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Milton and Self-Knowledge

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Albert W. Fields
Albert W. Fields*
Affiliation:
University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette
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Abstract

Milton's notion of self-knowledge places him in the Socratic-Christian tradition which distinguishes between man's rational part, or self-like-God, and his passional nature, the aspect of self most easily subverted by Satan. Only the self-knowing man, by introspection and by seeing the reflection of self in the mirror of the world's stage, achieves a harmony between the two aspects of self. Milton's concept of self-examination, apparent in his prose and verse, is symbolically represented in Paradise Lost. The world of Adam-Eve mirrors both God's realm of pure truth and reason and Satan's realm of unreason and unrestrained passion. These realms represent those aspects of self that man must necessarily discover within. The Fall is inevitable and irrevocable in the creation of self: in Adam's discovery of his obligation to know himself “aright,” he understands that his rational self-like-God must rule the darker passionate self. Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes also represent man as achieving self-knowledge by the twofold means of introspection and viewing the reflection of himself in the external world.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 83 , Issue 2 , May 1968 , pp. 392 - 399
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1968

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References

1 Milton, Private Correspondence and Academic Exercises, tr. Phyllis B. Tillyard with introd. and commentary by ?. M. W. Tillyard (Cambridge, Eng., 1932), p. 72.

2 For the notion of a pattern of Christian tests, see Thomas B. Stroup, Microcosmos: The Shape of the Elizabethan Play (Lexington, Ky., 1965), Ch. vi, especially pp. 206–207. See also, Milton's De Doctrina in The Works of John Milton, gen. ed. F. A. Patterson (New York, 1931–38), xiv, 29.

3 See, e.g., The Dialogues of Plato, tr. B. Jowett, 3rd ed. rev. (London, 1892), i, 28–31, 452–453, 460–462; ii, 504–509; iii, 180–181; iv, 621–625, 640–641.

4 Xenophon, Memorabilia and Oeconomicus, tr. E. C. Marchant (New York, 1923), pp. 287,289.

5 See W. D. Ross, Aristotle (London, 1945), pp. 232–234.

6 See Ethica Eudemia in The Works of Aristotle, tr. W. D. Ross (Oxford, 1925), ix, 1244b; also, Magna Moralia, Bk. ii, Works, ix, 1213.

7 See Ethica Eudemia, Bk. x, Works, ix, 1177ab-1178a.

8 See, e.g., Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, tr. George Long, in Marcus Aurelius and His Times (New York, 1945), pp. 20–23.

9 See Etienne Gilson, L'Esprit de la philosophie médiévale, Etudes de Philosophie Médiévale, xxxiii (Paris, 1944), 214–233.

10 Louis I. Bredvold, “The Sources Used by Davies in Nosce Teipsum,” PMLA, xxxviii (1923), 747; see also, ?. Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine, tr. L. ?. M. Lynch (London, 1961), passim.

11 The Enchiridion of Erasmus, tr. Raymond Himelick (Bloomington, Ind., 1963), pp. 62–70.

12 Howard Schultz, in Milton and Forbidden Knowledge (New York, 1955), says that Socrates invented the ethical science of self-knowledge and in so doing set “star-knowledge” in opposition to self-knowledge. He finds Milton participating to an extent in the anti-curiosity tradition that developed from this bifurcation.

13 Thomas Hobbes, The English Works, ed. William Molesworth (London, 1839), ra, xi-xii.

14 Douglas Bush, English Literature in the Earlier Seventeenth Century, 1600–1660, Oxford History of English Literature, v (New York, 1945), 392–393.

15 Works, xv, 39. Except for the Prolusions, all citations from Milton are to the Columbia Edition. Hereafter, volume and page numbers of prose passages will be cited in parentheses.

16 Lily B. Campbell, Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes (New York, 1959), pp. 103–105.

17 P. B. Tillyard, pp. 113, 114–115.

18 Cf. George Williamson, “The Education of Adam,” MP' LXI (1963), 96–109, passim; also, Albert Cook, “Milton's Abstract Music,” UTQ, xxix (1959–60), 373–374.

19 PL ni.375–401. Hereafter, book and line numbers for citations from Milton's poetry will be indicated in parentheses.

20 Cf. the idea of the “triple equation” in Elizabeth M. Pope, Paradise Regained : The Tradition and the Poem (New York, 1962), Ch. v, especially p. 53.

21 Cf. Helen Gardner, “Milton's ‘Satan’ and the Theme of Damnation in Elizabethan Tragedy,” ES, N. S., i (1948), 46–66.

22 A Preface to Paradise Lost (London, 1942), p. 96.

23 Milton (London, 1956), p. 271.

24 Cf. Milton's use of “divine monitor” in Second Defence, viii, 69.

25 “Creation and the Self in Paradise Lost,” ELH, xxix (1962), 1–2. Both these lines of thought, Coffin says, “assist the revision of the classical exhortation to ‘know thyself’ to accommodate the dignity of man in a world which is enlarging and dislocating man from his traditional station.”

26 “Thus farr to try thee, Adam, I was pleas'd” (viii.437).

27 Williamson, p. 102.

28 Cf. Williamson, p. 104.

29 Cf. Pope, pp. 51–52; cf., also, Coffin, pp. 16–17.

30 See iiv.487–488.

31 Cf. Williamson, pp. 106–109.

32 The Paradise Within (New Haven, Conn., 1964), p. 155; see also, pp. 148–154; also Lawrence A. Sasek, “The Drama of Paradise Lost, Books XI and xii,” Studies in English Renaissance Literature, ed. W. F. McNeir, Louisiana State Univ. Studies: Humanities Series, No. 12 (1962), pp. 189–194; also Williamson, pp. 106–107.

33 Williamson, p. 109.

34 Tillyard, p. 328.

35 Cf. William ?. Harris, “Despair and ‘Patience as the Truest Fortitude’ in Samson Agonistes,” ELH, xxx (1963), 118; see also, A. S. P. Woodhouse, “Tragic Effect in Samson Agonistes,” UTQ, XXVIii (1958–59), 220.