Paradise Lost. - book reviews

Christian Century, June 16, 1993 by John Ottenhoff

WHY READ Paradise Lost? Given its reputation as a cornerstone of the fossilized canon, the case against it seems virtually open and shut. Exhibit A: all those biblical and classical allusions, all the footnotes and latinate English in iambic pentameter, all those irrelevant discussions of angels and devils, good and evil. Exhibit B: John Milton, king of patriarchal literature by dead white males and prima facie guilty of misogyny, offends modern sensibilities. Exhibit C: Milton's attempt to justify the creation story of Genesis -- as his maintenance of a Ptolemaic cosmos -- introduces a host of encumbrances and embarrassments for modern Christians. Exhibit D: Paradise Lost is just plain hard to read: it's long, difficult and demanding.

Why bother? Because Paradise Lost demands a level of reflection that few other texts can duplicate, and that every reader should experience. It raises issues still relevant for our culture -- questions about creation, war, pride, relationships, nature, progress, technology and freedom. Paradise Lost remains a vital and crucial work, stimulating and rewarding not just for academics, in whose classrooms, unfortunately, it usually resides, but for the general reader as well.

To read Paradise Lost is to realize that no matter how secular our society has become, we all still struggle -- whether we want to or not -- with questions about right and wrong, about free will and choice, about the nature of God, and about the relations between God, woman and man. To read Paradise Lost is to enter into the world of passionate argument and debate, not the cold world of a fossilized classic. Indeed, Paradise Lost continues to challenge the social and religious status quo -- and the status quo of reading itself, for it especially rewards modern critical emphases upon readers' responses and the slipperiness of language.

That Milton's text promotes disputation can be seen in the disparate reactions it has provoked over the centuries. Despite recent challenges and protests, Paradise Lost is still acknowledged, in the terms of one detractor, as the canonical text par excellence of English literature." Yet in the 1920s, modernists, including T. S. Eliot, pronounced Milton dead. Critic F. R. Leavis proclaimed in 1936 that Milton's dislodgment in the past decade, after his two centuries of predominance, was effected with remarkably little fuss." Firmly relodged in the university curriculum as a work of religious orthodoxy, Milton, in the words of Marxist critic Christopher Hill, must now "be defended from his defenders almost more than from the declining band of his enemies."

Christians too have been uncertain how to treat this "Christian classic." Samuel Johnson, the dean of 18th-century letters, claimed that "in Milton every line breathes sanctity of thought, and purity of manners, except when the train of the narrative requires the introduction of the rebellious spirits; and even they are compelled to acknowledge their subjection to God in such a manner as excites reverence, and confirms piety." But Johnson was wrong about the orthodoxy of Paradise Lost, as has been confirmed by generations of strife over the text. Many Protestants have found the theology of Paradise Lost lacking in huminity and charity; salvation through Christ's blood is hardly mentioned. A professor I knew at Calvin College, while perhaps taking some satisfaction in speaking of Paradise Lost as the "discovery of man's darker side of himself," was obliged to highlight Milton's Arminian emphasis on free will, antitrinitarianism, and -- from a Calvinist point of view -- generally suspect standing as a great Christian writer. Roman Catholics have been equally appalled: the Virgin birth and the crucifixion have little place in Paradise Lost; and several gratuitous reminders -- notably in the description of the Paradise of Fools -- exhibit Milton's contentious attitude toward Rome. According to Cardinal Newman, good Catholics must feel a great repugnance for Milton. Milton provides an elusive target for those who would enshrine him as the creator of the great orthodox Christian epic -- no matter their place on the theological spectrum.

Paradise Lost is, as Joseph Summers put it, full of "embarrassments" for those trying to enlist it in their causes. It will disappoint most moralists and strike striving militalists as "subversive" and dangerous for young citizens: epic battles -- and warfare in general -- come off looking quite silly indeed. Neither does this epic fit the conservative agenda of the most vocal defenders of the canon; it hardly gives a blueprint for timeless Republican living. But just as Milton allows little comfort for those seeking to claim him as a stern Puritan or saintly Christian, so too he frustrates those who would attempt to make Paradise Lost merely a great work of literature. Paradise Lost challenges its readers repeatedly to use their intellects but also to recognize their need for faith; it challenges readers to exercise freedom and responsibility but also, finally, to embrace the ethic of obedience. Milton wants his readers to know that they will be changed after confronting Paradise Lost -- for the better should they grasp the meaning of his work, for the worse should they disregard it.