[Milton-L] Fw: "Milton Regained . . ." by Charles McGrath

[Horace Jeffery Hodges]

I think that Feisel is right -- we ought not take this article's 'misinformation' so seriously. McGrath's is not an unreasonable reading of Milton, albeit based on partial evidence. I agree that he doesn't do Milton justice, and I don't think that Milton had a 'Turkish' contempt for women, but a man as polemical as Milton might easily be disliked and misunderstood -- though I suspect that McGrath was aiming for ironic humor, not dark defamation, in his description of our favorite poet.

Perhaps we should use this teachable moment to present other views on Milton. That seems, in part, what the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center intends with its exhibition -- and McGrath, in his ironic bemusement at some of the artworks, conveys that intention well enough.

Jeffery Hodges

P.S. Disney's Thumper? Did I miss something?

Feisal Mohamed wrote:
Not to dispute the authority of Professor Barton or Disney's Thumper, but the McGrath article is not 'defamatory' in the least.  It has its imprecisions and it is simplistic in its interpretation of the term 'Puritan poet,' but it also has some glowing (if equally simplistic) passages on _Paradise Lost_: 'But of course that's what makes great poems great: they're open to multiple interpretations. At this show there is even a painting in which Satan announces: "Getting knocked out of heaven was just a stepping stone. Now I have a better job and my life is full of opportunities." As Johnson wrote: "Milton's delight was to sport in the wide regions of possibility; reality was a scene too narrow for his mind. He sent his faculties out upon discovery, into worlds where only imagination can travel."'  
As for the sculpture, the artist has labeled it 'Milton' and what has been taken to be a 'pointy beard' is in fact an extended tongue.  I'm not persuaded that 'any expert on the seventeenth century' would know this to be a representation of Charles I.
One would hope that Miltonists are not so narrowly partisan that they cannot endure a few newspaper sentences over-emphasizing for attention-grabbing effect aspects of the poet's life that we know to be true--the work he set for his daughters was certainly drudge-ish, after all.
I appreciated the link.  I also appreciated the detailed attention that this exhibit received in the Times.


Feisal Mohamed
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