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

Introduction

xv Introduction John Milton’s works include interpretations of texts ranging from classical myths to biblical narratives regarded in his day as authoritative. In approaching these authoritative texts, Milton can be seen to be both faithfully rehearsing these culturally revered precursors and freely reinterpreting, even altering, them for his own purposes. For example, Milton’s Samson Agonistes, while based on the story of Samson in the book of Judges, radically departs from the biblical narrative in several ways. In one such departure, in his tragedy Milton casts Dalila as the wife, not the concubine of Samson as in the Bible, thus allowing Milton to explore further his ideas about marriage. Likewise, Milton recalls but revalues classical literary forms, for example, converting the Ovidian erotic dream vision into his elegy for the Bishop of Winchester, or reshaping Odysseus’s heroic wanderings in the Odyssey into Satan’s cosmic journey to seduce humankind in Paradise Lost. While creating space for Milton’s own beliefs and artistic representations, Milton’s habit of creatively reinterpreting texts, particularly texts found in sacred Scripture, raises questions about his fidelity to those texts and about his relationship to Hebraic, Christian, and Hellenic traditions generally. Milton’s acts of interpretation compel readers to reflect not only on the rival hermeneutics they find within xvi Introduction his works but also on their own hermeneutic principles and choices. The contributors to this volume explore a variety of Milton’s works that illustrate and call for the deployment of rival hermeneutics. A number of critics describe Milton’s works, particularly Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, as sites of uncertainty, irreconcilability, or even confusion . Claiming inspiration by the brilliant contrarian spirit of William Empson’s Milton’s God, these critics, among them Michael Bryson, Peter C. Herman, and Christopher D’Addario, argue that Milton’s masterworks embody radical contradiction or incertitude in a variety of areas. For example, Bryson, in The Tyranny of Heaven: The Rejection of God as King, reads Milton’s portrayal of God in Paradise Lost not as the benevolent supreme being in the universe but rather as a warning to readers against tyranny. Herman, in Destabilizing Milton: “Paradise Lost” and the Poetics of Incertitude, finds uncertainty in Milton’s syntax, emphasizing the disjunctive word “or” that appears between various alternatives, as well as in allusions that invite double, even opposite readings. Overall, Herman argues for a Milton who is “productively confused.” D’Addario, in Exile and Journey in Seventeenth-Century Literature, finds Milton’s epic not only uncertain but also detached from its Restoration context , given Milton’s ambiguous situation as what D’Addario calls an “interior exile” in London after 1660.1 These newer critical voices posit, moreover, that traditional critics strain to find coherence and authorial control in Milton’s poetry, while his works themselves actually reflect radical incoherence and openness. Milton’s Rival Hermeneutics responds to this critical challenge. While the heralds of incertitude have done well to highlight tensions and issues too often ignored in Milton criticism, we believe both their diagnosis and response to these issues have been too sweeping and dogmatic. With eyes Introduction xvii open to the presence of uncertainty and welcoming the multiple perspectives that Milton builds into his works, the contributors to Milton’s Rival Hermeneutics offer a variety of nuanced approaches to Milton’s texts. Each of the essays in this volume explores the problem of how to interpret: some contributors are interested in Milton’s own engagement with Scripture, some in the ways in which Milton represents the process of interpretation in his narrative poems, still others in the ways that Milton’s works challenge the reader’s own interpretive skills. Repeatedly the contributors argue that because Milton believed that “no person or institution is authorized to interpret God’s word to another” (Lewalski 81), he understood the search for truth as “a process both necessarily incomplete and necessary” (Woods 7). He intentionally destabilized meaning in order to encourage “an openness to emergent truth” (Lewalski 81). Pointing out that “the interpretive options” Milton offers “often force interpretive choices” (Wittreich 102), these critics show how Milton challenges readers to avoid accepting “an improved interpretation...for the final truth” in favor of “unfolding revelation” (Wittreich 103, 108). By isolating and discussing competing hermeneutics as integral to Milton’s poetry, the essays in this collection show a writer unwilling to present formulae or neat...