Milton's transgressive maneuvers: receptions (then and now) and the sexual politics of Paradise Lost

Abstract

he Ever was a Dissenter… Jonathan Richardson I'm increasingly uncertain, with Milton in particular, as to whether we have a way of talking about what it is that Milton is actually doing in Paradise Lost . I reject completely the orthodox accounts … Milton more even than Blake is an instance of someone who so persuasively redefines tradition, including Christianity itself, that he makes it entirely in his image … his orthodoxy is such a powerful transumption of Christian orthodoxy … that we can only speak of the Miltonic. To call him a Christian poet is… to beg the question in the extreme. Harold Bloom There may be only one Milton, but in Paradise Lost there are at least two texts circulating at once: in the words of Richard Corum, one of “obedient submission” and another of “subversive mutiny.” This fact alone casts doubt upon the proposition that “students … would learn just as much about poetry from a professor who thought Milton was a sexist as they would from one who didn't,” only because the initial thesis (that Milton is a sexist) requires that attention be given to the first of these texts, while the second thesis (that Milton was not a sexist) cannot be seriously addressed without engaging the inner workings of both texts – their dynamic tensions and complicated interactions. One lesson to learn from these two texts, read in conjunction, is that Milton's poem is an arena for conflict, a battleground for warring values, for contrary theologies, philosophies, and politics. Milton thus gives voice to inconsistencies and to contradictions within his culture that often he cannot transcend.

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