Divided Empire: Milton's Political ImageryPenn State Press, 1995年9月8日 - 208 頁 In Divided Empire, Robert T. Fallon examines the influence of John Milton's political experience on his great poems: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. This study is a natural sequel to Fallon's previous book, Milton in Government, which examined Milton's decade of service as Secretary for Foreign Languages to the English Republic. Milton's works are crowded with political figures—kings, counselors, senators, soldiers, and envoys—all engaged in a comparable variety of public acts—debate, decree, diplomacy, and warfare—in a manner similar to those who exercised power on the world stage during his time in public office. Traditionally, scholars have cited this imagery for two purposes: first, to support studies of the poet's political allegiances as reflected in his prose and his life; and, second, to demonstrate that his works are sympathetic to certain ideological positions popular in present times. Fallon argues that Paradise Lost is not a political testament, however, and to read its lines as a critique of allegiances and ideologies outside the work is limit the range and scope of critical inquiry and to miss the larger purpose of the political imagery within the poem. That imagery, the author proposes, like that of all Milton's later works, serves to illuminate the spiritual message, a vision of the human soul caught up in the struggle between vast metaphysical forces of good and evil. Fallon seeks to enlarge the range of critical inquiry by assessing the influence of personal and historical events upon art, asking, as he puts it, "not what the poetry says about the events, but what the events say about the poetry." Divided Empire probes, not Milton's judgment on his sources, but the use he made of them. |
搜尋書籍內容
第 1 到 5 筆結果,共 24 筆
... decree , diplomacy , and warfare . These figures and these acts define traditional political oppositions – the individual and society , loyalty and rebellion , obe- dience and freedom – the balance of which ultimately determines the ...
... decrees of kings . The decade to follow forced such matters upon him , however , interrupting his plans for quiet study and the slow maturing of his poetic art . The public debate over church government drew him into the pamphlet war ...
... decree ? One would think not . That rich imagery is the legacy of a decade of public service . If John Milton became a “ profoundly political animal , ” to use Christopher Hill's provocative phrase , it was the consequence of laboring ...
... decree . This is not to imply that Milton was of the Devil's party , knowing full well , but to argue that the political structures of Paradise Lost do not reflect the poet's political allegiances . David Quint's Epic and Empire is only ...
... decrees inviolable law , his subjects bonded to him by an amalgam of boundless love , their voices raised in hymns of consummate poetry . In Heaven's court God rules by decree , as did King Charles I for eleven years between Parliaments ...
內容
1 | |
25 | |
To Reign in Hell | 55 |
Heaven and Hell | 83 |
The Lords of the Earth | 97 |
Divided Empire | 119 |
The Final Things | 143 |
Embattled Humanity | 161 |
Works Cited | 180 |
Index | 186 |