Divided Empire: Milton's Political ImageryIn 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. |
From inside the book
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... Chaos , which in Milton's symbolic cosmology surrounds the World , all too ready , given the opportunity , to replant “ the Standard there of ancient Night ” ( 2 : 986 ) . Milton's poetry , however , is not a discourse on the politics ...
... Chaos , and the pre- and postlapsarian worlds . Chapter 2 examines Heaven ; Chapter 3 , Hell ; Chapter 4 compares the two ; and Chapter 5 addresses the political changes occasioned by the Fall . These are followed by a discussion of the ...
... Chaos , and Earth , are similarly governed . Milton describes a Heaven ruled by two kings . God so presides , of course , but the Son does as well , once he is declared " to be Heir and to be King " ( 6 : 708 ) . They reign together ...
... Chaos , " where eldest Night / And Chaos , Ancestors of Nature , hold / Eternal Anarchy " ( 2 : 894-96 ) . Beside that alle- gorical monarch " Enthron'd / Sat Sable - vested Night , eldest of things , / The Consort of his Reign ” ( 2 ...
... Chaos alone none is stated or implied ) . In Heaven and Hell the two are father and son , on Earth husband and wife . Of course , Milton is following Christian tradition in his description of both the celestial Father and Son and the ...
Contents
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 |