Christopher Grose's

Milton & The Sense of Tradition

Milton's final works, the epic poem Paradise Regained and the tragic drama Samson Agonistes, were published together in a volume produced in 1671. In this book, Christopher Grose analyzes the two poems, showing how they are integrally related and how they constitute part of the poet's prophetic canon.

To establish his argument that these poems are sustained recollections of Milton's previous works, Grose begins by discussing the pamphlets, letters, poems, and autobiographical digressions of Milton's earlier years. He focuses in particular on An Apology against a Pamphlet, which he sees as both marking an important moment of clarification in Milton's development and anticipating later issues in his prose and poetry. Grose suggests that Milton's oeuvre shows more consistency and continuity than are usually attributed to it, and he significantly revises the familiar convention of the two Miltons--literary and political, verse and prose--by suggesting that Milton himself invented the antithesis in moments of doubt. In the second half of the book, Grose concentrates on Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. Demonstrating that these works share a unity of outlook and literary purpose, he shows how they cast light upon each other and how they rework Milton's earlier writing. According to Grose, the two poems reflect Milton's complex sense that the Reformation itself had become bound by tradition. Samson Agonistes is an aftermath for Paradise Regained, says Grose, replacing the public ministry of Jesus with the retrospections and self-creating acts of the Old Testament judge. Samson Agonistes thus becomes the ultimate statement of Milton's lifelong effort to articulate a form of Protestant humanism.

"Grose is a well-informed and learned commentator, a stimulating guide to the patterns through which poetic illumination is presented in Milton's writing."--H. R. MacCallum, University of Toronto

Christopher Grose is associate professor of English at the University of California in Los Angeles.