POETICS OF MOURNING

Milton criticism, and especially that of Samson
Agonistes, is commonly founded upon two certainties:
the certainty of Samson s regeneration, and the
certainty of Milton s idealizing Christianity.
These platitudes have led too many critics to
accommodate Samson (and by implication Milton) into
a neo-conservative, predictable, brutally
formalistic mold that, instead of challenging,
enshrines inherited systems of belief. Euripides,
Milton s favorite tragedian, wrote tragedy through
his experience of the Peloponnesian War and the
resultant fall of the Periclean democratic
experiment, a disaster Milton recognized in his own
experience of the English civil war. Through war
and tragedy Euripides searched the individual and
historical boundaries between normality and
pathology, locating the source of tragedy in the
tense interdependence of opposites: the forces of
creation and destruction in ourselves, our
societies, our world. This study examines Milton s
intellectual and imaginative development in light of
Euripidean tragedy, a development that would
culminate, achieve its fullest expression, in
Milton s last poem Samson Agonistes.

Autorentext

Dr. Kelley received his BA from Boston Univ. and his MPhil and PhD from The Graduate Center, City Univ. of New York. He has been Adjunct Prof. at Hunter and Lehman Colleges. Publications include: Milton and the Grounds of Contention (Duquesne UP, 2003), and Altering Eyes: New Perspectives on Samson Agonistes (U of Delaware P, 2002).

Klappentext

Milton criticism, and especially that of Samson Agonistes, is commonly founded upon two certainties: the certainty of Samson's regeneration, and the certainty of Milton's idealizing Christianity. These platitudes have led too many critics to accommodate Samson (and by implication Milton) into a neo-conservative, predictable, brutally formalistic mold that, instead of challenging, enshrines inherited systems of belief. Euripides, Milton's favorite tragedian, wrote tragedy through his experience of the Peloponnesian War and the resultant fall of the Periclean democratic experiment, a disaster Milton recognized in his own experience of the English civil war. Through war and tragedy Euripides searched the individual and historical boundaries between normality and pathology, locating the source of tragedy in the tense interdependence of opposites: the forces of creation and destruction in ourselves, our societies, our world. This study examines Milton's intellectual and imaginative development in light of Euripidean tragedy, a development that would culminate, achieve its fullest expression, in Milton's last poem Samson Agonistes.