Milton's Rival Hermeneutics: “Reason is But Choosing”

A Tribute to Richard J. DuRocher, 1955–2010

vii A Tribute to Richard J. DuRocher, 1955–2010 I believe that Richard James DuRocher was an exceptional Milton scholar in two respects. What he wrote was faithful to Milton’s poetry, and how he lived and comported himself was faithful to Milton’s standards. His responsiveness and integrity will be shown fully in his new book on Milton and the passions. —Mary Ann Radzinowicz Like all the great Renaissance humanists, Rich DuRocher was deeply grounded in Christian faith and in classical authors. These two arenas of lifetime commitment came together in his passionate engagement with Milton. His early studies at Loyola University in physics and electrical engineering inspired a fascination with how things work and how things are connected. This curiosity about the interconnectedness of physical properties carried over at Cornell University in his later studies of conceptual interrelations in different periods of literature and culture. Rich’s Milton scholarship embodies his faithful pursuit of understanding. He wished to discover how parts relate to a whole, how the complexities of the intellect, spirit, and heart comprise a whole human self, viii A Tribute to Richard J. DuRocher and how Milton’s poetry can teach us to think, feel, believe, and live. All of Rich’s colleagues, students, friends, and family have experienced the truth of Mary Ann Radzinowicz’s tribute. Rich DuRocher, a scholar—“faithful to Milton’s poetry”—cannot be separated from Rich DuRocher the man—“faithful to Milton’s standards.” Rich’s contribution to Milton studies cannot be measured by his scholarly publications alone, but must take into account the depth of his collegial inspiration and warmth, and his devoted teaching. At St. Olaf College, where Rich taught for 24 years, he was known as an enthusiastic and encouraging (as well as exacting) professor steeped in knowledge of Latin language and literature and in Milton’s poetry and prose. In 2006, in his delivery of the college’s prestigious Melby Lecture, he spoke about Milton’s continued relevance in our world and what Milton can teach us about “discriminating freedom,” “the rhetoric of heroism,” and the search “for wisdom and beauty.” More than a decade earlier, in his article “Dante, Milton, and the Art of Visual Speech,” he had argued that “Paradise Lost remains at its close profoundly committed to the solitary struggle for liberating choice in the world below” (168). Always true to his own insights and words, Rich lived what he taught, and both his pedagogy and his scholarship present an honest account of his own intellectual and spiritual search for the choices that truly liberate in this world. Rich’s Milton publications evolved through three major phases, all united by his engagement with the classical Roman authors who influenced Milton’s writings. Rich’s two monographs, Milton and Ovid (1985), and Milton Among the Romans: The Pedagogy and Influence of Milton’s Latin Curriculum (2001) remain influential studies of the ways in which Milton’s ideas were informed by the classics. The second development in Rich’s scholarship includes essays that seminally influenced ecocritical Milton scholarship. The A Tribute to Richard J. DuRocher ix third focuses primarily on Milton and the emotions, the subject of his monograph Passionate Milton, which he worked on until very shortly before he died. Twenty-five years after its publication, Milton and Ovid remains essential for any scholar considering Milton and the classics. In addition to considering how allusions to Ovidian characters and rhetoric may have shaped Milton’s own characters , Milton and Ovid extends its inquiry toward what such poetic devices might reveal more broadly about the concept of change, the construction of poetic genres, and the role of authorial presence. Expanding on the subject in Milton Among the Romans, Rich turns his attention specifically toward the curriculum of Latin authors that Milton studied and taught to pupils under his private tutelage from 1640 to 1646, and Rich explores how this set of scientific, historical, and architectural texts contributed to Milton’s poetic style, especially in Paradise Lost. Milton Among the Romans, in addition to calling attention to the civic and spiritual aims of Milton’s pedagogy, also examines how the kind of education Milton espoused continues to address human needs. By investigating Milton’s curriculum both for its own sake and for what it reveals about reading, learning, and constructing a life based in public and moral service, Milton...