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Book Review

The Two Poets of Paradise Lost

William B. Hunter, quoted on the dust jacket of this book, hails it as "the most original and stimulating criticism of Paradise Lost to appear in the last decade or more . . . [with] a thesis difficult for anyone to lay aside." Robert McMahon describes it as "eccentric to the tradition of Milton studies" (22). His thesis develops out of two ideas: first, that there is a distinction between the historical Milton and the Bard within Paradise Lost; second, that the poem is not a static entity but unfolds in time. Neither of these ideas is eccentric to Milton studies but the way McMahon develops them is.

Arguing from the fact that the historical Milton chose the ordering of material in Paradise Lost, McMahon claims that what comes later is, by virtue of being later, authoritative. If we want to know the views of Milton we should "give pride of place to the final two books" because they are the ending (3). The sequential principle, the poem's unfolding in time, relates most significantly in McMahon's thesis to the Bard: the Bard presents himself composing the poem as an "unrevised performance" (5) in a literary present, while Milton as the author behind the poem designed the Bard to grow as the poem unfolds, to mature in both aesthetic and moral judgment. The Bard's progress is in fact the overriding concern of the book and McMahon sees him as the protagonist "for a poem that seems to lack one" (158). Bringing a knowledge of classical literature to his project, he argues that Milton's great innovation in epic was the creation of "a Bard who matures in the experience of singing his poem" (86), more eccentrically, that the Bard is an imperfect narrator who corrects himself as he sings. This "corrective resinging" (124) is examined through the proems and through the Bard's relation to Satan, to God the Father and the Son, to Raphael and Michael, and to the historical Milton.

In his first proem the Bard is interpreted as proclaiming "the greatness of his song," in his last "the greatness of his subject" (56), for which he prays only for an "answerable style" (9.20). As the poem unfolds the Bard comes to realize what Christian epic "truly requires" and this realization "effects a shift of balance in the poem, from Christian epic to Christian epic" (58); the epic grandeur of the first six books gradually gives way to a plainer, more biblical mode. Concerning Satan, Milton as author knows what Satan is, knowing the whole poem, but he designs an evolution in the fallen Bard's responses. As he sings the poem in the ongoing present, the Bard in Books 1 and 2 is "nervously fascinated by Satan" (66): his epic aspirations glory in Satan while his Christian belief checks him. Referring particularly to Waldock and Fish, McMahon holds that Miltonists have explored this story of the Bard "without quite knowing that they did so" (81). The Bard's deepest involvement with Satan is in the odyssey of Book II where he follows Satan's "every move" (79). Singing the celestial colloquy in Book 3 cures him and thereafter even his narrative syntax shows him distancing himself from Satan (78-80). With the singing of God, Milton as author has "brilliantly impersonated the Bard's faltering attempt" to portray God the Father in Book 3 and then has him re-sing the Father in Books 10 and 11 as "more beneficent and less irascible, less classical and more Christian" (94)--the concilium deorum in 3 is seen as "a magnificent program to overgo Vergil" (114). The fallen Bard's overreaching results in a skewing of the truth of salvation in the Son's speech in 3.236-65, so he "recants this Redemption theology in Book 12, re-singing it correctively" (112). The imperfect singer misrepresents his Saviour in Book 6 also, as he tries to overgo Homer, but corrects this in the biblical discourse of Michael. Here McMahon introduces specifically the idea of moral and aesthetic superiority. Taking as a touchstone Raphael's remark that "Great / Or Bright inferrs not Excellence" compared with the small "solid good" (8.90-93), he argues that "Michael's epic" is "the lowest part of the poem stylistically" but contains "more of solid good than all the poetic splendors of Raphael's epic" (149), and that this shift reflects the Bard's progress. "Milton and the Bard's Song" (Chapter 5) argues that the Bard's need to correct and re-sing his material shows Milton's understanding of Christian epic as a "problematical genre" (151), furthermore that the resinging is evidence of the mature Milton calling into question visionary poets (155-62). An extra, concluding chapter argues that Paradise Regain'd is the culmination of the Bard's progress to true Christian epic. McMahon does not mention Thomas Ellwood, but a rare biographical reference early in the book reminds us that Milton could not abide hearing Paradise Regain'd denigrated beside Paradise Lost (21). [End Page 89]

It is a closely argued and constantly provocative book, and for sustained clarity of prose is notable among 1998 Milton studies. It provokes a multitude of queries in its details: for example, it is hard to believe that the Bard is distanced from Satan as he approaches Eden, particularly in the soliloquy on Mount Niphates, and the violent "Dogs of Hell" speech in 10.616-40 scarcely supports the idea of the Bard re-singing God mildly. More generally, and in light of the fact that Paradise Lost does many things at once, even opposite things, McMahon's argument about the Bard's progress provokes a fundamental question. Could the various "corrective resinging[s]" be the author Milton's minute attention to decorum in handling the action of the epic? McMahon early acknowledges that he neglects "certain parts of the poem, especially those concerning Adam and Eve" (22), and while he emphasizes the temporal unfolding of Paradise Lost he ignores the main temporal sequence, the fall. Milton as author shaped that story, using different material according to the needs of context: Michael's discourse is of a different order from Raphael's because it has a different context, a different reason for existence; the proems are right for their respective stages in the action, showing changes in the Bard but not necessarily improvement. The evolution of styles in Paradise Lost might have something to do with the Bard criticizing earlier parts of the poem but much to do with Milton bodying forth the loss of paradise. Milton as author also gave the poem its title, and in certain respects the title takes "pride of place" over the last two books, including the "paradise within."

A final question concerns the distinction between the historical Milton and the Bard. In his Introduction, McMahon deplores the "ambiguous" use of "Milton" by scholars who have not distinguished "the two poets" of Paradise Lost (2-12). While he is careful to say that the Bard and Milton are not sundered, he fails to acknowledge how close they are. The only undisguised contemporary reference in Paradise Lost, apart from that to Galileo, is to Milton's blindness. McMahon valuably focuses on the Bard within the poem singing it orally, but he is interested in this strictly as a poetic fiction and never connects it with Milton's actual oral delivery of the poem. As his early biographers record, the blind Milton dictated flowing passages of verse on waking in the morning, his third wife declared that he stole from no one but "the Holy Spirit that visited him nightly" (reported in Newton's Life), and his way of life was of necessity strongly oral and aural. McMahon's subject called for investigation into this cultural context. The Two Poets of Paradise Lost is a challenging book which has much to say on one poet, the "fictive Bard," but disappointingly little on the other, the historical Milton.

Beverly Sherry
University of Sydney