[Milton-L] Milton's Humor

Wed May 20 13:10:43 EDT 2009

Yes. This wonderful analysis gets at something close to the heart of Milton's peculiar poetic genius, I think, and also demonstrates his (underexplored) kinship with Spenser and Shakespeare. Tragicomic doesn't quite cover it (or for Shakespeare either), and "romance" would do except that such a cabinet of wonders consorts oddly with what we take to be Milton's theology. Maybe there's more there for the taking than we imagine. I myself think that more attention to the qualities Louis maps gets us closer to the heart of what's most interesting and transformative about Milton's heavenly imagination, something not unlike the heavenly imagination implicit in other poets both sacred and secular, than most of the more straightforward theological analyses of this so-called "logical" epic (though they're also important).

Easier to experience the empyreal conceit, with tremendous gratitude, than to explain it!

Gardner

From: milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu [mailto:milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu] On Behalf Of Schwartz, Louis
Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 11:20 AM
To: 'John Milton Discussion List'
Subject: RE: [Milton-L] Milton's Humor

The Book 3 passage is a good example of Milton's satirical side (there's plenty of this sort of thing in the pamphlets, too).  Here the humor is at one with the basic purpose of the passage, which designed to express scorn.  The narrator is ridiculing something and inviting us to laugh along with him.  The scatology is actually traditional, although that doesn't make it any less funny.   What interests me more are those passages that are plainly serious or sad in ways that have nothing to do with scorn or ridicule, and yet also seem funny in some way that I find difficult to explain.  There is something gently and sadly indulgent about moments like the ones in Books 10 and 3 that I mentioned.  And there are others that do involve scorn, but that also mix this strangely with other incompatible emotions and responses.  I'm thinking of the weirdly farcical and meta-referential elements in the allegory of Sin and Death (Satan's back-tracking after his misrecognition, Death's allegorical stalemate over wanting to eat his mother, etc.).  I've written at some length about the pathos of that last episode, but the pathos does not get rid of what's also funny; it somehow lives with it uneasily.  By the way, I believe this is a virtue, not a flaw.

L.

===========================
Louis Schwartz
Associate Professor of English
University of Richmond
Richmond, VA  23173
(804) 289-8315
lschwart at richmond.edu<mailto:lschwart at richmond.edu>

________________________________
From: milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu [mailto:milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu] On Behalf Of Jason Kerr
Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 10:25 AM
To: John Milton Discussion List
Subject: Re: [Milton-L] Milton's Heaven in 25 words or less

Another instance of Milton's humor in PL, one that shows a, shall we say, different aspect of his expressive range than those previously noted, comes in Book 3:

                                          when loe
A violent cross wind from either Coast
Blows them transverse ten thousand Leagues awry
Into the devious Air; then might ye see
Cowles, Hoods and Habits with thir wearers tost [ 490 ]
And flutterd into Raggs, then Reliques, Beads,
Indulgences, Dispenses, Pardons, Bulls,
The sport of Winds: all these upwhirld aloft
Fly o're the backside of the World farr off
Into a Limbo large and broad, since calld [ 495 ]
The Paradise of Fools,

Milton, it seems, never could resist a fart joke, especially at the expense of Rome.

I must admit, with some embarrassment, that I was the only one snickering at this passage at a recent marathon reading. Perhaps one day I'll grow up and stop laughing at this sort of thing, but I hope not soon. Milton, at least, apparently never did.

Apologies also for taking us from Milton's Heaven to the Paradise of Fools...

Back to work,
Jason A. Kerr
On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 3:44 PM, David Ainsworth <dainsworth at bama.ua.edu<mailto:dainsworth at bama.ua.edu>> wrote:
I've always found some humor in other unexpected places in the poem, too.  Students seem to appreciate my tracing the discussion of astronomy from Eve's question and Adam's answer, to the dream, to Adam's question to Raphael and his extended "need to know" answer, though perhaps they most appreciate the Raphael-as-academic association.  I find something both funny and sweet about Adam answering Eve's question with assurance in Book 4 and then pumping Raphael for more information in book 8.  (One wonders, too, how students would respond to an educational system which intermixes digressions with caresses...)

Certain moments in the poem also invite us to imagine some humor implicit in the situation.  Chaos' reaction upon discovering that by letting Satan pass he's also allowed for the construction of a superhighway through the middle of his realm amuses me, for instance, and I'm slightly ashamed to admit that I find parts of Books 11 and 12 funnier and funnier every time I read the poem.  (Michael's teaching style, in particular, invites a certain amount of ironic introspection.)

There's a few other moments which contain humor under specific circumstances--on staging Eve's temptation in Book 9, one of my classes discovered some real humor built into the suspense involved as Eve decides to eat the fruit.  From the moment she decides to the moment she tastes takes quite a while, especially if you have someone reading the poem aloud while an actor-as-serpent/Satan reacts.  In our eventual performance, the class brought a student from the audience up to play the part of the tree and dangle the apple in Eve's face--he naturally played the part with attitude initially, but was showing the effort in holding his arms up by the time Eve actually plucked the fruit.  It is, I think, a beautiful example of the sort of humor generated by nervous anticipation, and if we'd figured out a way to stage an earthquake I think the sudden bursting of that humorous bubble would have been everything Milton (or a horror director) might have desired.

David

Schwartz, Louis wrote:
Michael,

It's really interesting to me that you bring up this moment.  It's a very important one for my understanding of the epic, and when I've written about it, I've tended to stick to the serious side of it, and even more to its terrible pathos, but it's also true that whenever I've taught it, I've always worked with what I also find funny in it (although funny in a way that's inseperable from the seriousness and pathoa in a manner that's I think distinctly Miltonic).  For me the humor has been more about how quickly Eve goes from the idea of abstinence, which she frames with real pathos, to suicide. The speed of her thinking from one extreme to the other is a measure of just how unthinkable it is for her at this moment to pine with vain desire in the presence of the lover she's just gotten back.  But the speed itself and the extremities of her thought are so fast and so extreme that they never fail to make me smile, too.  You're right that Adam's response is also funny in its o
wn!
 way, althought it has, in its own ways an even greater pathos than Eve's suggestion.

There are a number of similarly serio-comic moments in PL, although that's an awkward term for them.  I'm thinking, for example, about the silence that greets God's request for a volunteer in Book III--one imagines the angels all looking down at the glowing pavements--or the exchange between about human and angelic sex at the end of Book VIII.  Both of these are very serious and yet also funny in peculiar ways.  It would be interesting to think more about these sorts of moments nd how and why they work.

Louis

________________________________
From: milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu<mailto:milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu> [milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu<mailto:milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu>] On Behalf Of Michael Bryson [michael.bryson at csun.edu<mailto:michael.bryson at csun.edu>]
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 2:59 PM
To: John Milton Discussion List
Subject: RE: [Milton-L] Milton's Heaven in 25 words or less

Yes, I think he does. I think the passage from 10.1010-46 is an excellent example of Milton's humor. Adam's great theological inspiration, the one in which he anticipates the "Christian" re-reading of the Serpent and the threat Yahweh makes against it in Genesis 3:15, is brought on--at least in part--as a reaction to Eve's suggestion that they either 1) go without sex for the rest of their lives (930 years in the case of the Biblical Adam...rather a long time, methinks...), or 2) kill themselves. It has long struck me as both a serious and a funny moment. Adam's ingenuity appears to stem from a desire not to be celibate for 900+ years (and not to commit suicide...though this is the less comic of the two motivations). I suspect Milton is having a bit of a wry joke here about the rather basic motivations that underlie some (much?) "higher" achievement and innovation.

Michael Bryson
(avoiding grading finals like his life depended on the avoidance...)

---- Original message ----
Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 13:31:45 -0500
From: "Dr. Larry Gorman" <larry at eastwest.edu<mailto:larry at eastwest.edu>>
Subject: RE: [Milton-L] Milton's Heaven in 25 words or less
To: "John Milton Discussion List" <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu<mailto:milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>>

You think he means to be?

________________________________

From:
milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu<mailto:milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu>
[mailto:milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu<mailto:milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu>] On
Behalf Of Michael Bryson
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 1:20 PM
To: John Milton Discussion List
Subject: RE: [Milton-L] Milton's Heaven in 25
words or less

The reference to Mel Brooks was deliberate...can't help myself...the
1968 "Springtime for Hitler" remains the single funniest thing I have
ever seen.

And of course, the cringing is Satan and Gabriel accusing each other of
toadying ("You were!" "No, you were!") at the end of book
4. That has always struck me as a comic moment...thus, back to Mel Brooks...and
what I often see as a faintly (to be grossly anachronistic) Busby Berkeley
quality to some of the heaven scenes in PL and PR. Milton is sometimes very
funny...

Michael

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--
The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.

          -Czeslaw Milosz, from "Ars Poetica?"
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