Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained: Doing Milton Justice

A question I’ve been circling around throughout the quarter has been: how to make a rather polemic Milton text speak to contemporary theorists in a way more than simply representative of a historicized view? Although it’s considered an important example of the anti-censorship genre, contemporary classrooms and scholars raise a skeptical eyebrow toward the heavy, almost militant, use of Truth throughout the work, leading to a general consensus that while Milton may have been right about free speech, academic freedom, and liberal humanist education, “the poor guy was a little misled when it comes to truth [or faith].” Given that many of his claims rely on a conception of truth, national destiny, and the purpose of the individual scholar inextricable from a stated faith claim, how do we avoid falling into the trap that Steven Justice articulates of either declaring Milton to have appropriated religion in service of his point or adopting a potentially condescending stance that Milton was deceived in believing in universals, because we know better now.[1] Conversely, how can we take Milton on his own terms while still acknowledging that we operate under a much different milieu?

In an early post (October 5) on Stephen Best and relationships to the past, whose specter haunts this post as well, Aaron helpfully asked, “A question arises here, then: if we “already know” that the past is other, is there a way in which melancholic returnings are not always symptomatic of the tendency to redeem history?” I suggest that when it comes to early modern statements of certainty or faith, the tendency is not to redeem history but to explain that particular part away as, usually, the operation of a Marxist hegemony or something. I’d like to note the shades of difference between redeeming history and taking it on its own terms, and in the context of Milton and Justice, suggest that our acknowledgement of the past’s alterity need not necessarily result in an impulse to redeem it, or in Areopagitica’s case, revise it to fit our current philosophical systems.

“Doubt and controversy not only attended miracles, but were actively cultivated in defining them,” Justice writes of the medieval approach (6). In order to distinguish miracle from coincidence, the event on trial needed to be rigorously evaluated first—so veracity was never self-evident. To the medievals, and to Milton, searching was part of the definition of truth: “Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions” (371). The concept of “truth” in Milton could stand in for Justice’s “miracles” very easily—both require belief in and present a clear choice between two alternatives: something is either truth or not, either a miracle or not. But before this choice can be made, the claim must be rigorously tested, prodded, cross-examined, returned to, to use Aaron’s words. However, it is a returning without redeeming: in Justice’s model, the miracle either stands on its own or it is assigned to another epistemological category.

When reading Areopagitica in 2013, then, what might taking Milton on his own terms look like? To say “Milton believed in truth but we no longer have that assurance” is not profitable; nor is it correct to assume one approach will transfer exactly over 400 years. Perhaps, if we allow Milton his goal of eventually reuniting the pieces of Truth, a lifetime of contestation and debate does not mean that truth is nonexistent but continually taking shape. Our suspicion of much “truth,” and the reason for the scare quotes, is that it is presented as self-evident, but this was, I think, not a definition that the medievalists (according to Justice) or Milton would agree with. In an earlier post I suggested a working definition of truth as an increasingly-growing network, an image I revisit here but add that the process of debate may be necessary.




[1] I am aware that this is a persuasive essay and that Milton does many things (not all of them entirely scholarly rigorous, whatever that nebulous term may mean) in order to persuade; however, I and his corpus of works argue that expressing faith and believing in a semi-universal truth are not such moves.