Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-24hb2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T11:56:11.977Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Fear of Falling: Icarus, Phaethon, and Lucretius in Paradise Lost

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

David Quint*
Affiliation:
Yale University

Abstract

This essay discloses a hitherto-undetected network of allusion and motif in Paradise Lost (1667). Satan falls through Chaos like Icarus in book 2, and like Phaethon in book 6. In book 6 the Son rides triumphantly in the Chariot of Paternal Deity as a good, successful Phaethon. Both myths of falling in a poem about the Fall involve Milton (1608-74) in a polemic with Lucretius, the classical poet of a godless, Epicurean universe that is ever falling and dying. In a parallel to the Son, Milton depicts himself in his invocations to his Muse as a successful Icarus, claiming to escape a condition offallenness on the wings of immortal verse.

Type
Studies
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, Robert Martin. “A Little Look into Chaos.” In Illustrious Evidence: Approaches to English Literature in the Early Seventeenth Century, ed. Miner, Earl, 71-89. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1975.Google Scholar
Alighieri, Dante. La divina commedia. Ed. Vandelli, Giuseppe. Milan, 1987.Google Scholar
Borris, Kenneth. “Allegory in Paradise Lost. Satan's Cosmic Journey.” Milton Studies 26 (1990): 101-33.Google Scholar
Burton, Robert. The Anatomy of Melancholy. 3 vols. 1932. London and New York. Reprint, New York, 1977.Google Scholar
Camoes, Luis de. Obra completa. Ed. Junior, Antonio Salgado. Rio de Janeiro, 1988.Google Scholar
Chambers, A. B. “Chaos in Paradise Lost.“ Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (1963): 5584.Google Scholar
Cheney, Patrick. Spenser's Famous Flight: A Renaissance Idea of a Literary Career. Toronto and Buffalo, 1993.Google Scholar
Colombo, Fernando. Storie del Nuovo Mondo. Ed. Caddeo, R.. Genoa. 1989.Google Scholar
Courcelle, Pierre. “Quelques symboles funeraires du neoplatonisme latin: Le vol de Dedale — Ulysse et les Sirenes.“ Revue des etudes anciennes 46 (1944): 6593.Google Scholar
Du Bartas, Guillaume de Saluste. La Sepmaine, texte de 1581. Ed. Bellenger, Yvonne. Paris, 1993.Google Scholar
DuRocher, Richard J. Milton and Ovid. Ithaca and London, 1985- . Milton Among the Romans: The Pedagogy and Influence of Milton's Latin Curriculum. Pittsburgh, 2001.Google Scholar
Dyson, Julia. “Dido the Epicurean.” ClassicalAntiquity 15 (1996): 203-21.Google Scholar
Fallon, Stephen M. “Intention and its Limits in Paradise Lost: The Case of Bellerophon.” In Literary Milton: Text, Pretext, Context, ed. Benet, Diana Trevino and Lieb, Michael, 161-79. Pittsburgh, 1994.Google Scholar
Freccero, John. Dante: The Poetics of Conversion. Cambridge, MA and London, 1986.Google Scholar
Gordon, Pamela. “Dido the Phaeacian: Lost Pleasures of an Epicurean Intertext.“ Classical Antiquity 17 (1998): 188211.Google Scholar
Grant, Edward. Much Ado About Nothing: Theories of Space and Vacuum from the Middle Ages to the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge, 1981.Google Scholar
Hardie, Philip. Virgil's Aeneid.- Cosmos and Imperium. Oxford, 1986.Google Scholar
Hardie, Philip. Ovid's Poetics of Illusion. Cambridge, 2002.Google Scholar
Harding, Davis. Milton and the Renaissance Ovid. Urbana, 1946. Horace. Odes and Epodes. Trans. C. E. Bennett. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA and London, 1968.Google Scholar
Hunter, William B. “The Confounded Confusion of Chaos.” In Living Texts: Interpreting Milton (2000), 228-36.Google Scholar
Kerrigan, William. “The Heretical Milton: From Assumption to Mortalism.” English Literary Renaissance 5 (1975): 125-66.Google Scholar
Leonard, John. “Milton, Lucretius and the 'Void Profound of Unessential Night.“’ In Living Texts: Interpreting Milton (2000), 198-210.Google Scholar
Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. Paradise Lost and the Rhetoric of Literary Forms. Princeton, 1985.Google Scholar
Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography. Oxford, 2000.Google Scholar
Lieb, Michael. The Dialectics of Creation: Patterns of Birth and Regeneration in Paradise Lost. Amherst, 1970.Google Scholar
Living Texts: Interpreting Milton. Ed. Kristin A. Pruitt and Charles W. Durham. Selingsgrove, 2000.Google Scholar
Lucretius, . De rerum natura. Trans. W. H. D. Rouse. Cambridge, MA and London, 1966.Google Scholar
Martin, Catherine Gimelli. The Ruins of Allegory: Paradise Lost and the Metamorphoses of Epic Convention. Durham and London, 1998.Google Scholar
Michels, Agnes Kirsopp. “Lucretius and the Sixth Book of the Aeneid'’ American Journal of Philology 65 (1944): 135-48.Google Scholar
Milton, John. The Works of John Milton. Ed. Patterson, Frank et al. 20 vols. New York, 1931-38.Google Scholar
Milton, John. The Complete Prose Works of John Milton. Ed. Wolfe, Don M.. 8 vols. New Haven, 1953-82.Google Scholar
Milton, John. The Complete Poems of John Milton. Ed. Bush, Douglas. Boston, 1965.Google Scholar
Milton, John. The Poems of John Milton. Ed. Carey, John and Fowler, Alastair. London and New York, 1968.Google Scholar
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Ed. Alastair Fowler. 2nd rev. ed. London and New York, 1998.Google Scholar
Mulryan, John. “Through a Glass Darkly“: Milton's Reinvention of the Mythological Tradition. Pittsburgh, 1996.Google Scholar
Oliensis, Ellen. “Return to Sender: The Rhetoric of Nomina in Ovid's Tristia.“ Ramus 26 (1997): 172-93.Google Scholar
Ovid, . Metamorphoses. Trans. Frank Justus Miller. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA and London, 1971.Google Scholar
Oliensis, Ellen. The Art of Love and Other Poems. Trans. Mozley, J. H.. Cambridge, MA and London, 1985.Google Scholar
Oliensis, Ellen. Tristia. Ex Ponto. Trans. Wheeler, A. L.. Cambridge, MA and London, 1988.Google Scholar
Pindar, . The Odes of Pindar. Trans. Lattimore, Richmond. Chicago, 1947.Google Scholar
Plato, . The Collected Dialogues. Ed. Hamilton, Edith and Cairns, Huntington. Princeton, 1971.Google Scholar
Pope, Alexander. Poetry and Prose of Alexander Pope. Ed. Williams, Aubrey. Boston, 1969.Google Scholar
Putnam, Michael C. J. Virgil's Epic Designs: Ekphrasis in the Aeneid. New Haven and London, 1998.Google Scholar
Quint, David. Epic and Empire. Princeton, 1993.Google Scholar
Rogers, John. The Matter of Revolution. Ithaca and London, 1996.Google Scholar
Ronsard, Pierre de. Oeuvres completes. Ed. Ceard, Jean, Ménager, Daniel, and Simonin, Michel. 2 vols. Paris, 1993.Google Scholar
Rumrich, John. Milton Unbound. Cambridge, 1996.Google Scholar
Rumrich, John. “Of Chaos and Nightingales.” In Living Texts: Interpreting Milton (2000), 218-27.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Regina, M. “Milton's Hostile Chaos:'… and the Sea was no More.'“ English Literary History 52 (1985): 337-74.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Regina, M. Remembering and Repeating: Biblical Creation in Paradise Lost. Cambridge, 1988.Google Scholar
Scodel, Joshua. Excess and the Mean in Early Modern English Literature. Princeton and Oxford, 2002.Google Scholar
Segal, Charles. “Aeternumpersaecula nomen, the Golden Bough and the Tragedy of History: Part II.” Arion 5 (1966): 3472.Google Scholar
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston, 1974.Google Scholar
Sylvester, Joshua. The Divine Weeks and Works of Guillaume de Saluste, Sieur du Bartas. Ed. Snyder, Susan. 2 vols. Oxford. 1979.Google Scholar
Tasso, Torquato. Opere. Ed. Maier, Bruno. 5 vols. Milan, 1964.Google Scholar
Thompson, David. Dante's Epic Journeys. Baltimore, 1974. Virgil. P. Vergili Maronis Opera. Ed. John Conington and Henry Netteship. London, 1884.Google Scholar
Thompson, David. Aeneid VI. Ed. Fletcher, Sir Frank. Oxford, 1941.Google Scholar
Thompson, David. P. Vergili Maronis Opera. Ed. Mynors, R. A. B.. Oxford, 1988.Google Scholar