[Milton-L] historicism and formalism

[Alice Crawford Berghof]

I am intrigued by the discussion between Professors Fleming and 
Skulsky, and have written a few responses in an attempt to ask whether 
people on the list have opinions about seventeenth-century philosophies 
of reception in relation to the debate over formalism and historicism.  
I suppose I am suggesting that we consider making historical our 
discussion of historicism.

First, a quick note regarding the end of Professor Skulsky's most 
recent posting: an inroad for Gadamer as far as Milton studies are 
concerned would seem to be Wolfgang Iser's reception theory, as an 
alternative to Stanley Fish's reader response theory.  Iser would take 
into account both of Professor Skulsky's articulations of Professor 
Fleming's attack on historicism - the circularity of using the text as 
a paradigm for examining the text, as well as using the text as a 
paradigm for evaluating the next text, etc.  (I will try to find my 
seminar notes from Professor Iser's fascinating discussions of Truth 
and Method, but most readers on this list are very likely quite 
familiar with Professor Iser's linguistic reception theories.)  It is 
tempting it to point out the Hegel / Heidegger opposition in these 
conundrums.  However, I am wondering whether we might read Milton as a 
philosopher who addresses both kinds of interpretive dilemmas.

Might the contribution cultural studies would make to reception theory 
be to suggest that we should take into account not merely the social 
history but the linguistic philosophy of the reception of Milton?  
Sharon Achinstein's important book Milton and the Revolutionary Reader 
does this in a political sense.  What would the concomitant 
seventeenth-century linguistic reception philosophy be?  One might 
recall the careful work in Harold Skulsky's Language Recreated, and 
bring that work forward to answer cultural studies' attack on New 
Historicism as follows: there is a cultural philosophy of 
interpretation implicit in the structure of metaphor, and that 
philosophy has a historically specific attitude toward the kind of 
conundrums Professor Fleming notes.  It seems to me that the difference 
between Milton and Locke on the topic of metaphor, for example, 
requires a historical analysis of tropes.  To say that one cannot 
escape the blind spots of historical analysis would be to reiterate 
what Milton's tropes already achieve - especially in certain passages 
in Areopagitica, for example.

Further, and in a broader sense, in the Ramist Logic as well as in 
passages of De Doctrina Christiana, Milton provides a framework not 
merely for the thematic, theological and political but the linguistic 
and rhetorical reception of his work.  I think there's a possibility 
that Professors Fleming and Skulsky might find common ground in this 
respect.  Just a thought.
Warm regards,
Alice Berghof