Fallon, Stephen M. Review of Sanford Budick, KANT AND MILTON. NDPR (April 2011).

 Budick, Sanford.  Kant and Milton.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2010.

You may be one of the many readers who do a double-take when encountering the title of Sanford Budick's Kant and Milton. I predict that Kant scholars will put down the book convinced that Milton is a seminal figure for Kant, and Miltonists will put it down heartened by this evidence of the poet's influence and armed with a new way of thinking about one of the central debates in Milton studies today, concerning the meaning of Samson Agonistes. (A preliminary word to philosophers: caveat emptor; as a Milton scholar with an interest in the history of philosophy, I cannot claim anything like Budick's intimate knowledge of Kant.)

Budick, a prominent, highly regarded Milton scholar, demonstrates an impressive philosophical sophistication. The second surprise, after the title, is that Budick, a professor of English at Hebrew University, engages intensively with Kant scholarship and only minimally with Milton scholarship. He argues that Kant, who along with other eighteenth-century German intellectuals knew Milton well and valued him highly, singles out the poet as the preeminent poet of the sublime and, as such, as a crucial predecessor making possible Kant's understanding and articulation of the attainment of freedom and moral autonomy. For Budick's Kant, aesthetics and ethics are closely related. If Budick's arguments are right, then Kant's readers will have a new resource for tracing the development of the categorical imperative, and Miltonists will have a new and powerful lens to understand Milton.

In six chapters Budick traces the development of Kant's moral and aesthetic thought as it develops out of the crucible of the constellation of German Miltonism (Budick employs a methodology of Konstellationsforschung pioneered by Dieter Heinrich), particularly in agonistic dialogue with Herder. . . .

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Kermode, Frank. "Heroic Milton: Happy Birthday." NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS February 26, 2009.

Celebrations of the four hundredth anniversary of the birth of John Milton in December 1608 have been modest and largely academic. He was born, and for the most part lived, in the City of London, now the financial district. Nationalistic sentiment in those days was such that the idea of a great national poet was welcomed, and Milton had high hopes of filling that role; but although his gifts were acknowledged there were aspects of his career, especially his politics, that were far from pleasing to all parties. In the eighteenth century, however, his poetry was highly valued for its own sake, and there was a revival of interest in his politics. Wordsworth celebrated Milton's republicanism as well as his poems. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22357.

Hobson, Theo. "John Milton's Vision." OPEN DEMOCRACY December 9, 2008.

There are, according to the received wisdom of our day, two sides to the greatness of John Milton, who was born in London on 9 December 1608. First and foremost he was a great poet (despite being religious). Also, he was a champion of liberty; a key architect of the English-British tradition of liberalism (despite being religious). It is principally the latter assumption that I want to discuss, though I will come back to his literary reputation. The idea is that he helped to put his country on the path to an enlightened constitution, in which such things as freedom of the press are firmly enshrined. Liberty is "the greatest gift that Britain gave the world", in the words of prime minister Gordon Brown; and John Milton was a founding father of this noble tradition (Brown mentioned Milton in his 25 October 2007 speech about liberty). This subtly misrepresents what Milton was about. It's a variant of the Whiggish fallacy, that the history of ideas is essentially about how freedom unfolded into its present-day fullness. To call Milton a key figure in British liberalism is like calling Karl Marx a key figure in British political history. True, his thought was influential, but it is far more important to note that the entirety of his vision was shunned, rejected, reacted against. The nation defined itself in opposition to Milton's vision, considered as a whole - and still does. Unless this is acknowledged, he is treated with condescension: he is patted on the back for contributing something really useful to national identity, while his actual thought is ignored. If we are to honour Milton on his 400th birthday we must clearly recognise the persistence of his otherness - the fact that he cannot be claimed as a noble exemplar of the national soul. The nation chose against him, and still does. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/john-milton-s-vision.

Wieder, Laurance. "Happy Birthday Milton: the Poet-Prophet Turns 500." WEEKLY STANDARD December 1, 2008.

I wouldn't recommend John Milton's sacred epics, or even his short poems, to a newcomer to the English language. The poetry of Andrew Marvell, John Donne, William Blake, and Emily Dickinson share his themes, is good to learn by heart, and can enter through many gates. It is written in the vernacular, maybe encrusted by the fashions of their times, but still alluring. Adamantine, hard from the start, Milton's English poetry aspires to biblical Hebrew and, for good or ill, succeeds. John Milton (1608-1674) is read mostly in university courses (that's by the priestly caste) and by novelists and poets. Unlike the Bible, or Blake, or Dickinson, Paradise Lost is not amenable to paraphrase. There's no graphic novelization, no stage or movie treatment even of his life, much less of the (relatively) simple Paradise Regain'd. The greatness of his art is its difficulty, its intransigence, its irreducible material. All Milton's settings and actions occur in the mind. Even Samson Agonistes, patterned on Greek tragedy, was not intended for performance. Whatever the virtues of the Handel oratorio based on Milton's text, it is something other (and less) than the original. Paradise Lost, Paradise Regain'd, and Samson Agonistes were dictated by a blind poet; they were not written. When Milton says "Sing," he's invoking more than literary convention. He couldn't proof his last works, never saw the books in print or read them to himself. Unless the epics are read aloud, it's impossible to hear them, no matter how developed the inward ear. This presents a daunting task for a generation taught to read to itself without moving the lips. But it's the basic requirement for a reader (or at least for me) to discover what one thought one knew but does not know. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=15837&R=13CE43DF0.

Pinsky, Robert. "The American John Milton." SLATE MAGAZINE August 18, 2008.

Great art is great not because it enters an academic curriculum, and neither is greatness affirmed by the awarding of prizes or titles. But great is not necessarily a vague term. It can indicate work that penetrates the shapes, feelings, ideas, and sounds of a culture, as in the cadences of speech. Sometimes that kind of penetration is so deep, so transforming, that it is nearly invisible, or barely acknowledged. W. E. B. Du Bois, the American essayist and political leader, begins the peroration of his great essay "On the Training of Black Men" with a sentence like a symphonic chord, fortissimo, compact, rousing: "I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not." This statement, and the paragraph it introduces, come at the climax of an argument against the idea of measured progress, associated with Booker T. Washington: first training a generation of freed slaves to be cooks and carpenters, then a generation of clerks, then artisans, and, finally, in four or five generations, doctors and judges and scholars. Du Bois, on the other side of this famous and crucial American argument, had emphasized individual qualities: "teach the workers to work and the thinkers to think; make carpenters of carpenters, and philosophers of philosophers, and fops of fools." . . . Read the rest here: http://www.slate.com/id/2197576/pagenum/all/.

Rosen, Jonathan. "Return to Paradise: the Enduring Relevance of John Milton." NEW YORKER June 2, 2008.

This year is the four-hundredth anniversary of Milton’s birth, and there are a host of Milton books to mark the occasion: the Modern Library has brought out The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose, edited by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon, and not long ago Oxford University Press published an edition of Paradise Lost introduced by Philip Pullman, whose young-adult trilogy His Dark Materials draws its title and much of its mythic energy from Paradise Lost. (Titles involving sight and blindness often come from Milton: Look Homeward, Angel, Eyeless in Gaza, Darkness at Noon, Darkness Visible.) There is a new edition of Paradise Lost edited by the scholar Barbara Lewalski, whose monumental biography of the poet came out a few years ago, and Oxford is launching an eleven-volume series of all Milton’s works, edited by Thomas Corns and Gordon Campbell. Corns and Campbell are also jointly publishing a biography of Milton in time for the birthday, later this year, and Corns is editing The Milton Encyclopedia, for Yale University Press. A new critical study by the Princeton scholar Nigel Smith bears the provocative title Is Milton Better Than Shakespeare?, and there has been a recent spate of books with titles like Why Milton Matters and Milton in Popular Culture, pointing out Milton’s influence on everyone from Malcolm X, who read Paradise Lost in prison and identified with Satan, to Helen Keller, who created the John Milton Society for the Blind. Milton in Popular Culture reminds the reader that in the movie Animal House, Donald Sutherland’s Professor Jennings gives a lecture on Paradise Lost, taking a bite of an apple as he suggests that the Devil has more fun, before confessing to his unresponsive students that even “Mrs. Milton found Milton boring,” and so does he. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/06/02/080602crat_atlarge_rosen?currentPage=all.

Kirsch, Adam. "Is Milton Better than Shakespeare?" NEW YORK SUN May 21, 2008.

Smith, Nigel. Is Milton Better than Shakespeare?. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2008. It would be hard to dispute that Shakespeare's plays are more powerful, and more central to our culture, than Milton's biblical epics or his artfully classical lyrics. Around the world, when people dream about true love, they think of Romeo and Juliet; when they thrill with ambition, they think of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, and so on down the list of Shakespeare's characters. Harold Bloom could even speculate, not quite in jest, that Shakespeare invented human nature, so completely does he seem to dominate our imagination of what it means to be human. Ever since Paradise Lost was published in 1667, Milton has been acclaimed as a supreme English poet, Shakespeare's only rival in linguistic mastery. Yet even at the height of his prestige, in the 18th century, Milton never inspired the kind of ardent intimacy that readers bring to Shakesepare. Nor is it simply our lazy generation, unused to reading long poems and deaf to the majesty of Milton's artifice, that has relegated Paradise Lost to the seminar room. Even Samuel Johnson, in his "Life of Milton," wrote that "Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read Milton for instruction, retire harassed and overburdened, and look elsewhere for recreation; we desert our master, and seek for companions." . . . Read the rest here: http://www.nysun.com/arts/doing-battle-with-the-bard/76756/.

Tomalin, Claire. "The Devil's Advocate [on Milton]." GUARDIAN March 1, 2008.

When I was invited by my publishers to choose any English poet for a "selected poems" I found myself saying, almost without a pause to think, "Milton". I confess I was surprised that they took the idea on board so readily. John Milton is a great name, but today he is not a popular poet. To me the early poems are sumptuous, the sonnets witty, magnificent and moving by turns, and Paradise Lost as thrilling as a novel. Yet I suspect that he does not fit easily into our age of performance poetry, and that he may be read less than he deserves to be. His reputation as a bad-tempered husband and father is held against him. But it seems to me that the man who emerges from the poems is a man possessed by natural and human beauty, by dreams, myths and legends, a man full of ideas that are sometimes in conflict with one another; who was prepared to give up his vocation as a poet for years in order to serve a political cause; and who overcame blindness to write his greatest work, full of exquisitely imagined scenes. However gnarled and crusty a man, he is a poet who commands attention. . . . Read the rest here: http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2261041,00.html.