On Thursday, January 6, 2022 at 5:21:37 PM UTC-5, Dennis wrote:
Milton, On Shakespeare
Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame,
What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?
(snip)
And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
Milton – Republican. King immured in extravagant rhetoric – the Paradise of a Fool
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Milton – Paradise of Fools
Wikipedia
... One of the most notable examples of the Paradise of Fools is found in Book 3 of John Milton's _Paradise Lost_, where Milton, in the narrative of Satan's journey to Earth, reserves a space for future fools (Milton also calls it the "Limbo of Vanity")
, specifically Catholic clergy and "fleeting wits".[2] Milton's satirical allegory in turn was inspired by Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1516); Samuel Johnson, in Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, stated that the allegory "disgraced" Milton'
s epic.[3]
The ancestry of Milton's Paradise of Fools includes Canto XXXIV of Orlando and Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. As John Wooten argued, that canto in Orlando contains a summarizing critique of Dante's entire Comedy—a descent into Hell, followed by an
ascent to a mountain top (Dante's Earthly Paradise) and a flight to the moon: "with the greatest ironic debunking, the moon ... is Ariosto's allegorical substitute for the complex theology and metaphysics of Dante's Paradiso".[4] In turn, Milton's
Paradise of Fools builds on Ariosto's mock version of Dante's Comedy, but adds a specifically anti-Catholic aspect by making fun of hermits, friars, Dominicans, Franciscans—those equipped with "Reliques, Beads, / Indulgences, Dispenses, Pardons, Bulls".
Central is the PUNISHMENT OF VANITY; it is the place for "all things transitory and vain, when Sin / With vanity had fill'd the works of men: / Both all things vain, and all who in vain things / Built thir fond hopes of Glory or lasting fame" (III.446-
49). Milton also "corrects" Ariosto; the Paradise of Fools is "Not in the neighboring Moon, as some have dream'd" (III.459)--a "mock correction", as Wooten calls it.
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Definition of pomp
1: a show of magnificence : SPLENDOR
every day begins … in a pomp of flaming colours— F. D. Ommanney
2: a ceremonial or festival display (such as a train of followers or a pageant)
3a: ostentatious display : VAINGLORY
b: an ostentatious gesture or act
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Limbus Fatuorum
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Milton, On Shakespeare
What needs my Shakespeare for his *honoured bones*,
The labor of an age in pilèd stones,
Or that his * hallowed relics * should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?
(Saintly Shake-speare?)
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Ad Gulielmum Shakespeare
John WEEVER (1576-1632)
Honey-tongued Shakespeare, when I saw thine issue,
I swore Apollo got them, and none other;
Their rosy-tainted features, clothed in tissue,
Some heaven-born goddess said to be their mother:
Rose-cheeked Adonis, with his amber tresses,
Fair fire-hot Venus charming him to love her;
Chaste Lucretia, virgin-like her dresses,
Proud lust-stung Tarquin, seeking still to prove her;
Romeo, Richard - more, whose names I know not -
Their sugared tongues and power-attractive beauty
Say they are saints, although that saints they show not,
For thousands vows to them subjective duty;
They burn in love; thy children, Shakespeare, het them,
Go, woo thy muse, more nymphish brood beget them.
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From Purgatory to the Paradise of Fools: Dante, Ariosto, and Milton's
John Wooten
If we trace the sources of Milton’s Paradise of Fools, or Limbo of Vanity, his other name for that strange region Satan finds while flying from Hell to Eden in Book III of Paradise Lost, aren’t we led most logically to Dante’s Limbo, and not to
his Purgatory? Most editors and commentators have assumed, and with good reason, that Milton’s Limbo functions in some way as a literary allusion to Dante’s first circle of Hell, which is Dante’s Limbo. After probing that assumption, however, even
such a distinguished Miltonist as Merritt Y. Hughes lamented that as far as he could tell Milton’s Limbo has nothing to do with Dante’s. Hughes offered Plato as the most significant influence on this section of Paradise Lost, but, as I hope to show,
Dante is relevant, though not in so simple a way as critics have believed. In addition, critics and commentators have assumed, because of Milton’s reference in this passage to the canto in Ariosto’s _Orlando Furioso_ where *Astolfo*, the English
Knight-errant, flies to the moon, that Milton has Ariosto very much in mind as a complementary source. After all, the narrator of Paradise Lost rather bluntly tells us that all the strange things with which Ariosto littered his lunar terrain are to be
found in Milton’s Limbo, and “Not in the neighboring Moon, as some have dream’d.” Ariosto stands corrected. Milton never minded correcting those in error, or course, and he does not hesitate here. But before we nod in complacent agreement about
this familiar aspect of the Milton we know and love, we should stop over the fact that Milton’s Limbo is as much a literary fantasy as Ariosto’s moon ever was. And Milton knew that, of course. So why this mock correction of one playful fantasy with
another fantasy, equally invalid so far as strict truth is concerned?
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Milton, Paradise Lost – Bk III
So on this windie Sea of Land, the Fiend [ 440 ]
Walk'd up and down alone bent on his prey,
Alone, for o...ther Creature in this place
Living or liveless to be found was none,
None yet, but store hereafter from the earth
Up hither like Aereal vapours flew [ 445 ]
Of all things transitorie and vain, when Sin
With vanity had filld the works of men:
Both all things vain, and all who in vain things
Built thir fond hopes of Glorie or lasting fame,
Or happiness in this or th' other life; [ 450 ]
All who have thir reward on Earth, the fruits
Of painful Superstition and blind Zeal,
Naught seeking but the praise of men, here find
Fit retribution, emptie as thir deeds;
All th' unaccomplisht works of Natures hand, [ 455 ]
Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixt,
Dissolvd on earth, fleet hither, and in vain,
Till final dissolution, wander here,
Not in the neighbouring Moon, as some have dreamd;
Those argent Fields more likely habitants, [ 460 ]
Translated Saints, or middle Spirits hold
Betwixt th' Angelical and Human kinde:
Hither of ill-joynd Sons and Daughters born
First from the ancient World those Giants came
With many a vain exploit, though then renownd: [ 465 ]
The builders next of Babel on the Plain
Of Sennaar, and still with vain designe
New Babels, had they wherewithall, would build:
Others came single; he who to be deem'd
A God, leap'd fondly into Ætna flames [ 470 ]
*Empedocles, and hee who to enjoy
Plato's Elysium, leap'd into the Sea*,
Cleombrotus, and many more too long,
Embryo's and Idiots, Eremits and Friers
White, Black and Grey, with all thir trumperie. [ 475 ]
Here Pilgrims roam, that stray'd so farr to seek
In Golgotha him dead, who lives in Heav'n;
And they who to be sure of Paradise
Dying put on the weeds of Dominic,
Or in Franciscan think to pass disguis'd; [ 480 ]
They pass the Planets seven, and pass the fixt,
And that Crystalline Sphear whose ballance weighs
The Trepidation talkt, and that first mov'd;
And now Saint Peter at Heav'ns Wicket seems
To wait them with his Keys, and now at foot [ 485 ]
Of Heav'ns ascent they lift thir Feet, when loe
*A violent cross wind from either Coast
Blows them transverse ten thousand Leagues awry
Into the devious Air*; then might ye see
Cowles, Hoods and Habits with thir wearers tost [ 490 ]
And flutterd into Raggs, then Reliques, Beads,
Indulgences, Dispenses, Pardons, Bulls,
The sport of Winds: all these upwhirld aloft
Fly o're the backside of the World farr off
Into a Limbo large and broad, since calld [ 495 ]
The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown
Long after, now unpeopl'd, and untrod;
All this dark Globe the Fiend found as he pass'd,
And long he wanderd,
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Limbo Reapplied: On living in Perennial Crisis and the Immanent Afterlife Kristof K.P. Vanhoutte
If also in the case of Milton’s _Paradise Lost_, and, in particular, regarding his Paradise of Fools, we were to offer one single extra interpretative comment, or stress one single aspect, then it would regard the inhabitants of Milton’s Limbo. A
greater difference between Milton’s (but also already Ariosto’s) Limbo and the traditional scholastic and even Dantesque Limbo can probably not be found than in the description of its inhabitants. Whereas we find, in Dante’s and the scholastic
Limbo, the first human (Adam), ancient prophets, the great Fathers of the Jewish tradition, Greek philosophers, scientists, even some other ‘barbarian’ just, and, finally innocent newborns, we are contrasted by the Miltonian/Ariostonian vainglorious,
narcissistic, haughty arrogant, superstitiously void and praise-seeking nullities on the one hand, and on the other, the trumpery-loaded ordained Catholics and their silly superstitious and almost purely work-oriented lay counterparts.
However, if we were to attempt to leave the parody and critical satire behind, or better, if we were to try and transcend all of this (in other words, if we were to leave out the mere aspect of vanity and emptiness from Milton’s ‘Limbo large and
broad’), one could venture out and discover that Milton’s Limbo considered as a Fools’ Paradise is not so different than the paradoxical Limbo we discovered in Dante and, above all in Saint Thomas. Reading Milton after we have spent so much time
with Dante might have clouded our minds. Dante’s insistence on the great merit of all the inhabitants of Limbo has somewhat biased our reading of Milton. True, Milton’s insistence on the negative characteristics of the future inhabitants of his Limbo
seem to be hinting at a similar – although in reverse - primary importance of the Limbo-dwellers. But Milton’s Limbo is, however, primarily about something else. Milton’s Limbo is about the ‘punishment’, about the punishment that reverses all
that is expected. It is about the overturning of glory, fame, and supposed happiness. It is about subverting rewards that had been worked for in a superstitious way.
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vain - vanus – empty
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Milton, On Shakespeare
What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,
The labor of an age in pilèd stones,
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?
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Milton, Paradise Lost, Bk I
...After these appear’d
A CREW who, under names of old renown,
Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train,
With monstrous shapes and sorceries abus’d
Fanatic Egypt and her priests to seek
Their wand’ring Gods disguis’d in brutish forms
Rather than human. (481)
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Worldly Vanity/Pomp
_Comus_, John Milton
745: COMUS. Why are you vexed, Lady? why do you frown?
746: Here dwell no frowns, nor anger; from these gates
747: Sorrow flies far. See, here be all the pleasures
748: That FANCY can beget on youthful thoughts,
749: When the fresh blood grows lively, and returns
750: Brisk as the April buds in primrose season.
751: And first behold this cordial julep here,
752: That flames and dances in his crystal bounds,
753: With spirits of balm and fragrant syrups mixed.
(SNIP)
837: LADY. I had not thought to have unlocked my lips
838: In this unhallowed air, but that this juggler
839: Would think to charm my judgment, as mine eyes,
840: Obtruding false rules pranked in reason's garb.
841: I hate when vice can bolt her arguments
842: And virtue has no tongue to check her pride.
843: Impostor! do not charge most innocent Nature,
844: As if she would her children should be riotous
845: With her abundance. She, good cateress,
846: Means her provision only to the good,
847: That live according to her sober laws,
848: And holy dictate of spare Temperance.
849: If every just man that now pines with want
850: Had but a moderate and beseeming share
851: Of that which lewdly-pampered LUXURY
852: Now heaps upon some few with vast excess,
853: Nature's full blessings would be well dispensed
854: In unsuperfluous even proportion,
855: And she no whit encumbered with her store;
856: And then the Giver would be better thanked,
857: His praise due paid: for swinish gluttony
858: Ne'er looks to Heaven amidst his GORGEOUS feast,
859: But with besotted base ingratitude
860: Crams, and blasphemes his Feeder. Shall I go on
861: Or have I said enow? To him that dares
862: Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous words
863: Against the sun-clad power of chastity
864: Fain would I something say;--yet to what end?
865: Thou hast nor ear, nor soul, to apprehend
866: The sublime notion and high mystery
867: That must be uttered to unfold the sage
868: And serious doctrine of Virginity;
869: And thou art worthy that thou shouldst not know
870: More happiness than this thy present lot.
871: Enjoy your dear wit, and gay rhetoric,
872: That hath so well been taught her DAZZLING FENCE;
873: Thou art not fit to hear thyself convinced.
874: Yet, should I try, the uncontrolled worth
875: Of this pure cause would kindle my rapt spirits
876: To such a flame of sacred vehemence
877: That dumb things would be moved to sympathise,
878: And the brute Earth would lend her nerves, and SHAKE,
879: Till all thy MAGIC STRUCTURES, reared so high,
880: Were SHATTERED into heaps o'er thy FALSE HEAD.
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*Casting Down Imaginations*: Milton as Iconoclast
David Loewenstein
“The weapons of our warfare are...mightie through God to the pulling down of strong holds; *casting down imaginations and everie high thing that exalts it self against the knowledge of God*...having in a readiness to aveng all disobedience.” This
passage from Paul’s second epistle to the Corinthians (10:4-6) had special significance for Milton’s controversial writings: he cited it three times in his polemics – once in his antiprelatical tracts of the early 1640s, once during the period of
his regicide polemics, a once in his late pre-Restoration works. While it involved the breaking of images and the pulling down of strongholds, iconoclasm for Milton, the major literary iconoclast of his revolutionary age, was a renovating activity with
both crucial artistic and social implications.(...)
Eikonoklastes is Milton’s longest and most sustained revolutionary polemic: with immense passion and skill it demolishes the fiction, spectacle, and arguments of Eikon Basilike, a work of royalist propaganda displaying Charles I as the greatest
martyr of his age. Iconoclasm emerges in Milton’s controversial tract, which appeared i early October 1649 (and which was written in response to an order from Parliament), as an essential expression of the poet-polemicist’s dynamic and creative
response to the historical process. In Eikonoklastes Milton attempts to free history from the tyranny of the king’s image – a powerful icon of Charles projected and fashioned with considerable visual and rhetorical art in the frontispiece and text of
the king’s book. Recognizing the the extraordinarily alluring power of the king’s theatrical image and text, Milton seeks to deconstruct point by point the arguments of Eikon Basilike, thereby relentlessly breaking to pieces, with his verbal
iconoclasm, the royal ideology and its symbolic icon. Iconoclasm for Milton consequently emerges as a profoundly radical and creative response that cannot be divorced from his dramatic sense of social transformation: it represents his attempt to
undermine an entrenched ideological and historical perspective, so as to being about a new mode of social vision.
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‘Companions of their solitudes’: Transforming the Commonplace in Milton’s ‘Eikonoklastes’
Iris Pearson
One of John Milton’s pithiest criticisms of Eikon Basilike comes at the beginning of his preface to his Eikonoklastes: he accuses the king’s book of ‘containing little else but the common grounds of tyranny and popery’.[1] To a Renaissance
reader drilled in humanist practices of reading from their earliest school days, the phrase ‘common grounds’ would have had an undeniable resonance. Common ground is common territory, which is common place – communis locus – which becomes the
practice of commonplacing and the commonplace book. A foundation of Renaissance humanist teaching championed by Erasmus and also by Milton himself in his 1644 essay ‘Of Education’, commonplacing was a method of reading which involved selecting
extracts from texts and categorising these quotations and extracts under different headings and subheadings in a single book (although often in multiple volumes), to be used in writing different essays or pieces on these subjects.[2] Intertextuality, in
this way, was inextricably connected to commonplacing; a reference to another text implied a quotation in the writer’s commonplace book. As Milton discusses texts that are mentioned either explicitly or implicitly in Eikon Basilike, then, he begins to
construct an image of the titles on the bookshelf of King Charles I. I suggest that Milton gives us more than this imagined library, however, and that his criticism of the king goes beyond a comment on which texts he reads. I argue, through the apian
metaphor for reading provided by multiple humanist writers, that Milton’s primary criticism lies in the static, aesthetic status that the king seems to give to the books he reads and that Milton himself, in Eikonoklastes, presents an alternative model
for reading and working with texts.
Perhaps the most discussed moment of intertextuality in Eikonoklastes (perhaps more accurately described as an intertextual moment from Eikon Basilike which Milton tears apart in Eikonoklastes) is ‘the Pamela prayer’. The words of this prayer,
Milton tells us, although presented as the king’s own creation, have been lifted directly from Book Three, Chapter Six of Philip Sidney’s Arcadia (Milton in his pedantry of argument quotes the exact page number): ‘a prayer stolen word for word from
the mouth of a heathen woman praying to a heathen god’ (Eikonoklastes, p327). The repetition of ‘heathen’ at the centre of this quotation is a reminder of the contrast between the king’s own Anglicanism and Pamela’s emphatic pagan-ness as
Sidney presents her. Milton is critical of the ease with which the king seems to abandon his religion and the religious discourse which is supposedly so central to his position. The word ‘stolen’ is also significant, however, as it suggests an anger
about the direct and deliberate lifting of material from one work to use in this book. The verbal object sits in exactly the same state in Eikon Basilike as it was in Arcadia.‘Stolen’ hints therefore at a creative poverty in the king, as he cannot
come up with his own words but must take them from the mouth of another; Milton’s criticism at this point turns then on the possibility of plagiarism that is the result of misuse of the commonplace book.
In Chapter I of Eikonoklastes, Milton focuses on the king’s familiarity with Shakespeare: ‘I shall not instance an ABSTRUSE author, wherein the King might be less conversant, but one whom we well know was the closest companion of these his
solitudes, William Shakespeare’ (Eikonoklastes, p327).
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Merriam-Webster
Abstruse
Latin Ties Things Together With Abstruse
Look closely at the following Latin verbs, all of which are derived from the verb trudere ("to push, thrust"): extrudere, intrudere, obtrudere, protrudere. Remove the last two letters of each of these and you get an English descendant whose meaning
involves pushing or thrusting. Another trudere offspring, abstrudere, meaning "to push away" or "to conceal," gave English abstrude, meaning "to thrust away," but that 17th-century borrowing has fallen out of use. An abstrudere descendant that has
survived is abstruse, an adjective that recalls the meaning of its Latin parent abstrūsus, meaning "concealed."
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Eclipsing Shakespeare’s Eikon: Milton’s Subversion of “Richard II”
Julia M. Walker
...Written at the order of Parliament to refute the currently circulating Eikon Basilike (Charles posthumous twenty-eight-chapter version of the Pomfret Castle speech). Milton’s work not only takes on the ghostly voice of Charles and/or his ghost
writers but goes beyond the point-by-point, chapter-by-chapter refutation to address the larger question of the divinity of monarchs. Although Milton quotes lines from Eikon Basilike as texts for his own chapters, he makes no attempt to cite and remake
the frontispiece, Charles at emblem-rounded prayer. Just as Eikonklastes balances the Eikon Basilike’s icon of Charles at prayer with nothing – not a dismembered or reworked icon but total absence of icon – [note - What need’st thou such weak
witness of thy name - Oxford as master 'vain' image maker of previous reign] - so Milton sets out to deconstruct, to desanctify, to disprivilege all of the monarchy’s literary icons, the tropes, similies, and commonplaces of the late Middle Ages and
the early Renaissance, the very same devices which Shakespeare collects and presents with such telling, if varied, effect in Richard II. Just as Charles’s book relies upon this treasure trove of iconography, so does Milton’s text seek to erase it, to
render it without significance. Briefly, almost casually, Milton subverts a number of the important images from Richard II – the mirror of truth, the good gardener, the relative supremacy of fire and water; but it is for the play’s (and Charles’s)
most powerful image, the king as sun, that Milton reserves the full strength of his wit, poetic talent, and political conviction. Milton’s attack upon Eikon Basilike is, of necessity, not subtle: his attack upon the literary icons of kingship, however *
employs imagery to destroy imagery* [note- defacement of Oxford], showing us that even the Parliamentary “left hand” held the pen of a poet.
...A strong hand and a strong pen were clearly needed by the anti-royalists. Charles’s Eikon greatly moved the people, both by its prose pleas and prayers for understanding and by its William Marshall frontispiece, which Ernest B. Gilman describes as
“a rich pictorial synopsis of Charles’s Christ-like virtues.” Gilman reminds us of how recently such depictions of monarchs were considered commonplace by the English readers: “This is the illuminated monarch celebrated in the Stuart masque as
both the focus and the source of all ennobling visions. He is brought low but still (as Ben Jonson said of Charles’s father) ‘placed high’.” Milton attempts to redefine the audience which would have found such an image “ennobling”; in the
final paragraph of Eikonklastes he calls Charles attempt to explain himself “hopeless...but to catch the worthless approbation of an inconstant, irrational, and Image-doting rabble; ([that like a credulous and hapless herd, begott’n to servility, and
inchanted with these popular institutes of Tyranny, subscrib’d with a new device of the Kings Picture at his praiers, hold out both thir eares with such delight and ravishment to be stigmatiz’d and board through in witness of thir own voluntary and
beloved baseness)” (CPW p.601) The heavy-handed name-calling of this, the penultimate sentence of his work, reveals to us a poet in combat with something he recognizes to be beyond the bounds of simply rational discourse.
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Milton, Eikonoklastes
The PREFACE.
*TO descant on the misfortunes of a person fall'n from so high a dignity, who hath also payd his final debt both to Nature and his Faults*, is neither of it self a thing commendable, nor the intention of this discours. Neither was it fond ambition, or
the VANITY to get a Name, present, or with Posterity, by writing against a King: I never was so thirsty after Fame, nor so destitute of other hopes and means, better and more certaine to attaine it. For Kings have gain'd glorious Titles from thir
Favourers by writing against privat men, as Henry the 8th did against Luther; but no man ever gain'd much honour by writing against a King, as not usually meeting with that force of Argument in such Courtly Antagonists, which to convince might add to his
reputation. Kings most commonly, though strong in Legions, are but weak at Arguments; as they who ever have accustom'd from the Cradle to use thir will onely as thir right hand, *thir reason alwayes as thir left* [note – ambisinister Droeshout Figure].
Whence unexpectedly constrain'd to that kind of combat, they prove but weak and puny Adversaries. Nevertheless for their sakes who through custom, simplicitie, or want of better teaching, have not more seriously considerd Kings, then in the gaudy name of
Majesty, and admire them and thir doings, as if they breath'd not the same breath with other mortal men, I shall make no scruple to take up (for it seems to be the challenge both of him and all his party) to take up this Gauntlet, though a Kings, in the
behalf of Libertie, and the Common-wealth.
And furder, since it appears manifestly the cunning drift of a factious and defeated Party, to make the same advantage of his Book, which they did before of his Regal Name and Authority, and intend it not so much the defence of his former actions, as
the promoting of thir own future *designes*, making thereby the Book thir own rather then the Kings, as the benefit now must be thir own more then his, now the third time to corrupt and disorder the mindes of weaker men, by new suggestions and narrations,
either falsly or fallaciously representing the State of things to the dishonour of this present Goverment, and the retarding of a generall peace, so needfull to this afflicted Nation, and so nigh obtain'd, I suppose it no injurie to the dead, but a good
deed rather to the living, if by better information giv'n them, or, which is anough, by onely remembring them the truth of what they themselves know to be heer misaffirm'd, they may be kept from entring the third time unadvisedly into Warr and bloodshed.
For as to any moment of solidity in the Book it self, save only that a King is said to be the Author, a name, then which there needs no more among the blockish vulgar, to make it wise, and excellent, and admir'd, nay to set it next the Bible, though
otherwise containing little els but the common grounds of Tyranny and popery, drest up, the better to deceiv, in a new Protestant guise, and trimmly garnish'd over, or as to any need of answering, in respect of staid and well-principl'd men, I take it on
me as a work assign'd rather, then by me chos'n or affected. Which was the cause both of beginning it so late, and finishing it so leasurely, in the midst of other imployments and diversions. And though well it might have seem'd in vaine to write at all;
considering the envy and almost infinite prejudice likely to be stirr'd up among the Common sort, against what ever can be writt'n or gainsaid to the Kings book, so advantageous to a book it is, only to be a Kings, and though it be an irksom labour to
write with industrie and judicious paines that which neither waigh'd, nor well read, shall be judg'd without industry or the paines of well judging, by Faction and the easy literature of custom and opinion, it shall be ventur'd yet, and the truth not
smother'd, but sent abroad, in the native confidence of her single self, to earn, how she can, her entertainment in the world, and to finde out her own readers; few perhaps, but those few, of such value and substantial worth, as truth and wisdom, not
respecting numbers and bigg names, have bin ever wont in all ages to be contented with.
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