The Metaphysics of Milton’s Masque, 1634 to 1645
The Metaphysics of Milton’s Masque,1634 to 1645
0
조회
0
다운로드
0
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
The Poems of 1645 marks a defining moment in the poet’s career. Milton’s need for respectability to counter the attacks on his divorce tracts, combined with anxiety that his “late spring no bud or blossom shew’th” (“Sonnet 7” 4), converge in the printing of this volume of poetry. Though A Masque was the longest poem he had composed thus far, length was perhaps the least of Milton’s reasons for placing at the center of the collection. In this paper, I suggest that the career of the Masque from its performance in 1634 to its inclusion in the 1645 Poems may be traced by observing the changes in Milton’s metaphysical view of the world, from rudimentary Platonic abstraction in the early poems, through a more serious exploration of the body-soul dualism in the more mature poems, and finally to glimpses of materialist monism in the divorce tracts. In the end, I argue that the success or failure the virtuous soul in the Masque depends on how one views the materiality of the soul, but this metaphysical question is yet to be worked out in 1645, and the Lady continues to sit in ambiguity.
Abstract
The Poems of 1645 marks a defining moment in the poet’s career. Milton’s need for respectability to counter the attacks on his divorce tracts, combined with anxiety that his “late spring no bud or blossom shew’th” (“Sonnet 7” 4), converge in the printing of this volume of poetry. Though A Masque was the longest poem he had composed thus far, length was perhaps the least of Milton’s reasons for placing at the center of the collection. In this paper, I suggest that the career of the Masque from its performance in 1634 to its inclusion in the 1645 Poems may be traced by observing the changes in Milton’s metaphysical view of the world, from rudimentary Platonic abstraction in the early poems, through a more serious exploration of the body-soul dualism in the more mature poems, and finally to glimpses of materialist monism in the divorce tracts. In the end, I argue that the success or failure the virtuous soul in the Masque depends on how one views the materiality of the soul, but this metaphysical question is yet to be worked out in 1645, and the Lady continues to sit in ambiguity.
참고문헌 (23)
- Breasted, Barbara, "Comus and the Castlehaven Scandal", Milton Studies, 3, pp.201~224 (1971)
- Brown, Cedric, "John Milton’s Aristocratic Entertainments" (1985), Cambridge UP
- Coiro, Ann Baynes, "Anonymous Milton, or A Maske Masked", ELH, 71, pp.609~629 (2004)
- Daniel, Clay, "Milton’s Neo-Platonic Angel?", SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 44(1), pp.173~188 (2004)
- Darbishire, Helen, "Poetical Works: Volume 2. Paradise Regain’d; Samson Agonistes; Poems upon Several Occasions, both English and Latin", pp.9~13 (2000), Oxford UP
- Diekhoff, John S., "A Maske at Ludlow" (1968), P of Case Western Reserve U
- Fallon, Stephen M., "Milton among the Philosophers: Poetry and Materialism in Seventeenth-Century England" (1991), Cornell UP
- Fallon, Stephen M., "Milton’s Peculiar Grace : Self-Representation and Authority" (2007), Cornell UP
- Gordon, D. J., "Poet and Architect: The Intellectual Setting of the Quarrel Between Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones", Journal of the Warburg and Courtald Institutes, 12, pp.152~178 (1949)
- Hunter, William B., "Milton’s Comus: Family Piece" (1983), Whitson
- Jonson, Ben, "Hymenaei: or The Solemnities of Masques, and Barriers, Magnificently performed on the eleventh, and twelfth Nights, from Christmas" (2015), Thomas Thorp
- Kerrigan, William, "The Sacred Complex : On the Psychogenesis of Paradise Lost" (1983), Harvard UP
- Levin, Kate D., "Coming of Age on Stage: The Pedagogical Masque in Seventeenth-Century England", George Herbert Journal, 29(1-2), pp.114~130 (2005)
- Milton, John, "Milton’s Comus: Being the Bridgewater Manuscript with Notes and a Short Family Memoir by The Lady Alix Egerton" (1910), Dent
- Milton, John, "The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton" (2007), Modern Library
- (2015)[URL]
- Milton, John, "A MASKE PRESENTED At Ludlow Castle, 1634: On Michaelmasse night, before the RIGHT HONORABLE, IOHN Earle of Bridgewater, Vicount BRACKLY, Lord President of WALES", Hvmphrey Robinson
- Mundhenk, Rosemary Karmelich, "“Dark Scandal and the Sun-Clad Power of Chastity: The Historical Milieu of Milton's Comus", SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 15(1), pp.141~152 (1975)
- Ortiz, Joseph M., "Broken Harmony: Shakespeare and the Politics of Music" (2011), Cornell UP
- Rumrich, John Peter, "Matter of Glory: A New Preface to Paradise Lost" (1987), U of Pittsburgh P
- Sanders, Julie, "Ecocritical Readings and the Seventeenth-Century Woodland: Milton’s ‘Comus’ and the Forest of Dean", English, 50, pp.1~18 (2001)
- Shohet, Lauren, "Reading Masques: The English Masque and Public Culture in the Seventeenth Century" (2010), Oxford UP
- Thaler, Alwin, "Shakespeare’s Silences" (1929), Harvard UP