[Milton-L] L'Allegro and Il Penseroso

Tue Mar 31 15:46:55 EDT 2009

As I happened to be teaching the twin poems, I presented to my graduate 
students the alternative approaches presented on the list, that - as I 
understand them - either a. the sensibilities of the two poems represent 
complimentary personae (or as someone said 'avatars'), or b. Milton 
preferred one of these sensibilities, namely that of 'Il Penseroso.'

By the end of our class discussions, we found both of the approaches 
unsatisfactory in that neither takes into account the temporal aspect of 
the poems, or more particularly, the way the poems provide an implicit 
narrative of the life of the poet.  This is not to read 
anachronistically and suggest that since Milton later wrote religious 
poetry, he obviously prefers the sensibility of the later poem (as I 
think our precocious List contributor suggested), but rather to attend 
to the way Milton's poems provide a conception of the shape of the life 
of the poet.  'L'allegro' self-consciously provides images of those 
'sights as youthful Poets dream'; while the corresponding poem 
anticipates a poetry of 'weary age,' which approaches something like 
'prophetic strain.'  As Virgil could not write the Aenied without having 
first written the Eclogues (and Spenser not the Fairie Queen without the 
Sheperd's Calender), so Milton's twin poems both provide and anticipate 
the shape of a poetic career.  In this light, the former poem's 
'straight mine eyes hath caught new pleasures' may serve as Milton's 
affirmation that despite the exhausting of golden poetry with Marlowe 
and Raleigh, and it's dismissal in Donne, it still must serve Milton - 
in writing his own poetic career.

Such an argument, however, does not mean preferring the 'service high' 
of the latter poem.  For it makes no sense to say that one prefers the 
insights of one's adulthood when it's the youthful poetry and 
sensibility which allows that latter perspective - and aesthetic - to 
emerge.  True, the form of the companion poems leads us to think that 
Milton was thinking in terms of oppositions (and the metaphysics of the 
latter poem opposing the 'immortal mind' to the 'fleshly nook' shows 
Miltons still to be a dualist). Thinking of the poems as part of a 
process of both imagining and writing his poetic career, however, may 
find the latter sensibility to hold greater promise (yes, I'm avoiding 
the term preferable), but the earlier one is nonetheless indispensable 
in making that latter perspective possible.

Chernaik, Warren wrote:
> Since I was at the excellent Young MIlton conference and gave a paper on this topic, I thought I might add to the list of those worrying over Milton's stance in the companion poems. Neville Davies and I were the two people at the conference who discussed "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso", and we split evenly in arguing one or the other position. In John Carey's long introductory note in the Longman edition, he points out that critics are divided on the question of whether Milton expresses or implies a preference for "Il Penseroso", listing a series of references for both views, with more critics endorsing Neville's position than mine, but a respectable, long line for both. My view is more or less that of Tillyard, long ago, that Milton, in the tradition of arguing in utrumque partes,  taking one or another side of a debate, presents two complementary views, without having one win out over the other. To quote a sentence from my essay at the conference: Milton is not expressing!
  h!
>  is own preferences for contemplative melancholy over joy, so much as opposing two opposite and complementary perspectives, setting up a debate where neither participant can claim exclusive possession of truth. Harold Skulsky says in an interesting contribution to this discussion that a debate has to have a winner (or a vote of those listening), but that seems to me to define "debate" too narrowly. It's related to the idea of negative capability: a dramatist like Shakespeare will present opposite perspectives without overloading the scale on either side, and the same is true of paired poems--Marvell's Dialogue of the Soul and Body is another example of a poem in the form of a debate, where neither side can be said to come out a winner. Each one is valid from its own point of view, and Milton presents each case as effectively as he can.
> Warren Chernaik
>  
>
> ________________________________________
> From: milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu [milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu] On Behalf Of srevard at siue.edu [srevard at siue.edu]
> Sent: 28 March 2009 14:55
> To: John Milton Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [Milton-L] L'Allegro and Il Penseroso
>
> At the recent Young Milton conference in Oxford Neville Davies
> gave a paper on this very issue and came down strongly with
> the view that Milton expects us to move on to Penseroso and
> that the conclusion to the second ode sounds more positive than
> that to the first.
> However, there was not a consensus in the audience and a lot
> of us defended Allegro and some even said we preferred it.
>
> Stella Revard
>
> Quoting gamefreak727 at gmail.com:
>
>   
>> One piece of my evidence is, the conditional "if" at the end of "L'Allegro,"
>> it doesnt make it feel or seen to be as solid, there are possibilities. In
>> "Il Penseroso" there is no conditional, it just is i guess you could say. I
>> havent fully developed that yet of course... Another is, i dont know this
>> for fact, but i am guessing Milton did not drink or was against it since he
>> refers to Bacchus, the god of wine, a fallen angel in Paradise Lost. Since
>> mentioning and connecting mirth and L'Allegro with Bacchus, it gives me the
>> impression that he doesnt like L'Allegro for that reason. Lastly, in lines
>> 31-41, he connects melancholy, or Il Penseroso with the divine, praying,
>> Heaven. At first Milton wanted to become a anglican priest, so connecting
>> melancholy with God, gives the feeling of Milton siding, or agreeing with
>> melancholy/Il Penseroso.
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Schwartz, Louis" <lschwart at richmond.edu>
>> To: "'John Milton Discussion List'" <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
>> Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 9:04 AM
>> Subject: RE: [Milton-L] L'Allegro and Il Penseroso
>>
>>
>>     
>>> An even more important question, from my perspective, would be why you
>>> assume he'd take sides at all.  What, if anything, in the poems suggests
>>> that the debate is in any sense clearly decidable?
>>>
>>> Louis
>>>
>>> ===========================
>>> Louis Schwartz
>>> Associate Professor of English
>>> University of Richmond
>>> Richmond, VA  23173
>>> (804) 289-8315
>>> lschwart at richmond.edu
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu
>>> [mailto:milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu] On Behalf Of James Rovira
>>> Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 10:26 AM
>>> To: John Milton Discussion List
>>> Subject: Re: [Milton-L] L'Allegro and Il Penseroso
>>>
>>> More important than the answer is how you come to it.  Why do you
>>> think Milton would be on the side of Il Penseroso?  Can you list the
>>> reasons?
>>>
>>> Jim R
>>>
>>> 2009/3/24  <gamefreak727 at gmail.com>:
>>>       
>>>> Hey, i am just a high school student writing about John Milton's poem's
>>>> "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso." My prompt i made for my senior project
>>>> was,
>>>> If the two poems above were considered a debate, an argument, or two
>>>> sides
>>>> of an issue or debate, or two people, which side or person would Milton
>>>> most
>>>> prefer or like? My answer was "Il Penseroso." Would any of you agree with
>>>> me?
>>>>         
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>
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