Visionary Milton: Essays on Prophecy and Violence ed. by Peter E. Medine, John T. Shawcross, David V. Urban (review)

152 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE 1homae made by Benedict and William. These show how each monk linked stories and contrasts between collections, while names and subjects are reminders of miracles each selected. Scholars of literature concerned with bardic performance (Milman Parry, Albert Lord, Walter Ong, John Miles Foley) have written extensively about Homer, Beowulf, Song ofRoland, and surviving traditions, especially South Slavic. Others cite Middle English narratives like Havelok the Dane and Sir Orfeo for oral performance and variety of audience. Historians have focused on "questions of orality and literacy in governmental administration and legal dealings" (11). Yet, as Koopmans early noted, "in terms of number of authors, miracle collecting was actually a more important and mainstream activity in England than the writing of chronicles" (2). Her exploration of these religious stories, too easily and often dismissed, should provoke others to reevaluate a neglected area and to reconsider miracles. As historian, she stresses the wish to record and preserve; but her title "wonderful to relate" also signs a timeless wish to share what has happened, the unusual but even ordinary personal experience. Koopmans creates for us another world, peopled by monks who collected the miracle stories and by all the people who told stories and were moved by them. Velma Bourgeois Richmond Holy Names University Visionary Milton: Essays on Prophecy and Violence. Edited by Peter E. Medine, John T. Shawcross, and David V Urban. Princeton: Duquesne University Press, 2004. ISBN 978-0820704296. Pp. xxvi + 346. $60.00. On September 6, 2002, TLS carried a commentary by John Carey entitled, "A Work in Praise of Terrorism?: September 11and Samson Agonistes" In it, Professor Carey took issue with Stanley Fish'sinterpretation of Samson's suicidal destruction of the temple of Dagon in How Milton Works. Fish had written: In the end the only value we can put on Samson's action is the value he gives it in context. Within the situation, it is an expression, however provisional, of his reading of the divine will, and insofar as it represents his desire to conform to that will, it is a virtuous action. Reading this in the summer of 2001, Carey writes, he thought Fish's "viewpoint seemed monstrous:' In the wake of the September 11 attacks, "[tlhe events of that day seem[ed] like a devilish implementation of his arguments:' Carey went on to argue that Fish was mistaken in his reading of Samson, but the gauntlet had been BOOK REVIEWS 153 thrown and over the past decade the question as to whether Milton would have condoned religious terrorism has exercised scholars of all persuasions. As timely as this argument has been, it is not really new, but merely rephrased. The work of Michael Lieb (who himself has edited a volume of essays called Milton in the Age of Fish: Authorship, Text and Terrorism) has long examined Milton's attitude toward divinely sanctioned violence, and Visionary Milton: Essays on Prophecy and Violence is a collection of essays,afestschrift, if you will, that builds upon that work, while taking advantage of the now-trendy debate about Milton and terrorism. The editors, Peter E. Medine, John T. Shawcross, and David V. Urban, have solicited essays from a veritable who's who of Milton scholars, including Fish, Barbara Lewalski (TheLifeofJohn Milton: A Critical Biography), Sharon Achinstein (Milton and the RevolutionaryReader), David Lowenstein (Milton and the Drama of History) and Michael Bryson (The Tyranny of Heaven), among others, and have included essays of their own. The Introduction positions Milton as a "visionary" author, by which the editors mean both prophetic and iconoclastic (xi). According to Medine et al., Lieb argues that this makes Milton's works "strikingly and often disturbingly comfortable with the notion that violence may be a divinely sanctioned method for punishing the wicked and rewarding the righteous" (xiii). Lieb maintains, they contend, that "for Milton violence is, paradoxically, an agent of both renewal and destruction" (xiv). The editors have organized the essays in four parts: "Milton's Visionary Mode: Prophecy and Violence;' "Milton's Visionary Mode: Contemporary and Later Contexts;' "Milton'sVisionary Mode and Paradise Regain'd" and "Milton'sVisionary Mode and the Last Poems:' Parts I and III contain three essays each and...