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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... poems ; but an early reader of the manuscript , the distinguished historian , Dr. John Morrill , wisely observed that since the book said little about the poetry , the subtitle seemed to promise more than it delivered . As a result ...
... poem , not a political testament , one , moreover , whose purpose is to delineate universal spiritual values , not partisan ideologies . Its political imagery , therefore , like all the imagery of the poem , is not an end in itself but ...
... poems is assuredly drawn from that same experience but it surveys events from a loftier vantage , placing those two or three eventful decades within the grand sweep of cosmic history , and in the final books of Paradise Lost in the ...
... poetic expression and appealing to a faculty of comprehension that tran- scends pure reason . It can do more , it can ... poem , but it does not interpret it . I do not personally subscribe to the grim view of the world that perceives ...
... Poems and Major Prose . 2. The State Papers , cited by reference to the numbers assigned them in Works and Prose , e.g. , " ( W1 , P5 ) . " 3. The prose other than the State Papers , cited by volume and page number in Prose , e.g. ...
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 |