Of Education/ Of DivorceMilton’s Social Theory

Why is Milton bothered about social relationships?

● ‘Perfect’ relationship =>> Adam and Eve ==> virtue and social order

● Theorising of social system => religious order of society

● Poet/ cultural figure’s advice to the polity● Radical new ways of configuring identity and

behaviour● New possibilities (Family of Love, etc)● ‘Personal’ interpretation of the Bible● Importance of pleasure? Happiness?

Radical new identities…

● The idea that the state/ church might legislate for, address, relationships between men and women is radical and new

● Early Modern society> deeply patriarchal in organisation

● Milton’s rethinking of all relationships in society (this one particularly reorders the family…)

Milton/Gender

● Milton’s Eve● Gender in Paradise

Lost● Milton’s wife

● Complexity – although continuing problem and influence of Milton’s portrayal

Divorce? The ‘equality’ of men (and Milton’s opinion of women)

● Divorce for Milton is a process of coming to masculine consciousness. It involves radical separation and realignment, in this case from embracing the feminine to absolutely repudiating it. Divorce means freedom from the tyranny of enslavement to any woman, monarch, or way of thought that would constrict masculine self-determination’

● Olga Lucia Valbuena, ‘Milton’s ‘Divorsive’ Interpretation and the Gendered Reader’, Milton Studies, 27 (1992), 115-37 (p. 134).

But…

● Feminist readings of Milton’s prose/ poetry ● Milton’s Eve● Anxious masculinity ● Queer? >> ● Milton’s Divorce tracts enshrine patriarchal

ideas even in their radicalism

Women and silence

‘Catherine Belsey and Margaret W. Ferguson first directed critical attention to the Renaissance connection between female chastity and female silence, and it is a connection that has affected decades of literary readings […] Recognising the ties between chastity and silence – or between chastity’s ruin and speech – has profoundly affected considerations of early modern women’s writing and forces attention to the social constraints placed upon women and their words.

Michele Osherow, Biblical Women’s Voices in Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2009), p. 2

Milton’s wife

● The problem of biographical readings

● Milton’s writings on Divorce as a wider social mission

● Articulating the political relationship between man and woman in order to make a better commonwealth

Using Milton's biography

Marries Mary Powell

Separates from Mary Powell

however:

Of Reformation [1641], The Reason of Church Government [1642], An Apology for Smectymnuus [1642])Milton's work in his prose was towards Radical REFORM

Gender differences

“And what his chiefe end was of creating woman to be joynd with man, his own instituting words declare, and are infallible to informe us what is mariage, and what is no mariage: unlesse we can think them set there to no purpose: It is not good, saith he, that man should be alone”.

key attributes of women: virginity, virtue, demureness (think: the Lady, Eve)

The problem

For although God in the first ordaining of marriage, taught us to what end he did it, in words expresly implying the apt and cheerfull conversation of man with woman, to comfort and refresh him against the evil of solitary life, not mentioning the purpose of generation till afterwards, as being but a secondary end in dignity, though not in necessity;

● Key words:

ComfortSolitaryGeneration (secondary importance)

>> so: companionship is most important

● yet now, if any two be but once handed in the Church, and have tasted in any sort the nuptiall bed, let them finde themselves never so mistak'n in their dispositions through any error, concealment, or misadventure, that through their different tempers, thoughts, and constitutions, they can neither be to one another a remedy against lonelines, nor live in any union or contentment all their dayes, yet they shall, so they be but found suitably weapon'd to the least possibility of sensuall enjoyment, be made, spight of antipathy to fadge together, and combine as they may to their unspeakable wearisomnes and despaire of all sociable delight in the ordinance which God establisht to that very end. What a calamity is this, and as the Wise-man, if he were alive, would sigh out in his own phrase, what a sore evill is this under the Sunne!

Sonnet 23

Methought I saw my late espoused SaintBrought to me like Alcestis from the grave,Whom Joves great son to her glad Husband gave,Rescu'd from death by force though pale and faint.

Mine as whom washt from spot of child-bed taint, Purification in the old Law did save,And such, as yet once more I trust to haveFull sight of her in Heaven without restraint,

Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:Her face was vail'd, yet to my fancied sight, Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shin'd

So clear, as in no face with more delight.But O as to embrace me she enclin'd,I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.

● Ghostly revisiting● Memory, dreaming, desire● Ghoulish quality to the verse● Classical reference to frame

the text● The purification of the

woman● She changes him physically

(he can see again)● His need for her● Love● Sonnets – love poems? ?

Of Education – purpose of the text

● To outline a ‘perfect’ society

● The formation of the mind of the individual

● Perfection through learning

● Utopic?

● Poet asks that society be formed by learned people

● Key: aspirational?● Key: health of body

and mind● Male society

Class work

Of Education

The end then of Learning is to repair the ruines of our first Parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the neerest by possessing our souls of true vertue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection. But because our understanding cannot in this body found it self but on sensible things, nor arrive so clearly to the knowledge of God and things invisible, as by orderly conning over the visible and inferior creature, the same method is necessarily to be follow'd in all discreet teaching.

Continues…

● By this time, years and good general precepts will have furnisht them more distinctly with that act of reason which in Ethics is call'd Proairesis: that they may with some judgement contemplate upon moral good and evil. Then will be requir'd a special reinforcement of constant and sound endoctrinating to set them right and firm, instructing them more amply in the knowledge of Vertue and the hatred of Vice:

Of Education

● Think about your own education ● What were the principles of it? What were

the key moments? What were you taught and why? What was the purpose of your education?

● What are the principles of Education in the modern world?

● Why do we educate?

● Design an education system with a partner – utopic, dystopic, totalitarian, religious, as you wish

Of Divorce

● Editing Exercise ● Paradise Lost exercise

Pair exercises

● Characterise Milton's prose style● Outline the key things he is interested in● Discuss the following in his prose work:

o Reformo Libertyo Virtueo Evil/ Goodo Agency

● What makes Milton's prose works Radical?