The Relationship between the Grotesque and Revolutionary Thought in Milton's Paradise Lost

and Shelley's Prome the us Un bound

BY

Michael White

B.A., University of Toronto, 1994

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty

of The Department of English in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Masters of A r t s

McGill University

1997

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to rny supervisor, Professor Kenneth Borris,

whose expertise and helpful suggestions were greatly appreciated.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page

....................................... Introduction i

1 . Rebels Without a Cause: Revolution and ............ the Grotesque Worlds of Paradise Lost 18

II . Shelley and the Romantic Grotesque .............. 52

III . Prometheus Un bound The Grotesque ............................ as Revolutionary Code 62

........................................ Conclusion 84

Introduction

No substantial studies, at least to my knowledge, have yet been

dedicated either to Milton's or to Shelley's extensive poetic use of the

grotesque. This omission surprises me, especialiy given the

voluminous critical attention both authors receive. Neither Milton

nor Shelley's grotesquerie can be viewed as the basis of artistic

method or artistic achievement as we rnight with , Say, Rabelais, or

Poe, or even Kafka. And neither Milton nor Shelley is self-

consciously an artist of " the grotesque." In fact, Milton, from his

seventeenth cen tury perspective, would scarcely have regarded the

term as being applicable to Literary criticism at all. And as a late

Romantic, Shelley defined himself rather as a poet of the imagination.

Nonetheless 1 will show that both artists avail themselves of a

grotesque aesthetic to achieve some of their most powerful and

provocative poetry: we may here consider, for instance, Milton's

mernorable descriptions of the incongruities of Heii and the

deformities of its fallen denizens in Paradise Lost, or Shelley's Gothic

touches and his perplexing dis tortion of conven tional linguis tic and

dramatic form in Prometheus Un bound.

Aside from general considerations of the grotesque in these

texts, 1 will especially focus on how Milton's and Shelley's uses of the

grotesque mode provide us with unique, and often fascinating

vantage points from which to appreciate their respective political

concerns and revolutionary interests. While 1 expect this critical

approach wiIl elucidate Milton and Shelley in their own separate

artistic and political spheres, 1 am especially interested to compare

and contrast the poets, to show how the quite different uses made of

the grotesque in Prometheus Unbound and Paradise Lost reflec t the

various ways in which Shelley responds to Milton in his role as a

revolutionary forefather.

Milton and Shelley as Political Poeis

Though little critical attention has been paid to either Milton's

or Shelley's use of the grotesque, diverse recent critics have

examined Milton's role as a political poet from the perspective of his

Romantic followers. In fact, to the extent thac the English Roman tic

poets are seen as politically motivared, it is virtually impossible to

l a v e Milton out of the discussion. Many of the Romantics - notably

Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley -- eulogized Milton in their poetry

for his cornmitment to liberty. Shelley's fragmentary poem "Milton's

Spirit" begins

1 drearned that Milton's spirit rose, and took

From life's green tree his Uranian lute;

And from his touch sweet thunder flowed, and shook

Al1 human things built in contempt of man,--

And sanguine thrones and impious altars quaked,

Prisons and citadels . . . . ( Poetical Works 45 3 )

Nonetheless, until quite recently, Milton's political influence upon the

Romantics was al1 but ignored, mainly due to T.S. Eliot's influential

opinion that Rornantic poetry is characterized by the expression of

intense feeling without thought. Eliot held that the Metap hysical

poets of the seventeenth century were the last practitioners of a

poetry which fused thought and feeling. Following the

Metaphysicals, and perhaps tellingly, just prior to the English Civil

War, Eliot claims a debilitating "dissociation of sensibility set in, from

which we have never recovered" (288). This supposed dissociation

began with Milton, whom Eliot charged with writing in a lofty,

iatinate style whose remoteness from living speech implied a

remoteness from felt experience. Su bsequent to Milton, p e t s were

guilty either of thinking too much, like the eighteenth century

Augustans, or feeling too much, Like the Romantics.

Eliot's thesis has been attacked on a number of fronts by a

multitude of critics, leading to a thorough revaluation of Romantic

poetry. In the 1960ts and 1970's. there was a growing critical

movement, led by Harold Bloom and M.H. Abrams, to politicize the

Romantics. Abrams counters Eliot's view that the Romantic poets

were merely gushing sentimen talists or brainless idealis ts, and

claims rather that they were "to a degree without parallel . . . obsessed with the realities of the era" (93). In The Visionary

Company, Bloom charges Eliot with grounding his critical judgernents

of Romantic poetry upon a conservative politicai and religious

agenda Bloornts controversial thesis makes the claim that English

culture has been continuously divided since the seventeen th cen tury

betvveen those that accepted the English Puritan revolution and

those, like Eliot, that rejected it. For critics like Bloorn and Abrams,

Rornanticism represen ts the reemergence of the revolutionary ideals

that inspired the republican side in the English Civil War. Milton and

the Romantics thus corne to be read side by side, as radical political

voices urging the renovation of society. In The Roman tics on Müton,

Joseph Anthony Wittreich supports this view, arguing -- much almg

the same lines as Bloorn and Abrams - that as "the hero of political

radicaiism during the Romantic era, Milton -- more than any other

artist - taught the Romantics what it meant to be a revolutionary

artist" (21). Also, insofar as the Romantic poets conceived of

themselves as prophets or visionaries, they were part of what

Wittreich calls "the line of vision," or a Miltonic tradition of prophecy

in which the poets regarded themselves as spiritual leaders who

would bnng about a new order and a new age.2

However the critical revision which sees Milton and the

Romantics as proponents of a common revolutionary political agenda

introduces nearly as many problems as it solves in moving beyond

Eliot's critique. Few critics, 1 think it is safe to Say, would now

challenge the view that Milton had a profound impact upon Romantic

sensibility, or even that his impact was as rnuch political as it was

artistic. More difficult to determine, however, are Milton's own

political views, especiaily on the delicate matter of revolu tion, and

we cannot hope accurately to determine the nature and scope of

'~arold Bloom, The Visionary Company: A Reading of hgiish Romantic Poe- (Ithaca: Corneii UP, 1971).

Z~oreph Anthony Wittreich. Jr., Milton and the liDe of Vision (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1975).

Milton's influence upon the Romantics as a revolutionary forefather

until we understand the basis (and limits) of his own views on the

su bjec t.

This understanding initially involves recognizing that Milton's

politicai opinions must be seen in the light of his religious beliefs.

There has been considerable critical debate over the vexed question

of how Milton's politics relate to his religion. Some commentators

assume that Milton's support of the republican cause in his own

political life and in his political prose tracts cannot possibly be

rneaningfully reconciled with the monarchicai and hierarc hical

religious foundations of Paradise Lost.3 Though the next chapter

shows that, on the contrary, these two strands of Milton's thought are

indeed consistent and even complementary, 1 will briefly survey the

issues here to dari@ the main lines of rny general argument.

In the political tract, The Ten ure of Kings and Magistra tes,

Milton argues that revolution and regicide are defensible and even

necessary responses to political tyranny, w hich derives from political

rule camïed out in defnnce or conternpt of reason -- reason k i n g

the foundation of social organization if uue liberty and justice are to

be secured. Paradise Losr dramatizes the flip side of the same

argument, as it assumes Satan's and Adam and Eve's revolutions

agains t God are indefensi ble and undesirable because they deviate

from reason and lead ultimately, not to freedom, but to bondage.

Satan and Adam and Eve fail to keep their rightful places within the

3~ prominent proponent of the view that Milton's politics and poetry are irreconcilably ar odck ir C.A. Patrides. See Milton and the Christian Tradition (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1C)GG).

divine hierarchy headed by God, whom Milton portrays as the

essence of rational (and thereby justifiable) rulership.

Both the cause and result of rebellion in Paradise Lost involve

loss of the rebels' divine image within them; Satan and Adam and

Eve revol t because they suppress their God-given rational

judgement, their birthright as rational creatures under Cod, and are

punished by their separation from their deiform nature and from the

greater God. The Miltonic grotesque, then, springs from the loss of

the image of Cod in fallen angel and fallen hurnanity. I t is a

movement away from the rational center and formal perfection,

closely associated with Cod, into irrationality and deformity. On a

moral and spiritual level, Milton uses the grotesque to denote inner

evil and its outward manifestation, sin. At the same tirne the

grotesque brings the political argument of Paradise Losf into sharp

focus by allowing us to identify and examine political transgression,

its causes and outcornes, in terms of the deformities of the poem's

wayward rebels.

On the other hand, Shelley's approach to the grotesque in

Prometheus Unbound allows us to see more clearly what many critics

seem to miss - that his stance toward revolution and political rule

differs markedly from Milton's, and that one of his main aims in the

poem is to revise and update his predecessor.4 The Shelleian

4~ackie DiSalvio's War of Tirans: Blake's Critique of Miron and the Politics of Religion (Pittsburgh, ü of Pittsburgh P, 1983) shows a movement away from the Bloom-Abrams-Wittreich critical camp in arguùlg that Blake does not wholiy accept Milton's political example, but rather democratizes and feminizes Milton's elitis t republicanism. Little has been written about Shelley frorn this point of view, though Michael Chappell's interesthg articie(to which 1 later refer) entided "De-fencing the poet: the political dilemrna of the

grotesque is a vehicle of regenerative power, a forrn of art which, in

breaking down al1 hierarchical boundaries and in deforming the

known world, creates the possibility of radical imaginative and

political transformation. Importantly, by incorporating prominen t

elements of the grotesque into Prometheus (Inbound, Shelley is

reacting against a Miltonic brand of political organization which

privileges reason. The social and political boundaries Shelley is

trying to dismantle in his poetry, and especially in his grotesque

poetry, are precisely those he views as having been erected in the

name of reason. Yet in order to appreciate fully the social and

political import of the grotesque and its relationship to rational

thought, we must, before turning to consider Milton and Shelley,

examine i ts his tory as an aes thetic category.

The Grotesq ue: History and Critical Receprion

Our modern understanding of what we regard as "the

grotesque" in art and literature developed out of the fifteenth

century discovery of sorne ancient Roman ruins, buried since the

Augustan period. The excavated pain tings, whic h adorned the

ceilings and walls of the "Golden House of Nero," were intricately

arranged and fantastical creations. The designs showed a pattern

-- - --

poet and the people in Milton's Second Defense and Shelley's Defense of Poerry," gives a reading of the nvo authors' respective prose writings which points to the difkrent roles each plays in the politicai structure. My study supports Chappell's reading of the prose, though rny focus ir the pwtry, and especially the grotesque character of the poetry.

consisting of mythological creatures, as well as various flora and

fauna. Classical standards of artis tic organization were flou ted and

heterogeneous forms were fearlessly cornbined. This decora tive

style, termed grottesche in 1502, was received with much

enthusiasm in Italian artistic circles. Raphael and Michelangelo were

among the first of many prominent Italian artists who adapted the

style of the ancient murais into a new form, which rapidly became

the artistic standard throughout Europe. This novel approach to art

was widely acclaimed for its capacity to liberate artistic expression in

its disregard for conventions of form and style. Through the

grotesque artists were able ço move beyond the strictures of rule and

reason upon which the classicai method had been grounded.

The most infiuential proponent of the new style was the Italian

art critic Giorgio Vasari, who consiciered grotesque creations to be

both beautiful and divine.5 Vasari's celebration of the work of such

artists as Raphael and Michelangelo, however, met resistance from

another camp of critics in Italy who upheld the classical standards of

taste, rule, and proportion endorsed by the ancient Roman

commentator, Vitruvius. The latter grouprs claim was that grotesque

art, in its deviation from pure abstraction and reason, was licentious

and immoral for rejec ting divine harmony and order. According to

Vitruvian supporters, the grotesque style represented a debasement

and degradation of culture, while from the perspective of Vasari and

s~iorgio Vasari, Liver of the Mosr hinent Painters Sculptors and Archirects (New York: H a m y Abrams, 19791.

his followers, the use of the grotesque in art heralded a significant

advance in creative and artistic achievemen t.

Critical opinion on the grotesque remained very much divided

when the style appeared in England in the mid-sbteenth century.

Not surprisingly, the artists and critics most averse to the spread and

popularity of grotesque art in England were those with the most

inves ted in the onhodo~y of classical learning and its conceptions of

artistic propriety. By the end of the century, Edmund Spenser, to

whom John Milton was much indebted as an artist, would describe

grotesque art in The Faerie Queene as "wilde antickes" and

" monstrous formes" (3.1 1.5 1 ). Yet, in fact, Spenser used grotesque

art to great purpose. Notably, as part of the overall artistic design of

The Faerie Queene, the characters opposing the work's privileged

moral and political values are depicteci in grotesque physical forrns:

monsters, rnalformed wi tches, and various O ther bestial creatures

lurk around every corner as forces opposed to Spenser's knigh ts,

unrernittingly challenging their defense of Gloriana's realm and i ts

value system. Within the poem's multi-layered symbolic structure, a

charac ter's physical deformation suggests a corresponding moral,

religious, or political degeneracy; the grotesque form is attached to

chose who are "other," or those whorn Spenser depicts as immoral,

irnpious, or corrupt.

The grotesque was used almos t exclusively in a pejorative

sense throughout neoclassicai Europe. For many English Pro testan ts

especially, grotesque art came to be regarded as superfluously

ornamental and inhannonious, whereas the most highly valued

lorms of art demonstrateci sirnplicity, restraint, order, and

proportion. ItwasnotuntiltheRomanticrnovementhadtakenhold

that the grotesque began to lose its negative associations. There was

at this time a significant artistic and critical shift which altered how

the grotesque was used and perceived -- a movement, in broad

terms, from a Vitruvian perspective to a Vasarian perspective. i

address the reasons for this shift and its nature in my discussion of

Shelley and Romanticism in Chapter Two.

Studies of the grotesque in the modern era (by which 1 mean

the last hundred or so years) have sought primarily to define the

grotesque in art and to assess its purposes. A cornmon thread

existing between contending theories is that the grotesque, in its

reorganization of cacegories and its characteristic paradigm shifts,

requires a necessary reorientation of perspective on the part of the

subject. Arthur Clayborough defines grotesque art, for instance, as

"that which is not congruous with ordinary experience" (1 2 ) .

Geoffrey Galt Harpham makes a similar case, claiming that "ail

grotesque art threarens the notion of a center by implying

coherencies just out of reach, rnetaphors or analogies just beyond Our

grasp" (43 ) . and that the grotesque "calls into question our ways of

organizing the world, of dividing the continuum of experience into

knowable particles" (3). The fundamental sense in which critics

understand the grotesque is remarkably consistent, as they tend to

identify it with aspects of abnormali ty, irrationality, indeterminacy,

and a transgressive destruction (or restructuring) of order.

However, consideration of why the grotesque is used at all, and

its relation to a work of art as a whole. is more contentious. Though

none would deny, for instance, rhat Rabelais employs elernents of the

grotesque in his writing, there is still the matter of deterrnining what

the grotesque may reveal about Rabelais as an artist. Critics are

likely to ask, in other words, for what reason, and with what

intended effect, does Rabelais make the grotesque a prominent part

of his art. Often such enquiries reveal as much about the critic as

about the artist under examination, as my subsequent discussion of

Bakhtin and Kayser indicates. Broadly speaking, w hether the

grotesque is affirmative or pejorative, liberating or destructive,

depends upon the culture within which grotesque art is created, and

aiso upon the cultural context for the critical axamination of that art.

By establishing CO nventional condit ions of order and coherence,

culture determines the particular forms the grotesque will take in

art, and the meanings attached to grotesque representation.

In the modern period, to a greater extent than ever before, we

rnay not, to be accurate, speak of a single cultural consciousness.

Conceptions of cultural " normdcy ," we fiind, are prej udiced by class,

race, gender, and so on; in short, by political considerations which

disting uish benveen dominant and rnarg inalized perspectives on the

world - al1 of which impinges upon how the grotesque is used and

how it is experienced. Insofar as the grotesque is commonly

associated with change and flux, and with the distortion or disruption

of "ordinarytl experience, the uses made of the grotesque by the

artist, and the responses of the critic to grotesque art, rnay be seen as

indicators of a political point of view or orientation towards the

prevailing cultural orthodoxy.

Not surprisingly, the grotesque in the modem period has

generated more controversy than ever before. And yet, the debate

proceeds according to the same basic arguments which pitted a

Vasarian interpretation of the grotesque against a Vitruvian

viewpoint in the sixteenth century. On the Vitruvian side there is

John Ruskin, whose pioneering study, The Stones of Venice, remains

an enduring work of grotesque scholarship primarily on account of

the simplicity and rightness of its central assertion that "the mind,

under certain phases of excitement, plays with terror" (III.iii.23 ) . Yet Ruskin's discussion of the grotesque is but a part of his massive

treatise on medieval and Renaissance Venetian art and architecture,

in which he aims to show how the Venetians fell off from a healthy

and pious society into decadence and a11 forms of excess. Within this

larger design, what makes Ruskin's treatment of the grotesque so

novel and astute is his examination of the connec tion between

artistic expression and cultural trends. He regards the "ignoble"

grotesque ornamental style, which liberated Venetian artists from

artistic imitation in favor of non-representational, fantastic modes of

art, as one important aspect of the culture's debasement and decline.

He attacks Raphael's work, for instance, as "an elaborate and luscious

form of nonsense . . . a poisonous root; an artistical pottage,

composed of nymphs, cupids, and satyrs, with shreddings of heads

and paws of meek wild beasts, and nondescript vegetables."

Deploring Raphael's art for its qualities of confusion and ambivalence,

Ruskin is horraed at "the depth to which the human mind can be

debased in following this species of grotesque" (III.iii.39).

Ruskin's assessrnent of grotesque art as corrupt and impious is

a gauge of his investment in a world which privileges reason, order,

and classical decorum. He takes his point of view from the center, in

effect, and consequently fears and despises the grotesque in art for

what Harpharn has called its capacity to "effect the liberation of

ornament from the domination of the center" (29). The marginalized

monstrosities of the world achieve an extraordinary conspicuousness

in the grotesque. What lies behind Ruskin's condemnation of the

grotesque, therefore, is a recognition of its power to invert

hierarchies and challenge codes, and thus forcibly to reorient the

perceived nature of reality, with the ultimate result that worldly

reality is itseif transformed.

In The Sense of Beauty (1896), George Santayana succinctly

cap tured the grotesque's transformative capacity in his often-quo ted

- though largely misunderstood -- remark "The good grotesque is

novel beauty" (258). Seen in this light, the grotesque has the power

to question and even transforrn edsting conceptual models and

cultural standards. [t is through a continual exposure to the

monstrous and the malformeci, says Santayana, that "the incongruity

with the conventional type then disappears, and what was

impossible and ridiculous at firs t takes its place among recognized

ideais. The centaur and the satyr are no longer grotesque; the type is

accepted" (260). Not surprisingly, then, the grotesque is often

discussed in connection with revolutionary changes of one kind or

another. Says Harpham: "It is one characteristic of revolutions,

whether literary, political, or scientific, that they liberate, dignify,

and pass through the grotesque. A shift in vision . . . and suddenly

the deformed is revealed as the sublime" (20).6

In the modern era, most critics follow Ruskin's and Santayana's

lead in viewing the grotesque in art as, at least in part, a cultural

phenornenon, and specifically, as a vehicle of cultural

metamorphoses. Particular emphasis has been placed upon the

challenge which the grotesque poses to the rational and ordered

basis of Western culture. Mikhail Bakhtin and Wolfgang Kayser are

probably the two most prominent reviewers of the grotesque in this

century, and they generally agree that the grotesque is characterized

by irrationality and by the destruction of al1 order and hierarchical

organization. In Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin refers to the

grotesque as "the negation of the entire order of life," (307) and

Kayser, in The Grotesque in Art and Licerature, daims that

"structurally, the grotesque presupposes that the categories which

apply to our world view become inapplicable" ( 185). Though these

authors concur in determining what the grotesque is, they differ

markedly on what the grotesque means. While Bakhtin views the

grotesque as developing out of a spirit of joyousness and festivity,

and containing a regenerative energy, Kayser conceives of the

grotesque as, above all, terriwing and threatening. We have, as it

were, returned to the pre-Romantic debate which pitted a Vasarian

incerpretation of the grotesque against a Vitruvian viewpoint.

the scientific realm, for instance, revolutionary breakthroughs are often explained in terms of paradigm shifts caused by an analysis of abnomalities or anomalies found within the exisring paradigm. in Kevol u tion in Science (Cambridge: Harvard UP. 1985), J. Bernard Cohen explains, "The activity of scientists within one accepted paradigm is often called 'normal science' and usually consists of 'puzzle solvhg,' that is, adding to the accepted stock of knowledge. Such normal science continues untii anomaiies tum up which evenrualiy cause a criais, foliowed by a revolution producing a new pmdigmt' (26-7).

Bakh tin's Rabelais and His World, while limited in its scope by

dealing with a single author, aims nonetheless to provide a

comprehensive interpretation of the purpose of grotesque art. It is

Bakhtin's contention that, within the grotesque, carnival atmosphere

of Rabelais' world, there lies a degradation of authority; amid the

corrupting and fecundating bodies (what Bakhtin terms "grotesque

realism") exists the "unofficial speech of the people" (3 19). The

grotesque is the people's triumphant laughter which dethrones the

shibboleths of the "official" world, undercutting the center by

substituting for its lifeless and oppressive officialdom a carnival

atmosphere grounded in the abundance of iife and the

indomitableness of the collective human animal. The grotesque

body, debased to a level of materiality which breaks down

boundaries between bodies and between the body and the world.

provides a vital ünk to the "change of epochs and the renewal of

culture" (325). We are never left in any doubt that Bakhtin views

change and renewal as both positive and necessary.

The vantage point from which Wolfgang Kayser views the

grotesque substantially differs from Bakhtints. Kaysert s treatise, The

Grotesque in Art and Lirerature, accually refers us back to Ruskin

and to The Stones of Venice. The grotesque world for Kayser is to be

distinguished from our world. Bakhtin's "grotesque realism," of

course, suggests the opposite, that the carnival world is on the side of

reality and an integral part of this world. Kayser's grotesque world,

on the other hand, is located out there, "estrangedu from the known

world.7 It is a place which he variously describes as "sinister" and

"abysmal," to be contemplated with terror and revulsion, as opposed

to joy, hope, or sympathy. Kayser's Rabelais, for instance, "savagely

[piles] epithet upon epithet to an ultimate effect of terror," dragging

the reader "into the nocturnal and inhuman sphere" ( 15 7) . Kayser, in

sharp contrast with Bakhtin, does not want to see the ordered and

familiar world distorted and fragmented, and so regards the

grotesque as a demonic and destructive power.

Kayser's perspective on the grotesque. like Bakhtin's, helps us

read certain texts, while contributing little to our reading of others.

We must conclude that no single theory of the grotesque in art is

applicable to al1 works, some of which, in fact, would seem flatly to

involved in attempting a holistic analysis of the grotesque. That said.

it is still generaily true that Milton's treatment of the grotesque in

Paradise Losr is best read in the light of Ruskin's or Kayser's critical

perspective. Or it may be quite as accurately stated that Ruskin and

Kayser follow a Miltonic conception of the grotesque, for Milton is in

many ways the originator and progenitor of grotesque literature in

English, as Dante and Rabelais are for continental literature. Milton's

manipulation of grotesque imagery is, as with so many aspects of his

7 " ~ h e grotesque," Kayser notes "is the estranged world" (184). In some translations of Kayser's The Grotesque in Art and Licerame, the word "esvanged" is replaced by "aüenated. I mention this because "alienatim" is a virally important concept in Milton's Paradise Lost. The grotesque is introduced into the poem in conneccion with Sam's and Adam and Eve's dienation frorn the divine image of God.

crafr, subtle and ingenious. It is characteristic of the poet thar he is

able to masterfully weave together seemingly disparate s trands of

thought into a consistent and unified vision. Accordingly, the

grotesque in Paradise Lust is much more than poetic flourish, but is,

as it were, a strand of thought integrally related to the epic's major

themes; my reading of the poem, therefore, atternpts to show how

the grotesque is especially valuable as a key to tracing the contours

of Milton's revolutionary thought. Shelley's use of the grotesque in

Prometheus Unbound also clearly reflects a political point of view,

though one that is quite different from Milton's. Much like the

Rabelaisian grotesque according to Bakh tin, the Shelleian grotesque is

an aesthetic mode which celebrates the possibility of human

0 revolution and liberation through an. The Miltonic grotesque in

Paradise Lost, on the contrary, correlates to a form of revolutionary

activity which the poet deerns unj ust, and so is us& pejoratively.

- 1 -

Rebels Without a Cause: Revolution and the Grotesque Worlds

of Paradise Lost

According to Wolfgang Kayser, "the various forms of the

grotesque are the most obvious and pronounced contradictions of

any kind of rationalism and any systematic use of thought" ( 188).

Such an explanation of the grotesque is, as we shall see, quite

relevant to Paradise Lost; but we need first to understand the sense

in which Milton understands racionalism and systematued thoughr,

for they are concepts integrally related co both his politics and his

Christian faith. In Paradise Losr, reason and order derive lrom and

are centered on Cod, the creator and defender of a rationalistic and

hierarchically ordered universe. The poem's two principal

revolutions against God, Satan's and Adam and Eve's, represent the

transgression of boundarîes as ordained by God. So, in the trespass

of hurnanity, "Man disobeying, / Disloyal breaks his fealty, and sins /

Against the high Supremacy of Heav'n, / Affecting Godhead, and so

losing dl" (3.203-6, my italics). Satan is also punished for "Affecting

allequality with Cod" (5.763). For both Satan and Adam and Eve,

prima1 transgression invoives the attemp t to undermine God's

hierarchy. Milton aims to "justifie the wayes of God to men" ( 1 A)

partly by showing that God's hierarchy is as inviolable as God

0 himself, and furthemore just. If Milton's defense of God is to be

coherent, the rebels must be shown to have no just cause to want to

subvert Gd's divine order. Their revolutions rnust be proven to

have no rational justification. [t must be shown that the rational

choice, the right choice, is to serve God in whatever capacity he has

ordained. What is made abundantly clear in Paradise Lost is that to

rebel against God is futile, and ultimately self-defeating. By virtue of

their resistance to God's sovereignty, Satan is cast from heaven and

Adam and Eve barred from Eden, both realms governed by divine

reason and order. Milton represents the rebels' expulsions in terms

of the their alienation from Cod: Satan is addressed by the faithful

angel, Abdiel, as "O alienate from Cod," (5.877) while Adam and Eve,

due to their " revolt and disobedience" are from heaven "Now

alienated" (9.7-9).

Milton funher emphasizes that in the very act of revolting, the

rebels are already fallen, are already alienated from God, because

they have relinquished the image of God within themselves. Milton's

understanding of the divine image, as Hugh MacCaIlum notes, relates

fundamentally to a capacity for rational judgement? While the

perfect image of the Father is located in his divine Son, angels and

humans are also made in the image of God. The Son is most fit to

rule heaven and earth because his rational judgement is faultless;

Adam and Eve are equipped with sufficient rational powers to be

lords over Eden in the service of God. The revolutions waged by

Satan and by Adam and Eve in resistance to Gd's sovereignty

contradict reason as well as good ethical and political judgemen t.

The atternpt to supplant or resist God is furthemore an assault upon

8 ~ u g h MacCallum, Milton and rhe Sons of God (Toronto: U of Toronto P. 19861.

the divine image within, the rational cornponent of human or angel.

And so when Adam asks why man, after the fall, should be debased

and deformed, these effects arise, we End, from impairment of the

image:

Thir Makers Image, answerd Michel, then

Forsook them, when themselves they villifi'd

To serve ungovemrd appetite, and took

His Image whom they servtd, a brutish vice,

Inductive rnainly to the sin of Eve.

Therefore so abject is thir punishment,

Disfiguring not Gods likeness, but thir own,

Or if his fikeness, by themselves defac't

While they pervert pure Natures healthful niles

To loathsom sickness, worthily, since they

Gods Image did not reverence in themselves.

(11.514-25)

As Michael's speech indicates, to oppose God is to oppose the divine

image within; to rebel against one's own inborn rational character

leads to wanton appetite, sickness, perversion. and deformity. This is

the source of the grotesque in Paradise Lost. The grotesque is

intricately tied up with revolution, but not in the way a critic such as

Bakhtin would imagine: the grotesque is not a progress toward

revolution, but rather vice-versa. Furthermore, Milton's post-

e revolutionary grotesque worlds are not places of moral or political

ernancipation, but rather of confinement, bitter servitude, and terror.

Sovereign ry and the Figure of God in Paradise Lost

Contrary to the opinion of some critics, as noted earlier,

Milton's views on the subject of the tyranny of kings and political

freedom are indeed consistent with his religious views, and in

particular, his unders tanding of Christian liberty and obedience to

Cod. Refemng to the problem of Paul's injunction to civil obedience

in Romans 13, Milton States:

Our freedom belongs not to Caesar, but it is rather a gift

from Cod himself given at birth, and to surrender it to

Caesar, when we did not receive it of him, would be an

act of shame most unworthy of man's origin. If any

person should gaze upon a man's face and features and

inquire whose likeness was found there, would it not be

easy for anyone to reply, the Iikeness of Cod? Since

therefore we are God's own, and indeed his children, we

are for this reason his property alone, and accordingly

cannot without wickedness and extreme sacrilege deliver

ourselves as slaves to Caesar, that is to a man, and a man

who is unjust, unrighteous, and a tyrant (Yale 4. pt. 1:

376-77).

Caesar, of course, represen ts the archetypal despo t. Milton abhors

political tyranny in al1 its forms and in every historical period, and

his political tracts are fiiled with scathing indictments of kings from

Babel to Charles 1. in Milton's view, the only appropriate answer to

regai tyranny is regicide, which he presents as a social obligation and

as an act of piety, ennobling men before God. Milton quotes the

words of Seneca: "'Jove on his altar can receive no sacrifice / Of

higher worth, or richer, than an unjust king"' (Yale 4. pt. 1: 446) .ci

Satan is Milton's prototype of a tyrant. His role as despot of

Hel1 makes him the mode1 for al1 the tyrants of earth which Michael

makes visible to Adam in the final books of Paradise Lost. Yet Milton

did not have to Look fa. to find similar forms of tyranny in the world

of real political events. In EikonoWastes, Milton, charges Charles I of

milking parliament of more money "then would have bought the

Turk out of Morea, and set free al1 the Greeks," the suggestion here

being that the English king is a sultan over the English (Yale 3: 448).

In contrast to the kingship of the Son, who " by right of rnerit Reigns"

(6.431, Satan's (and indeed Charles') daim to sovereignty is

fraudulent. Satan's infernal kingdom is a perversion of Cod's

heavenly empire of "Rational Libertie" (1 2.82). Satan hungers for

personal glory and power. His subjects are his slaves, in bondage for

renouncing "Right reason for their Law," ( 6.42) as represented ideally

in the Son.

Yet Milton is not opposed to sovereignty on principle. There

need not be anything the matter w i t h absolute rule, nor with the

hierarchical division of society. But for Mil ton, sovereign ty and

hierarchy must be of a certain kind to be considered just. A ruler is

just and legitimate when he governs in accordance with "sovran

9~ am indebted to Stevie Davies' book for bringing this passage of Milton's prose ta rny attention. See Images of Kingship in Paradjse Losr, (Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1983) 91.

Reason" (9.1 l3O), as was required of Adam in Eden. Likewise, the

form of hierarchy Milton approved in society was specifically one

which ranked members according to relative rnerit, rather than by

hereditary privilege. C.S. Lewis, then, is correct when he remarks

that one of the central principles of Paradise Losc is hierarchy,

though Milton's approval of hierarchy is rather more specific than

Lewis suggests. 10 In the Second Defence Milton States, " nothing is

more natural, nothing more useful or more advantageous to the

human race than that the lesser obey the greater, not the lesser

number the greater number, but the lesser virtue the greater virtue,

the lesser wisdom the greater wisdom" (Yale 4: 636). Abominable to

Milton are political models based on the subjection of the worthy. He

regards meritocracy as the only tme ethical form of human

governrnent anci socid organization.

Milton appiies the same principle to the celestial sphere in

Paradise Lost, in which God's Son is anointed king only after he has

dernonstrated his virtue. God says to him:

Because thou hast, thou Thron'd in highest biiss

Equal to God, and equaily enjoying

God-like fruition, quitted al1 to Save

A World from utter loss, and hast been found

By Merit more than Birthright Son of Cod,

Here shalt thou sit incarnate, here shalt Reign

i o ~ . ~ . Lewis, A Preface CO Paradise Losr (Oxford: Oxford UP. 1942) 72-80.

Both Cod and Man, Son both of God and Man,

Anointed universal King. (3.304-1 6)

Rightful sovereign power is invested in those who, like the Son,

prove themselves to be worthy of the role. Specifically, fitness for

rulership requires the exercise of rational judgement. It should be

noted that the qualities of virtue and wisdom, which are the

hallmarks of a good sovereign, are closely aligned in Miltonic usage

with superior reason, upon which al1 the higher faculties of

humankind depend. This parallel is brought out both in the prose

and in the poetry: in DeDocaina Chrisciana, for instance, Milton

equates the exercise of God-given " right reason" with "whatever is

intrinsically good" (Yale 6: 3 IO), and in Paradise Lost, Mic hael

explains to Adam rhat liberty is losr when individuals or nations

swerve "From vertue, which is reason" ( 12.98).

Political liberty depends upon rational govemmen t For as

Michael counseis Adam: "true Libertie . . . / with right Reason dwells

/ Winn'd, and frorn her hath no dividuai king" ( 12.83-85). Failure

to rule according to reason, as Michael goes on to Say, amounts to

tyranny:

Reason in man obscur'd, or not obeyd,

Immediately inordinate desires

And upstart Passions catch the Government

From Reason, and to servitude reduce

Man fiil then free. Therefore since hee permits

Within himself unworthie Powers to reign

Over free Reason, Cod in Judgement just

Subjects him from without to violent Lords. (12.86-93)

For Milton, freedom is above al1 Liberation frorn one's lower self, the

self of the passions- Lawrence Babb notes how reason and passion

were understood in seventeenth century thought: "A man who allows

his emotions to overrule his reasonable will sacrifices his freedom

and his virtue" (47). That interna1 freedom lost, a parallel loss of

external freedom will follow as a consequence. Andrew Milner puts

the matter succinctly: "Those who lai1 in the government of

themselves will, then, necessarily fail prey to a tyrannical

government imposed from without" ( 163-4)- Just as a state

governed by a rational d e r is a free state, so is the man who is

guided by reason a free man.

Though the causes of the Fa11 are cornplex, Satan and Adam and

Eve fa11 largely due to the triumph of passion over reason.li

Raphael's final set of instructions to Adam before the fa11 makes the

point clearly:

Be strong, live happie, and love, but first of ail

Him whom to love is to obey, and keep

His great command; rake heed least Passion sway

L1~enis Saurat was probably the fxst to identify how Milton had redefmed the nature of the Fa. In his landmark smdy, iclilton: M m and Thinlter (Hamden: Archon, 1924), Saurat shows, though perhaps oversirnplifying the issue, how Milton wants to see the Fa11 in te- of passion overcoming reason, rather than as a search for forbidden knowledge, as the Biblical source for the story would suggest.

Thy Judgement to do aught, which else free Will

Would not admit. . . . (8.633-37)

Ali ratioiial creatures possess free will, for as God says, "Reason also

is choice" (3.108). To choose rightly is to choose in obedience co the

dictates of reason. In order to defend God's justice, Milton must

show that Satan and Adam act irrationaily and illegitimately in

choosing to revolt against Cod.

Their acts of rebellion lack a rational justification, we learn,

because God is an ideal ruler whose kingdom is based upon a

rneritocratic order. " k c h in thir several Sphears assignd, / Till body

up to spirit work, in bounds / Proportiond to each kind" (5.477-79).

God's kingdom is in Milton's eyes an ideal political rnodel, Cod an

ideai ruler. There is liberty under God for those who know and

respect their proper station. I t is well known that after the failure of

the English revolution, Milton began to despair that human liberty

was ever attainable in any earthly States. We may speculate,

however, that if he had found a king in seventeenth century England

who approximated God, there would have beeri scant reason for the

p e t to embrace the Good Old Cause.

Yet the Guâ of Paradise Lost is an elusive figure. Are we to

understand God as representing reason itself? Andrew Milner claims

that Milton's Cod is "abstract reason." and that therefore Miltonic

rationalism is logically atheistic ( 1 59). This claim, however, seems

counter-intuitive, and furthemore at odds with the basis of Milton's

theological principles, as it needs rationalism to explain the existence

of God, rather than the other way around. Cod is more than an

@ abstraction in Milton's thought. Yet there is no question God is

somehow to be associated in Milton's system with reason, which is

also goodness, truth, and justice. I t is perhaps safer and more

accurate to say that Milton's God is the source of rationality.

Part of the problem, of course, is that Milton himself often

seems unsure of how to account for the Cod in whom he believes. I t

is often held that Milton bungled his characterization of Cod, or that

he undemined him from the start, as William Empson daims in

Miiton 's cod. Certainly God is a less compeliing figure than Satan or

Adam in Paradise Lost. But this does not mean that Milton was

(knowingly or unknowingly) of the devil's Party, nor that his praise

of Goci is disingenuous, nor even that his characterization of God is

unsuccessfuL From Milton's perspective, God represents the

principle of creation; yet paradoxically, as the source, he defies visual

representation, becomes featureless. Milton certainly regarded

scriptural revelation as the chief means through which humanity cm

approach knowledge of Cod; but Milton also assumes that the Bible

cannot fully represent its divine inspiration. We may know Cod also

through his rational creations, and yet even in these vessels, his

image appears in varying degrees of incompleteness. And so Milton's

God in Paradise Lost swims just outside of our imaginative grasp,

"Imrnutable, ïmmonal, Infinite" (3.3 72), w hile Satan, by contrast, in

his body of leviathan proportions, is visually striking, but diminished

in cornparison to his creator. Milton would seem to be saying that

Satan - like the nature of evil itself - appeals to our senses. while

God may not be approached thus directly.

Nonetheless, Milton's God must be accounted for if we are to

understand the hierarchical basis of the poet's political and religious

views. Milton, we find, considers capacity for rulership to depend

upon the exercise of rationai judgement, and he regards God as an

ideal sovereign who rules with rational wisdom, and whose kingdom

is based upon a perfect meritocratic order. As such, Satan's and

Adam and Eve's rebellions possess no rational or legitimate

foundation, but rather spring from passionate and self-serving

motives. Revolu tion in Paradise Lost, therefore, connotes a

movement away from divine rational order; with an unmatched

variety and rïchness of lurid detail, Milton characterizes this

unfortunate change as a descent into the grotesque.

Sa tan and the Grotesq ue

Let us first assess Satan's reasons for rebelling against God, for

herein lies the root cause of his grotesque nature. As leader of the

rebel army of angels in heaven, Satan's alleged justification for

chaiienging Cod's sovereignty is not uncompelling at first glace.

Godts rule is absolute. His authonty may not be challenged. Indeed,

such a form of rule readily appears to be tyrannical. And yet, as

Milton wants to show, the rational and moral position is to choose to

serve God. who is benevolent and just. I t is important to emphasize

that Satan chooses evil. He understands his actions to be wrong and

he knows the consequences. This is Satan's pervers@, to use his

free will to turn al1 that is good into evil. He does not. therefore,

actually believe in the rightness of his actions, for if he did, he would

not be freely choosing evil and his punishment would lose its

justification. 12 Further acquaintance with Satan's character reveals

plainly that his actual motives for revolution are self-serving and

nefarious: pride, envy, and revenge. Satan's moral Mure is usuaily

cited as the mainspring of his actions. The text, however, makes

more of his inability to reason effectively. As Abdiel rightly

observes, Satan employs reason which is "Unsound and false" (6.121),

or a kind of pseudo-rationality. It is his lack of right reason which

corrupts his ability co make the correct choices. Instead of choosing

to continue to serve God in heaven, Satan instead allows his corrupt

desires to motivate his conduct, and thus chooses to turn away from

Cod in active rebeliion.

I t is through Satan's rebellion rhat Sin enters the world. Milton

gives this fateful change visuai and symbolic resonance through the

use of grotesque imagery. Sin is born out of Satan's mptured head.

By bringing her into existence, Satan forfeits his own divine image, as

well as those of his legions of followers. Sin's awful physicality is a

measure of her role as the source (and thereafter the root cause) of

the grotesque in the world; for it is she that " first / Distemperd al1

12~he doctrine of free wili is, of course, a centrai tenet of Milton's theology. In De Docmina Chnstiana, Milton explains, ". . . everyone is provided with a sufficient degree of innate reason for him to resist evii desires by his own effort. . ." (Yale 6: 186). Sunilarly, in Areopagitica, Milton notes that Cod "gave [Adam] freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing" (Yale 2: 527). The rebel angds, Milton believes. are more blameworthy than Adam and Eve because, though both freely chose a sinful path, the angels tempted and deceived themselves, whereas humanity was Fust tempted and deceived by Satan. This difference in degree of sin corresponds ta the difference in the possibilicy for attaùiing grace: The f i r t son by thk own suggestion fell, / Self-tempted. self-depraved: Man therefore shaii fmd grace, / The other none. . . ( 3.129-32 1.

things, and of incorrupt / Corrupteded" (1 1.55-7). Sin is described in

typically grotesque language: "Woman to the waist, and fair, / But

ended fou1 in many a scaly fold / Voluminous and vast, a Serpent

armrd / With mortal sting" (2.650-653). Like Spenser's Duessa, Sin's

body is double, at once human and bestial, alluring and repulsive;

this kind of categorical confusion is, according to Harpham, the

essence of the grotesque, apprehended in "the sense that things that

should be kept apart are fused togetheru( l 1 ). 13

Death, Sin's child by her father, also defies categorization. but

for the reason that it lacks a physical form altogether, existing simply

as a terrible black shadow. The only time Milton provides Death

with physicality is in Book 10, following the fall of Adam and Eve,

a when it is incarnated as a "vast unhide-bound Corps" (10.601),

suggesting a flayed cadaver. The image is suitable, as Death, newly

introduced into the world through the Fall, "de-forms" the living

world, divesting bodies of their corporeal shape. Death is the

destroyer as Cod is the creator, and Death is as "dreadful and

deform" as God is sublime (2.706).

13111 her book, P & v and Danger (London: Routledge, l966), Mary Douglas offers a fascinating account of how categoricai hybrids have become associated with moral, social, and religious forms of transgression. She seeks to explain why, for example, in Leviticus, certain creatures are considered impure and inedible according to diemry law, while others are regarded as pure and edible. Douglast study reveals that the forbidden anunals share certain features in common: they may contain an interstitial quality (eg. crawting creatures from the sea), or be seen as incomplete members of their class (eg. rotting objects), or be regarded as hybrids or confusions (52-55). She writes: "ln short, our pollution behavior is the reaction which condemns any ob ject or idea likely to conhise or contradict cherished classifications" (48). It is worth notùig that Milton's God, the source and paragon of wholeness, order, and unity, ir described (through Belial) as ~unpoUutedtv (2.139).

Satan, though of regal appearance and bearing, is fully as

grotesque as Sin and Death. Sin, in fact, is describeci as Satan's

"perfect image" (2.764) in the absence of the divine image (2.764).

Satan's deformation is, of course, the result of his rebellion and

subsequen t fall. Harpham sees Michelangelo's sketches of The Las t

Judgement as exploiting a similar theme, in which groups of nudes

are changed into monstrous demons upon descent into Hell. The

distortion of Michelangelo's rebels is fitting, according to Harpham,

for they have "surrendered their structural integrity and formal

coherence in the act of transgression" (7). Milton's Satan and his

cohorts, we find, are likewise "gross by sinning grown" (G.GG 1 ). They

are variously described in Hell as 'trnonstrous shapes" and as "brutish

forms / Rather than hurnan" (1.479-82). The standard from which

they have fallen is a classicai one, in which bodies are closed,

homogeneous, centered, and symmetrical - features which are a

measure of ordered and proportional rationality. Satan appears

deformed beyond recognition before the angel, Zephon, who

apprehends him whispering to Eve. Once honored arnong the ranks

of angels, Satan condescends to Zephon, but is met with a sharp

rejoinder which reminds him of his place outside the hierarchy of

heaven:

Think not, revolted Spirit, thy shape the same.

Or undiminished brightness, to be known

As when thou stood'st in Heav'n upright and pure:

That glory then, when thou no more wast good,

Departeci from t h e and thou resembl'st now

Thy sin and place of doom obscure and foul. (4.835-40)

Satan's charac ter is revealed no t only b y his physical

degradation, but also by his slippery, changeable physical form This

"doubleness" of character is indicated by his ability to assume

assorted shapes; just as Satan minces "Ambiguous words" (5.703), so

does he inhabit an ambiguous physical shape. The tradition of the

shapeshifting devil is as old as the demonic tradition itself. The

capacity to remake the body is also a prominent feature of the

grotesque, wherein, as Bakhtin says, the body is always "in the act of

becoming. It is never finished, never completed; it is constantly

built, created, and builds and creates another body." The grotesque

form, Bakhtin alleges, is notable for "transgressing its own body"

(3 17). From Bakh tin's perspective, as we have seen, the grotesque's

transgressive quaiities are viewed as positive, containing a creative

(and procreative) energy integral to cultural change and renewal.

From Milton's perspective, on the other hand, God is the unique

creative force in the universe; Satan's transgressive function,

therefore, far from being regenerative, is a horrific perversion of

Cod's creative ordering function. Milton's Cod, in contrast to Satan, is

characterized by "oneness" and by his "imrnutable" form (3.373),

symbolizing the indivisibility of truth. Just as the divine is

characterized by formal unity and wholeness, which is a measure of

spintual perfection, so is the dernonic given a grotesque plasticity

which is the material analogue of spiritual corruption, and reflects

the arnorphous, degenerate instability stemming from loss of the

divine image.

As punishment for waging war in heaven against God, the

devils are plunged into Hell. Significantly, Hell is created from out of

the center rather than being created in reaction to the center - as

much as Satan would like to believe otherwise. Hell rnay be usefully

seen in terms of Kayser's aiienated world, grotesque for standing in

contradiction and opposition to rationalism and systematic thought.

Its denizens are rebels and transgressors, thus held as a "captive

multitude" in "strictest bondage" (2.3 2 1-4). Their position is one of

marginality, their place lying on the "utmost border of [God's]

Kingdom" (2.36 1). Milton's Hell is remarkable for arresting our

imagination with the vividness of its imagery while simultaneously

appearing confused, systemless beyond al1 recognition. It is rhis fine

line between referentiality and non-referen tiali ty that every artis t

ernploying the grotesque must tread.

In its ambiguity and ambivalence, Hel1 is suitably defined in

terms of paradox, which asserts both terms of a contradiction at once,

embraces both and neither, and dances on the margins of sense and

nonsense. In its "deformation" of language and meaning, paradox is

the basis of the grotesque; this relatedness is succinctly captured in

Harpham's defmition of grotesqueries as standing "at a margin of

consciousness benveen the known and the unknown, the perceived

and the unperceived" (5). Just so, out of Heu's flames emanates

"darkness visible" (L.63), and its atmosphere "Burns fore, and cold

performs the effect of fire" (3.595-6). Hell is furthermore where "al1

iife dies, death lives, and nature breeds, / Perverse, ail rnonstrous, al1

prodigious things, / Abominable, inutterable" (2.624-26). Paradox

challenges the lirnics of our realms of experience, breaking down

boundaries of thoughr and sense. I t is the ultimate expression for

that which exceeds al1 bounds. This is likewise how we commonly

apprehend the grotesque, w hich constitu tes, in Harpham's phrase,

"the things left over w hen the categories of language are exhaus ted"

(3).

As the grotesque is defined by excess, by an overflowing of

bounds, so is it opposed to order. Bakhtin's formulation of the

grotesque as "the negation of the entire order of life" gets to the

heart of the matter (307). In Paradise Lost, God is the architect of

order, which he creates from Chaos. Urie1 reports:

I saw when at his Word the formless Mas,

This worids rnaterial mould, came to a heap:

Confusion heard his voice, and wilde uproar

Stood rul'd, stood vast infinitude confin'd. (3.709- 12)

Milton's use of language in this passage is extremely precise. The

conjunction of the active verbs "rul'd" and "confmrd" show God as

bringing disorder to bear within the ordered bounds of his sovereign

sway.

The rebel angels, in their disregard for God's order, especially

his irresistible hierarchical order, are chased into Hell. As fallen

creatures estranged frorn the divine image of God, the rebels

institute a perverted order of their own, which while based upon

hierarchical limits, is ernpty of reason and justice. The fallen angels

in Hell are not ranged according to relative merit, as would be

rational and just, but rather according to their ability to persuade

courses of evil under various pretenses, to rnobilize the masses of

demons to a common nefarious purpose; the ability to lie

persuasively guarantees political power, and so Satan is a natural

leader. Reason, which justifies political rule, is subtly distorted by

Hell's leading figures. The demonic counsel is a perversion of right

reason, orchestrated to mislead the masses. Belial, we are told,

speaks to the assembled "with words cloth'd in reason's garb"

(2.226). The "settl'd State / Of order" (2.279) to which the devils

ostensibly aim is a sham, a perversion of God's rational order. I t is

suitably the temple of "Pandemonium" which is built in the center of

this disordered empire divorced from Cod. l4

Yet the disorder of Hel1 is not identical to the anarchic disorder

of Chaos, a place described as a "dark unbottom'd infinite" (2.403, an

"abortive gulf' (2.441), and as the " unfounded deep" (2.829). Chaost

elements mingle confiisedly in " Etemal Anarchy" (2.896). I t is a

space without Limits or boundaries, and thus eludes visuai

representation. Milton's depiction of Hell, on the other hand, rnakes a

striking visuai picture. Hell's landscape, with its lakes, forests and

mountains, is much like our Earth. And yet it is also a nightmarish,

otherworldly space of "doleful shades" ( 1.65 ) and " Floods and

14~he precise nature of this disorder is succinctly captured by Milton in his repeated use of the word confowided. The term is brilliantly used to connote simultaneously such various meanings as "confused," "damned," and "overthrown"; for it is the rebels' failed coup, and their overthrow by God. that results in their damnation and confusion. Banished from heaven, they are thrown into the abyss, to lie "vanquisht, rolling in the fiery Gulf / Confounded though ïmmonal" (1.53-4). Satan, in tum, makes it his mission to "confound the race / Of mankind in one root" (2.382-3). After he has succeeded, Adam and Eve are described in th& destitute condition: "silent, and in face / ~onfounded long they sate" (9.10634). Their sin shows in theV being "de-faced," much as Satan has k e n phyricaiiy altered through hir rebellion fram Gad.

Whirlwinds of ternpestuous fire" (1.77). This kind of corrupted

familiarity is often considered the basis of grotesque representation.

As Harpham notes, we experience the grotesque in its most poignant

manifestation when "in the midst of an overwhelming impression of

monstrousness there is much we can recognize" (5). Milton often

succeeds in making the grotesque horrors of Hell vividly recognizable

through metaphor. The dernons' movement en masse over the

surface of Hell recalls the plague of locusts brought down by Moses

( 1.341), and they are furthermore compareci to bees "In clustersl'

(1.771), as a swarm (1.776), and as a numberless throng (1.780). As

these exarnples indicate, Milton commonly compares the devils to

animals, which points to how they have surrendered their higher

rational natures in their rebeiiion from God. They are also often

linked,asabove,toobjectswhichlackstrucrureandresistclosure.

Masses of teerning bodies are typical of grotesque representations in

art. The grotesque body is often part of a throng in which there is no

organizing principle or focal point upon which the eye may rest.

This pattern of imagery anticipates Book 10 and the

mernorable scene in which Satan and his crew are transformed into a

mass of writhing serpents: "dreadful was the din / of hissing

through the Hall, thick swarming now / With complicated monsters

head and tale" ( 10.5 2 1-3 ). The devils' loss of the divine image

within corresponds to the their losing aii bodily integrity, to their

marginalized status as "cornplicated mons ters." Satan's own

transformation is evoked in terms which remind us of similar scenes

in Ovid's Mecamorphoses " His Visage drawn he felt so sharp and

spare, / His armes clung to his Ribs,his Leggs entwining / Each other.

till supplanted down he fell/ A rnonstrous Serpent on his Belly

prone" (1 0.5 1 1-1 4). Alastair Fowler has remarked upon the scene

that " just when the devils seern about to becorne heroes in Satan's

epic, . . . they turn out instead to be monsters in God's" (64).

Earlier, Satan had broken through the bounds of Heu, his

second transgression of limits, with apparent success. He then

asserted his demonic transformative power to don the guise of a

serpent and usurp the "sovran reason" of Eve. Yet Satan's breaking

of bounds, his freedom from Cod's restraint, is not actual freedom.

As Satan himself recognizes, so long as his will is bent on evil, he will

always be in hell, for "The mind is its own place, and in ifself / Can

make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n" (1.254-55). The "hard

liberty" (2.256) which the devils claim to prefer in resistance to God

is a sham. They are in bondage ro their own willed evil, which

deprives them of fkeedom of choice The devils' grotesque

metamorphoses into serpents is a visual analogue of what they have

willed themselves to become in their defmce of God: that is,

irrational, compted, suffering beasts at the furthest remove from

ideal created nature. The Bakhtinian sense in which the grotesque

represents a positive form of resistance to authority is inapplicable

to Paradise Lost, wherein resistance to God's au thority is

unjustifiable, and furthermore utterly futile. If the grotesque

promotes triumphant laughter, as Bakhtin suggests, the last laugh in

Milton's scheme belongs ro Cod.

Adam and Eve and the Grotesque

In recounting the story of the war in heaven, Gabriel uses

Satan's plight as a cautionary tale for Adam. He concludes: "let it

profit thee to have heard / By terrible Example the reward / Of

disobedience; first they might have stood, / Yet fell; remember. and

fear to transgress" (6.909-1 2): so concludes Book G and the first half

of Milton's epic. The second half consists of the anticipation of Man's

fall, the Fall itself, and its consequences throughou t human history;

boundaries are established, transgresseci, and the consequences of

that transgression are evaluated across time. In many important and

obvious respects, the Fa11 represents an axis of change; its

0 revolutionary character involves a turn away from the rationality,

order, and obedience demanded by God. As a consequence of their

revolt, Adam and Eve (and their offspring throughout history) are

alienated from God and from the divine image within, and are

thereafter subject to the irrationality and disorder which

accompanies that change. The f a e n world into which Adam and Eve

descend is of their own creating, and Milton's portrait of that world is

not a rosy one. It is largely with horror and disgust that Milton

contemplates a postlapsarian existence. In its fragmentation, its

confusion of hierarchy, and its putrefaction, the fallen world invites

numerous cornparisons to the grotesque.

Yet in order to understand Milton's basis for conceiving of a

grotesque fallen world, we need first to assess the limits irnposed

upon a prelapsarian, pre-revolutionary world. Eden, like di of Cod's

creations, is govemed by the rule of hierarchy. Superior reason

again determines ascendency. Adam and Eve are created, unlike the

animals of Eden, with "Sanctitie of Reason" and in the image of God

(7.508), and therefore may legitimately hold sway over the entire

earth. At the moment of creation, God proclaims:

Let us make now Man in our image, Man

In Our similitude, and let them rule

Over the Fish and Fowle of Sea and Aire,

Beast of the Field, and over al1 the k t h ,

And every creeping thing that creeps the ground.

(7.5 19-23)

Adam is placed above Eve for his superior reasoning ability,

artriburable to his creation direcrly by God, whereas Eve is created

out of Adam; thus Milton's controversial assessment of the pair's

relative status: "Hee for Cod only, shee for Cod in him" (4.299).

Adam therefore possesses "absolu te rule" (4.30 1) over ail the earth,

dependent only upon his obedience to God, which Milton defends as

the rationai position. Adam's turning away from God (literally, his

perversity) follows from the failure of his rational will.

Eden is Adam and Eve's rational empire. So long as they

remain within the boundaries of Eden, Adam and Eve maintain a

position of centrality in relation to Cod. Eden, as Satan observes,

bears close cornparison to heaven. I t is likewise a place w herein

limits are observed and the sanctity of order is upheld. Outside of

a Eden's " hallowed Limits" (4.964), however, Lies a disorderly prospect.

Eden is bordered by "a steep wilderness, whose hairie sides With

thicket overgrown, grottesque and wilde, / Access deni'd" (4.13 5-3 7) .

Milton's only use of the word "grotesque" in Paradise Lost vividly

depicts the contrast between the disorderliness of nature outside the

wall of Paradise and the perfect order within its boundaries. 15

Atternpting ro enter the Garden, Satan is repulsed (at least

momentarily) by the wilderness which serves as a naturai barrier to

the sanctuary within: "[He] further way found none, so thick

entwined, / As one continu'd brake, the undergrowth / Of shrubs and

tangling bushes had perplext / Al1 path of Man and Beast that past

that way" (4.174-77). The word "perplext" operates in this passage

in the same way as did "grotesque" in the earlier passage: both

words serve to set off the contrast between without and within -- the margin and the center - as well as to subtly represent the mind

of Satan in irs condition of abject confusion.~U~t is norably Satan's

perplexity, his grotesque confusion, which debars hîm from the

paradise he had known in heaven. Sirnilarly, Adam and Eve, in the

descent from rational preeminence rhat their revolution from God

15~he work which Adam and Eve perform in che Garden consists primarily of checking the "wanton growth" of its vegetation(4.629). While the abundance and luxuriance of nature in its purest form is often ernphasized, excess and overgrowsh are intolerable, and more suitably defmed by the fallen world.

16~he decorative style which was developed in Renaissance Europe, in imitation of grottesche cave art, showed an interesthg interplay between the center and margins of artistic space. A painting, for instance, would cornmonly consist of a central design which depicted sacred material in a recognizable, coherent, and ordered pattern; this centrai portion was bordered by fringe art consisting of rnonstrous shapes lacking order and proportion. Often these shapes were so painscakingly executed. and so absurd and decadent. that they rivalled the main panel for the viewer's attention. Milton's Paradise - his sacred centerpiece - is likewise bounded by a confused periphery, which does not, however, arrest our imagination. Yet Satan, who is aiso a marginalized moastrosity, achieves an extraordinary cons picuousness in our imaginative eye.

entails, find themselves cast from Eden into the disorderly outer

world.

Satan plays something like the role of facilitator in the fa11 of

humanity. In his encounters with Eve, he provokes her existing

desires and also instills new appetites and longings, dl with

characteristic subtlety and deception. He first approaches her with

seductive power through the irrational world of dream. Squatting

astride Eve, he is described evocatively as attempting to draw out

her lower nature:

Assaying by his Deviiish art to reach

The Organs of her Fancy, and with rhern forge

Illusions as he list, Phan tasms and Dreams,

Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint

Th 'animai Spirits that from pure blood arise

Like gentle breaths from Rivers pure, thence raise

At least distemper'd, discontented thoughts.

Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires

Blown up with high conceits engend'ring pride.

(4.80 1-09)

Satan's aim is to corrupt Adam and Eve by debasing [hem to his own

level. This involves encouragement of their sub-rational inner

powers to usurp their rational judgement. As Adam explains to Eve

upon hearing of her unsectling dream:

But know chat in the Soule

Are many lesser Faculties that serve

Reason as chief; among these Fansie next

Her office holds; of al1 external things,

Which the five watchful Senses represent,

She forms Imaginations, Aerie shapes,

Which Reason joyning or disjoyning, frames

Al1 what we affirm or what deny, and cal1

Our knowledge or opinion. (5.100-108)

Adam and Eve's rule on earth is reliant upon their keeping

imagination, or fancy, in subservience to reason. This is a forrn of

hierarchy which Satan atternpts to dismantle by planting in Eve's

imagination " misjoyning shapes" (5.1 1 1 ). Eve is as yet unacquainted

W h the maiformeci, incoherent images produced in a ciream srate.

Nonetheless, she is able, at this point, to withhold rational assent of

the dream and its demonic suggestion.

In their first encounter, Satan introduces Eve to the potential

challenges of her own lower nature, her passions and desires. In his

second approach of Eve, Satan buiids on what he has already

accomplished He recognizes that Eve will be on the defensive, wary

of direct appeals to her appetites, and so with masterful deceit, and

with backhanded subtlety, he appeals to her in the guise of reason.

Eve's warning to Satan that "Reason is Our Law" (9.G54) provides the

fodder which he needs to accomplish his ends. He daims to have

gone from being a dumb brute, an irrational being, to an articulate

a and fully rational creature by eating the forbidden fruit.

Accordingly, his status has risen a notch in the hierarchical chah of

being. His words, Eve must admit, seem "impregn'd / With reason"

(9.73 7-8), and she contemplates her own status elevated to the level

of the gods. She also rnomentarily revels in the thought of becoming

superior to Adam, and ponders the same question with which Satan

is self-deluded: "inferior who is free?" (9.825). Yet, in truth, like

Satan, she is at this point grasping for a pseudo-rational bais to

legitimate motivations grounded in such base desires as greed and

envy.

Eve's "fatal Trespass" (9.889) is properly viewed in the light of

her defeated faculty of reason, which she chooses to ignore and resis t

by eating of the fruit, and thus indulging her baser nature. Adam

had dready reminded Eve of the dangers to which reason is subject:

"Reason not impossibly may meet / Some specious object by the Foe

subornd, / and fa11 into deceprion unaware, / Not keeping strictest

watch, as she was warnd" (9.360453). As arch-deceiver, Satan dupes

Eve into abandoning her right reason, which recognizes the justice of

God-given limits. Ironically, Eve's revolutionary effort to raise

herself ùeyond her own human limits involves her lower nature

gaining preerninence over her higher nature, with a resultant loss of

freedom. After the Fall, both she and Adam are described "in

subjection now / To sensual Appetite, who frorn beneathe / Usurping

over sovran Reason claimd / Superior sway" (9.1128-30).17 There is

I7The blame which Adam receives for eating of the fruit is not identical to the blame foist upon Eve. As her "superior," Adam is blameworthy for fouowing her lead in eacing the forbidden fruit. By obeying her in a course of action he knows to be forbidden, he has effectively resigned his superior position in the hierarchy of nature; she has become his god, and in obeying her he worships ber like an idol. The Son rebukes Adam after the Fall, and rerninds hirn of his mle as chief sovereign of Eden:

enslaved by their own lower natures, a condition inimical to rule. and

they must consequently resign their sovereign control of Eden.

Milton indicates that, despite possessing rational forbearance,

Adam and Eve freely chose their own Fa11 by acting in accordance

with irrational impulses. Like Satan, they are cast from God's

rational kingdom, alienated from his benign order, with an attendant

loss of freedom and privilege. The sentence of "perpetual

banishment" ( 1 1.107) which falls upon Adam and Eve, as well as

their progeny, suggests not only a physical relocation, but a more

fundamental dislocation from God, from the center. The "lower

World . . . obscure / And wilde" (11.283-4) to which they are

condemned is a world of their own creating, one which is irrational

and temfyingly disordered. The usurpation of the forces of reason

by the forces of passion, upon which the Fall is predicated,

corresponds to a movement into the grotesque, which Harpham

pointedly describes as "a word for that dynamic state of low-

ascending and high-descending" (74). In the fallen world, the

"misjoyning shapes" which Eve experienced but as a dream have

become horribly real. The landscape "grotesque and wilde" at the

margins of Eden defines fallen existence in the absence of a

governing rational will.

Adornd Shee was indeed, and lovely to attract Thy Love. not thy Subjection, and her Gifts Were such as under Govenunent weii seem'd Unseemly to beare mie, which was thy part And person, had'st thou known thy self aright. ( 10.15 1-56)

Before moving on to a consideration of Milton's postlapsarian

world, however, let us briefly assess the Fa11 from Cod's perspective.

For, as 1 hope to show, it is in defining the precise conditions of the

Fa11 that we discover the logic of its consequences. God takes the

foiiowing view of even ts:

But longer in that Paradise to dwell,

The Law I gave ro Nature him forbids:

Those pure immortal Elements that know

No gross, no unharmoneous mixture foule,

Eject him tainted now, and purge him off

As a distemper, gross to aire as gross,

And mortal food, as may dispose him best

For dissolution wrought by Sin, that first

Distemperd al1 things, and of incorrupt

Compteci. ( 11.48-57)

Adam and Eve are despoiled and may no longer inhabit the pure soi1

of Eden. In a similar vein, l3elial had predicted the fallen angels

would be expelleci if they attempted to reascend to heaven:

"th'Ethereai mould / Incapable of stain would soon expel / Her

rnischief, and purge off the baser fire / Victorious" (2.131-42). 18 In

both these passages, the deiform universe seems imaged as a

physical body which flushes out, evacuates, al1 those baser elements

18~here is an implied meaning in both examples 1 have provided above of a political purge. In Miltonic usage, the word "purge" has a strong moral and religious ernphasis, but the commonly used political connotation ir equally applicable in both cases.

that tain t bodily purity and harmony. Humanity, with its " polluted

ways" ( 12.1 101, is expelled. and so thereafter alienated from the

source of its own creation. Humanity, the irnagery would suggest, is

distempered. The nature of the disease is sin, which is introduced

into the world through the Fall. Moral and spiritual dissolution are

here linked to a dissipated physicality, as was common in

seventeenth century medical theory (Flannagan 5 86). Humanity's

inner corruption is actualized in physical terms through decay,

deformity, and disease.

The elements of grotesque we find in the fallen outer world are

thus the outgrowth of an inner mental world constituted by disorder

and irrationality. (The Und of deformity that can result from a

warped and polluted rnind is, as we have seen, most rnanifest in the

characrer of Satan.) Imrnediately after eating the forbidden fruit,

Adam and Eve view each other from out of their own respective

feelings of degradation; the outside world is seen from a new vantage

point, and the alteration is experienced as strange and unsettling.

With the introduction of shame, Adam and Eve perceive their own

and their partner's genitals as "unseemliest seen" (9.1094). The lens

through which they view the world now contains a grotesque film.

Similarly, Sin does not manifest itself in the world until it has been

released by the mind of Man. The bondage of Adam and Eve

precipitates, and is coincidental with the keeing of Sin from her

significant position at the boundary between Hel1 and Chaos: the

relationship is expressed in terms of logical cause and effect. In this

light, God's punishment of Adam and Eve does not seem arbitrary,

but rather just. For not only does the punishment fit the crime. but

the crime brings the punishment into existence. Cod has been neatly

absolved of responsibility for not only the Fall, but also for its

consequences in human history.

I t is to those consequences that we now turn our attention.

Just as Adam had been privileged with knowledge of the past before

the Fall, so is he allowed to peer into the future, a future he has

determined by his own act of transgression. Adam is equipped with

increased vision to gaze into the beyond, given foresight, while this

flight into the future constantly refers hirn back to his own fateful

trespass, and thus also serves as hindsight. Michael shows Adam a

world as yet unfamiliar to his eyes. I t is Adam's familiar world

strangely inverted, contorted out of shape. Order and proportion are

no longer the rule in this new world. Michael's presentation of the

story of Cain and Abel, for instance. shows that "th'unjust the just

hath slain" ( 1 1.45 5). What human history demonstrates is that

Adam and Eve's crime is to be continuaily reenacted; al1 hierarchies

with a ba i s in reason and justice have collapsed, or been perversely

inverted.

Also unlike Eden, the new world is defined by excessive

behavior and intemperance of every sort. Michael emp hasizes that

these miseries were engendered by " th'inabstinence of Eve" ( 1 1.476).

The consequence of excess, relates Michael, is disease. Hurnanity is

rank with disease, just as postlapsarian Adam and Eve are

themselves "Distemperd." The "monstrous crew" (1 1.474) upon

which Adam gazes is a grotesque assembly of decaying, diseased

bodies: "Before his eyes appear'd, sad, noisorne, dark, / A Lazar-

house it seem'd, wherein were laid / Numbers of al1 diseas'd, al1

maladies / Of ghastly Spasm, or racking torture. . ." (1 1.478-81).

The passage continues with a litany of honific diseases and

harrowing descriptions of human suffering. This is Hel1 on earth, yet

it is also our world, depicted with brutal honesty and with an

unswerving grotesque eye. Adam, though, is devastated by the

vision, and cannot look upon it without weeping. These human

images, he recognizes, are "deformities" ( 1 1.5 1 3 ) , for they no longer

retain divine similitude in full. Michael informs Adam that this

deformation is due to "the sin of Eve" ( 1 1.5 19) and to Man's

subsequent perversion of " pure Nature's healthful rules / To

loathsome sickness" (11.523-4). It is perfectly consistent that

humanity should deviate physically from the image of God in

pursuing a disorderly, intemperate, irrational manner of life in open

defiance of God and his standards; it is hurnanity's perversity (or

literaily, its "tuming away from Cod") that precludes bodiiy order,

proportion, and health - consequences which Adam regards as "just"

(1 1.526)

The bleak future which Michael reveals to Adam does admit of

some rare exceptions. There are certain fleeting moments in history,

Michael explains, when speciai individuals are able to transcend the

"World perverse" (11.701) into which theyare bom. These

individuals, in the mould of Abdiel, are faithful to Cod and so retain

the divine image. Their purity is vividly contrasted with the

background of an " W h fill'd with violence, and al1 flesh /

Corrupting each their way" ( 1 1.888-3). The dominant grotesque

pattern of hurnan existence reaches its lowest ebb with the story of

the building of the Tower of Babel. In these scenes, the builders of

the Tower are likened to the fallen angels: like the devils they are

aspiring to reach Godhead, in this case by building a tower "whose

top rnay reach to Heav'n" ( 12.44); again like the devils, instead of

ultimately gaining fame and reputation, those who build the Tower

have their names blotted out. In order to punish the builders for

revoiting against hierarchical limits God sows confusion amongst

them Their building project is marred by disorder caused by a

failure to communicate, producing a grotesque scene. which Milton

describes vividly:

Forthwith a hideous gabble rises loud

Among the Builders; each to other calls

Not understood, till hoarse, and al1 in rage,

As mockt they storm; great laughter was in Heav'n

And looking down, to see the hubbub strange

And hear the din; thus was the building left

Ridiculous, and the work Confusion nam'd.

( 12.56-63)

As Roy Flannagan points out, the scene is strongly reminiscent of the

grotesque metamorphoses of the fallen angels attending Satan's

speech in Book 10 (633). The absurd product of the builders' labour,

the Tower named "Confusion," is Iikewise analogous to the creation of

Pandernonium in Hell; both are monuments which testiw to the

disordered and irrational minds of their builders.

Adam is quick to identiw the moral and political implications

of the building project. He recognizes Nimrod's (though he is

unnamed) treachery to be two-fold, for he has not only atternpted to

raise himself above his feiiow humans with an authority "from Cod

not giv'n" (1 2.66), but has also set his sights upon God himself: " to

God his Tower intends / Siege and defiance" ( 1 2.7 3) . Like Satan,

Nimrod lacks rational virtue and is a political tyran t He has

exceeded al1 human limits, and as a result, as Adam recognizes, is

reduced to a grotesque, life-denying existence "where thin Aire /

Above the Clouds wiil pine his entrails gross" ( 12.76-7). As Paradise

Lost has repeatedly emphasized, outside of God's ordained limits

there lies physical fragmentation, deformation, and disease. Nimrod,

like Satan, plies a transgressive, and whoiiy irrational course which

degrades and enslaves him and his followers.

The legacy of Adam and Eve's original trespass is shown

extending throug h Babel to the present age. Ey continually

perpetuating the Fdl , human beings remain a diseased and deformed

lot. SeKalienated from God, the source of rationality and order in

the universe, they are condemned to a grotesque world of their own

creation. This is a form of enslavement for which God provides a

remedy by sending his Son, the liberator of humanity. Adam

welcomes Michael's report of the Son's descent to earth with an

exultant: "So God with man unites" ( 12.3 8 2). It is through the

incarnate Son's mediation that the divine image is to be restored to

humanity. As Milton writes in De Docuina Christiana: "The effect and

end of the whole mediatorial administration is the satisfaction of

divine justice on behaif of di men, and the shaping of the faithful in

the image of Christ" (Yale 6: 3 20). There is in the Son's arriva1 the

hope of "disalienation," or a realignment of humanity within Godts

unpolluted, rational sphere, with an attendant restoration of moral,

spiritual, political, and consequently physical coherence, purity, and

wholeness. And yet it is with Adam and Eve's descent into the

strange wilderness beyond the gates of Eden, into the world of the

grotesque, that Paradise Lost concludes.

Examination of the epic's grotesque irnagery, then, reveals an

important, though previously unexplored, vantage point from which

Milton's revolutio nary views are clarified and amplified. Revolu tion

from Cod in Paradise Losr corresponds to a loss of the rebels' divine

image, which, both the Bible and Milton contend, al1 Cod's rational

creations possess by birth. The rebels' loss of the image derives from

the suppression of their rational judgernent, and results in separation

from their own deiform natures; the act of revolution, therefore,

marks a rnovement away from rationality, order, and fomal

coherence, al1 of which are associated with God and his kingdom, into

the domain of the grotesque, with its characteristic qualities of

irrationality, confusion, and defonnity. Through the grotesque in

Paradise Lost Milton's condemnation of the rebels is not only

evocatively expressed, but also more fully explained: rebellion in

Milton's scheme is unjustifiable when opposed to right reason and

meritocratic order, and thus the rebels' descent into the grotesque,

which finds them at the furthest remove from reason and order,

expresses the root cause of the& disobedience, and also indicates the

grounds justifjdng their punishments.

- I I -

Shelley and the Romantic Grotesque

In the interirn between the writing of Milton's Paradise Lost

and Shelley's lyric drama, Prometheus Unbound, the meanings and

valuations attached to the grotesque in literature had been radically

altered. Throughout much of the intervening neoclassical pend the

grotesque was considered a form of "low" comedy. According to John

Dryden's theory of comedy, the grotesque belonged to the least

sophisticated genres of comic art, such as burlesque and farce.19

Dryden, like most prominent critics of the "Age of Reason," vaiued

works of art created in the ciassical tradition which adhered to

accepteci standards of form, structure, and proportion. Grotesque art

represented a violation of these standards. Unlike comedy based

upon a naturalistic, Aristotelian model, grotesque comedy was

fantastic and rneaningless. It was not believed to consist of a moral

dimension.

I t became necessary, however, to account for the varied forms

of grotesque art found in the work of past masters like Homer,

Ariosto, Spenser, and Milton - artists whose creations were

considered profoundly moral. A distinction was therefore made

between sublime and ridiculous forms of grotesque art. The sublime

grotesque contained an allegorical disguise which hid moral meaning

within an alluringly fantastic outer shell. Thus John Hughes, writing

19see especially Dryden's 1G9S essay "A Paralle1 of Poew and Painting."

in 17 15, could admire Spenser's Faerie Queene as a "Grotesque

Invention" for its inventive and fabulous use of allegory (xliii). On

the other hand, ridiculous grotesque creations were those such as

found in the works of burlesque and farce, which featured

obscenities, odd rhymes, and bawdy jests. This division also

indicated a class split between the educated upper classes, who

cherished and upheld the Classics, and the lower classes, who

enjoyed ribald humor and clowning (Barasch &). These "low"

foms of comedy embraced by the peasantry would seem to evoke a

Rabelaisian spirit of carnival humor, which Bakhtin famously

considers "grotesque realism," and which serve, in his view, to

degrade authority and promote liberation. But, at least according to

some eighteenth century critics, humor of this sort had rather the

opposite effect of diverting the masses frorn a consideration of their

oppressed condition; for instance, though Dryden held burlesque and

farce in low esteem, he defended these forms as appropriate outlets

for the lower classes, who must be entertained if they are to "carry

their burthens cheerfully" ( 13 3 ) . Despite the opinions of its prominent detractors, this lowest

category of comedy gained increased popular favour throughout the

eighteenth century. Yet it was not until rnid-century that avant-

garde critics in Europe came to regard the grotesque as a legitimate

aesthetic category. At the same time that the social hierarchy was in

jeopardy of king overturned, there was a movement to include

"low" comic genres, with their characteristic elements of distortion

and incongniity, as rightful foms of art; as age-old class boundaries

were increasingly challenged, so were strict aesthetic divisions

collapsed. Elernents of the grotesque were aiso commonly used in

Gothic novels, the "pop fiction" of the period. Walter Scott, who

popularized the historical novel at the outset of the nineteenth

centory, is celebrated by William Hazlitt as an artist whose imagery

is "Gothic and grotesque" (63 8). Cervantes, Swift, and Fielding, al1 of

whom employed absurd and grotesque forms of distortion, gained

increased po pularity and were furthermore regarded by critics as

artists of high moral seriousness. These changes in aesthetic

standards and taste coincide with the beginning of what is now

considered the Romantic Period in art and literature.

Rornanticisrn may be seen to begin with the French Revolution,

an event which symbolized for many the dissolution of social and

class barriers. To its sympathizers the revolu tion represen ted

nothing less than the regeneration of humanity. Wordsworth recalls

the fall of the Bastille: "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. . . And

human nature seeming born again" (25 2). Wordsworth, like many of

his Romantic contemporaries, recognized that the revolution at the

social and poiitical level offered an avenue of intellectual and artistic

liberation. In The Prelude, which records his development as a poet,

Wordsworth reveals how the revolution pertains to the artist as an

individual:

How glorious! in self-knowledge and self-rule,

To look through al1 the frallties of the world,

And, with a resolute mastery shaking off

Infirmities of nature, time, and place,

Build social upon personal Liberty,

Which, to the blind restraints of general laws

Superior, magisterially adopts

One guide, the light of circumstances, flashed

Upon an independent intellect. (25 3)

Wordsworth's mood in this passage is celebratory; the shackles which

had held society were broken, its oppressive codes discredited.

There was in this change the awakening of a sense of freedom in

which to discover the world anew. This rediscovery took an inward

tum, as the Romantic artists rendered things not as they appeared

" in themselves," but as they were modified in perception by the

thoughts and feelings of the artist: such was the power of the

imagination to apprehend and shape ou tward realit~.~o

The meanings associateci with "imagination" in the Romantic

Period are extensive and diverse. The constant shifting of aesthetic

categories in Romanticism mean t that imagination was a Ruid

concept which could be variously linked to related terms Like the

"grotesque" and the "sublime." In Critique of Judgemen t, for

instance, Kant theorizes that it is on the outer lirnits of imagination

that we discover the grotesque:

. . . the English taste in gardens, the baroque taste in

furniture, rather urges the power of imagination to

20~or a thorough discussion of die "inward turn" in Romantic art see M.H. Abrams' The Mü~or and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and me Critical Tradition (New York: Odord UP, 1953). Also, Nancy Moore Gosleers Urie/*s Eye (University City: U of Alabama P, 1985) examines Shelley's method of interiorïzation in Prometheus Un baud in contrast to Miltonic objectivity.

something approaching the grotesque, and supposes that

it is in this very separation from all constraint of rules

that tasre can reveal its greatest perfection in the

projection of the imagination. (377)

It is worth noting that in this passage the grotesque is viewed

affirmatively, indeed, as a measure of aesthetic perfection. In the

Romantic Period, with its delimitation of art from classical strictures

and its pervasive esteem of the imaginative faculty, the grotesque

loses its pejorative coloration. Kant's views upon the sublime - another important aesthetic category in Romanticism - offer a

further critical point of entry into the grotesque. According to Kant,

the sublime may be contrasted with the beautiful as follows:

The beautiful in nature is connected with the fom of the

object, which consists in having definite boundaries. The

sublime, on the other hand, is to be found in a formless

object, so far as in it or by occasion of it boundlessness is

represented, and yet its totality is also present to

thought. (391 )

The sublime is not identical ro the grotesque, and yet there is a

significant overlap insofar as both the sublime and the grotesque

appear, in Kant's words, " to be unsuited to our presentative faculty"

(391); both assault our preconceptions of proper lirnits and thus

a canna t be readily accornmodated by our sensory faculties.

O A similar line of aesthetic inquiry is pursued by Hegel, whose

views upon artistic representation in The Philosophy of Fine Art bear

directly upon Shelley's work and artistic sensibility. Hegel describes

romantic art (as distinct from classical art and symbolic art) in these

terms:

The aspect of eternal is cornmitted to contingency, and

left at the mercy of freaks of the imagination, whose

caprice is no more likely to mirror what is given as it is

given, than to throw the shapes of the outer world into

chance rnedley, or distort them into grotesqueness. (479)

In Hegel's view, distortion is the only means by which the artist may

give expression to what is beyond the power of language to

adequately represent. The grotesque, as it were, fills in the space

between language and communication. In the twentieth century,

there is a tendency to view the grotesque in a Hegelian manner.

Geoffrey Galt Harpham, for instance, suggests that the grotesque

"accommodates the things left over when the categories of language

are exhausted" (3 ) . The artist's attempt to "CLothe it in words," as

Shelley's Mercury says in Prometheus Unbound, only shadows forth

the ineffable " Idea" which is the fount of inspiration ( 1.375).2L Hegel

writes:

21~his and aii subsequent quotations drawn from Shelley's peu). refer to line numbers (also preceded by act numbers in the case of Prometheus Un bound) . AU poetx-y selections are from English Romantic Poetry (New York: Harcoun. 1967).

Having no other reality to express it, [the Idea] expatiates

in all these shapes, seeks itself in them in al1 their unrest

and proportion, but nevertheless does not fmd them

adequate to itself. Then it proceeds to exaggerate the

natural shapes and the phenornenon of reality into

indefiniteness and disproportion . . . to distort and

explode them into unnatural shapes. (476)

In this passage, Kayser's comment on Hegel's view of the grotesque

seems especially pertinent: "Always there belongs to the grotesque

the characteristic of reaching beyond itself into a sphere of the

higher powers" ( 1 10). As we shall see, Shelley similarly uses the

grotesque ro express the human potential to overcorne tyranny and

injustice and to achieve regeneration.

We have already noted the similarities existing between the

sublime -- as described by Kant - and the grotesque. Hegel makes

this cornparison yet more explicit in his assessment of the

monstrosities he finds in Indian art, containing "an echo of the

sublime":

The sublime in art is the attempt to express the infinite

without fmding in the realm of phenornena any o bject

which proves itself fitting for this representation. As a

case of inadequate expression it is akin to the ugly or at

leas to the deformed and monstrous of the symbolic . . . phase of art . . . But yet these monstrosities have only an

"echo of the sublime," because they half satisw, or are

taken to satisw, the need of expression by the very

distortion, or magnitude. . . which makes them

monstrous. (3 56)

The contrat Hegel develops in this passage between the sublime and

the grotesque is crucial to our discussion of Shelley. In the sublime.

according to Hegel, there is a tension between subject matter and

manner of expression. In the poem "Mont Blanc," which provides a

revealing introduction to the later Prometheus Unbound, Shelley

explores this tension without arriving at a definitive resolution. The

awesome size and power of the mountain overwhelms the poet's

imagination; he gives an impression of the scene not by describing its

details-formeredescriptionisinadequafe--butbypointingtoits

sublimity. The vista which confronts the poet defies aii boundaries

of sense, as there is "ceaseless motion" and "unresting sound" (32-3).

The poet is filled with excitement, awe, and perturbation, as he

affvms the presence of a power which remains inaccessible to the

human mind: "Dizzy ravine! and when I gaze on thee / 1 seem as in a

trance sublime and strange" (34-5). The poet finds himself in a

quandw attempting to express in language that which is ineffable.

His poetic imagination goes

Seeking among the shadows that pass by,

Ghosts of al1 things that are, some shade of thee.

Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast

From which they fleâ recalls them, thou art there!

He persists, searching in this nightmarish space, this " awful scene,"

(15) to explain the desolation with which he is faced. But his

questions go unanswered, for "The wilderness has a mysterious

tonguet' (76). And yet he holds out hope that this "mysterious

tongue" contains "a voice. . . to repeai / Large codes of fraud and

woe" (80-1).

As the poem's conclusion reveals, however. the poet's ability to

interpret nature's hidden language is anything but certain:

And what were thou, and earth. and stars, and sea,

If to the human mind's imaginings

Silence and solitude were vacancy? ( 142-4)

The final question leaves open the possibility that the power of the

sublime has k e n recognized and ac tualized; "Vacancy" in this

reading is a creative space which bridges the human mind and the

sublime, as weli as language and imagination. But Shelley

furthermore allows us to read into these lines the voice of the

despairhg poet, who finds that the mounrain reveals not

revolutionax-y power, but utter emptiness.

"Mont Blanc" provides the most compelling instance in Shelley's

work of a sublime aesthetic which may well be voiceless,

incommunicable, a void of "Silence and solitude." In Prometheus

Llnbound, on the other hand, though Shelley is still working within an

aesthetic of silence, space, and emptiness, the play is a drarnatization

of the ultirnate transcendenre of an inhibitory subiimity. The

ineffable power of the sublime is given poetic expression among the

"shadows" and "shades" which had remained elusive in "Mont Blanc."

In Prometheus Unbound, Shelley is operating in an imaginative space

which accommodates, in Hegel's term, "an echo of the sublime." I t is

a work, therefore, which finds a voice of affirmation and

regeneration on the boundaries of sense and non-sense, form and

formlessness, shape and shapelessness. And i t is while straddling

these boundaries that we apprehend the grotesque. Harpham, we

rnay recall, defines grotesque forms as those which "stand at a

rnargin of consciousness between the known and the unknown, the

perceived and the unperceived" (3 ) . It is within this imaginative

space, the domain of the grotesque, that Shelley develops

Prometheus Lin bound.

Shelley's manipulation of a grotesque aesr hetic is, as we have

seen, part of a larger Romantic movement to delimit art from

classical strictures. And yet Shelley's grotesquerie - with its

characteristic distortion of language and textual patterns -- is quite

distinctive, if not unique, in the Romantic Period. Also, in

Prometheus ün bound especially, the grotesque informs to a large

degree the structure and meaning of the work as a whole. My next

chapter explores Shelley's reasons for foregrounding the grotesque in

Promecheus Unbound by exarnining the important connection in

Shelleian though t between poetry and revolutionary change.

- I I I -

Prometheos Un bound The Grotesque as Revolutionary Code

Central to both Shelley's life and a n is the dream, from which

he never wavers, to renovate society. The creation of poetry, in

Shelley's mind, constitutes a political act, a forum within which to

transform consciousness, and ultimately, the nature of social reality.

As we shall see, Shelley regards poetry as having the rare power to

rend "the veil of familiarity from the world," (1085) or to stimulate

people to imagine novel forms of reality, without which human

progress is unattainable. Prometheus Unbound is Shelley's most

cornpiete and accomplished exposition in poetry of the revolutionary

power of poetry and imagination to transcend tyranny and injustice.

In this text, it is specifically a grotesque aesthetic which provides

means to conceptuaüze imaginative transcendence, as weLl as moral

and political renewal. No tably, Prometheus Unbound is no t

commonly considered either bizarre, or obscene, or sinis ter, or

ridiculous - ail of which are saiient components of grotesque art.

Yet on account of its distinctively ambiguous characterization, its

defamiliarization of style and form, and its dismption of narrative

structure and coherence, the play is nonetheless profoundly

grotesque. Shelley intends these sarne features of the work,

meanwhile, to break down the boundaries which inhibit imagination,

and to prornote a revolutionary impulse in the mind of the individual

reader and in the greater society.

Shelley's Art and Human Emancipation

In order to understand and appreciate Shelley's artistic

purpose and method in Prometheus Un bound, for it can seem a

b u g work, it will be helpful first to examine in greater depch the

p e t ' s commitment to advancing human liberation, and the ways in

which that commitment was fulfilled through his poetry. This

approach will also allow us to make a preliminary assessrnent of how

Shelley's political, and related artistic vision differs from Milton's - a

cornparison which is to be rounded out in the light of my subsequent

discussion of the grotesque in Promecheus Unbound.

In his public üfe, Shelley was an agitator for freedom, human

rights, and social reform. As a young man, he was expelled from

Oxfkud for his refusal to disclose his role in distriburing the pamphlet

On the Necessis. of Artieism. He Wied direcrly to refom the socid

and poîitical evils he detected in Ireland, England and Wales, as well

as later trying to reform international politics through his writing.

He was also a voracious reader of political theory and was

exceedingly well versed in the works of such thinkers as Plato,

Rousseau, Paine, and Godwin. As Timothy Webb succinctly no tes:

"Politics were probably the dominating concern in Shelley's

intellectual Me" (75).

Much of Shelley's early poetry addresses politicai subjects wi t h

a kind of soap-box candor. In the poem "Song to the Men of

England," for instance, which had a wide circulation in radical

movements even after his own lifetime, Shelley exposes the

injustices of the class systern. It is a propaganda piece, written in a

mood of scorn and indignation, and begins:

Men of England, wherefore plough

For the lords who lay ye low?

Wherefore weave with toi1 and care

The rich robes your tyrants wear? (1019)

Clearly this is not Shelley the great Romantic lyric poet, but Shelley

the pamphleteer, prodding the working classes to awaken from their

doldmms and cake action against oppression.

As a literary artist, of course, Shelley is rnuch better known for

such lyrically haunting works as "Mont Blanc" and the lyrical drama,

Prometheus Llnbound. Yet in the eyes of sorne critics. even in the

post-Eliotic critical age, Shelley becomes in his mature artistic phase

a political escapist or idealist. F.W. Bateson writes: "The retreat from

politics . . . had been implicit in Shelley's poetry almost from the

beginning . . . The political facade that Shelley's poems retain was a

form of unconscious hypocrisy -- the uibute of the escapist to the

social conscience" ( 15 1-2). Jerome J. McGann has argued along

sirnilar lines that the Romantics disengaged from the political, and

that Shelley in particular retreated into idealisrn.22 Yet it is a

distorted reading of "Mt Blanc," or The Triumph of Life, or

22.Jerome J. McGann, The Romantic Ideology: A Critical Investigation (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983). For a similar iine of argument consult Marjorie Levinson's Wordsworth 'r Grear Period Pwms: Fo w Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge W. 1986).

Prometheus Unbound, for that matter, which fails to recognize its

political relevance. In such works, Shelley has not removed himself

from political concerns, but rather developed a subtler view of the

function of poetry. As Webb rightly urges, "a shift in emphasis

should not be confused with a change of view" (87).

Gone from the best of Shelley's later poems is the shrillness

and didactic tone of much of his earlier verse. Shelley was quite

aware of this change, as suggested by the image of the p e t as

nightingale in the Defence of Poetry: "A Poet is a nightingale, who

sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet

sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an

unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet

know not whence orwhy" (1076). Though Shelley's later poems

generallydemonstrateamoresubtlearristicapproachtosocialand

political reality, they are fundamentally reformulations of a familiar

question: how may humanity experience regeneration? The poetry

of overt political protest had offered one solution, but the tone of

rancor it brought out in Shelley did not suit his soaring lyrical

powers. The writing of Promeîheus Llnbound in particular heralds a

significant advance in Shelley's development as an artist, for it is in

this work that that the poet fmds a towering voice of affirmation and

regenerative force.

The Defence oPPoevy provides valuable insight into Shelley's

artistic method in Prometheus Unbound, and so it is worth

considering in some detail. I t is in the Mence that Shelley discusses

at length his view, ailuded to earlier. that poetry is the highest social

gwdandintrgrdmreformingtheworld. Poetry.hesays.isa

pmduct of the imagination and imagination is the obverse of reason:

"Reason is ro imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the body

to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance" ( 1072). Shelley's

Deface is a formai response to Thomas Love Peacock's The Four

Ages of Poetry, in which the claim is made that poetry is useless for

failing to make any difference whatsoever in the real world. Yet the

Mence is also a document which at another level takes aim at

revolutionary thinkers who had posited reason (often expressed as

"calculation" ) as the linch pin of revolution. Thomas Paine, for

instance, saw science and rational knowledge as weapons w hich

could be used to counter the nobility (or as he says, the "no-ability" ).

The tools of reason which make possible the calculus of the world's

rotation (or "revolution") should likewise propel the bourgeoisie

revolution.

In the Mmce, Shelley offers an opposing argument for the

ascendancy of imagination as a revolutionary lever. In Sheliey's

view, it is through the perceptual powers of imagination, and thus

through poetry, that progress and change are attainable: "The most

unfailing herald, cornpanion, and follower of the awakening of a great

people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is

poetry" (1086). The pet functions as a legislator and as a prophet,

and thus has the power to transform existing society for the better.

as well as to awaken the people to their own future. On the other

hand, the result of seeing the world exclusively in terms of

calculating reason is social injustice. Shelley argues in the Defence

that reason has made modern England a miserable and compt place

where "the rich have become richer, and the poor have become

poorer," ( 1083) whereas imagination, by contrast, is described as " the

great instrument of moral good" ( 1076).

It is helpful to read Shelley's defence of imagination in light of

Milton's Second Defence, especially as these texts illuminate some of

the centrai political differences between the poets. Shelley, we find,

regards imagination as an access to freedom and reason as a source

of oppression. For Milton, on the contrary, reason is the ultimate

human trait. Shelley recognizes that to embrace reason as the basis

of social organization, as does Milton, is to accept a structure which

places individuals within a hierarchy. This kind of social

organization is odious to Shelley, who regards imagination as a

vehicle to destroy al1 social barriers which stand in the way of

complete human equality. Cornparing the Defence of Poetry to the

Second Defince, Michael Chappdi observes: "When Shelley argues for

a more democratic structure and for the increased imaginative

involvement of the people, he is arguing against the Miltonic class

structure which would keep the people in order" (147).23 In the

in terest of maintaining proper perspective, however, we should

recall that in the preface to Prometheus Un bound, Shelley refers to

the "sacred Ml1tonn as a "repubiican, and a bold inquirer into mords

and religion" (98 2). Shelley, it should be emphasized, considers

23~hough Chappeiits cornparison of Milton and Shelley fruitfuîiy explores some of the poets' principal political differences, i t assumes throughout that Shelley engages Milton's Second Defence direccly in his Def ice of Poetry. Yet though Sheiiey does refer to Milton in the Defence. and though Milton is always a dominant influence in his artistic and political thought, there is no evidence to suggest that Shelley is specifica-üy referencing the Second Defence. In k t . as I mention, the Ddmce of Poeaywas compased as a reply to Thomas Love Peacock's The Four Ages of Poetry.

Milton not only as the greatest of the English poets, but also as a

liberal thinker of the first rank Milton's influence upon Shelley is

present in virtually al1 of the Romantic poet's work Indeed, Ross

Woodman suggests that Milton was the greatest single influence on

Shelley for the writing of Promecheus Llnbound.24

And yet, despite the profound influence which Milton exerts

upon Shelley, there are marked areas of difference between the

poets. As we have seen, for example, Shelley rejects Miltonic reason

in favor of imagination. Shelley's revision of Milton in this respect

suggests not only an artistic and philosophicai difference of opinion.

but a politicai one as well. Likewise, in Prometheus Unbound,

Shelley is writing in the shadow of an ancient and deep mythological

tradition and his adaptation of the Promethean myth is a reworking

of not only Milton, but also of Aeschylus, Dante, Blake, and others.

Shelley's approach to myth is well summarized by Earl R.

Wasserman: conceives of the poet as not merely an

assimilator of beautiful mythic forms: inasmuch as he is creative, he

is a mythopoeist, not by inventing myths, but by reconstituting the

imperfect ones that already exist" (68). Shelley transforms the

Promethean myth to illusvate his conception of moral and political

justice and to defend the efficacy of revolution both within the

human mind and in the political sphere.

Shelley's dialogue with Milton in Prometheus Unbound is not

systematically developed. Prometheus Un bound is no t on& a

2 4 ~ 0 s ~ Grieg W ~ d . m . a n , The Apocdyptic Vision in &be P o e 0 of Shelley (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1964).

rewriting of Paradise Lost, it is also much else. However we are

surely right in thinking that in Prome theus Un bound Shelley is

consciously modiwing Miltonic notions of authority, servitude, and

revolu tion, especially as found in Paradise Lost. Shelley's

modulations of Milton in Promerheus (Inbound have been explored

from a number of perspectives. Nancy Moore Goslee sees Shelley's

reworking of Milton in terms of a movement from objectivity to

subjectivity in art: "Shelley's development of the lyrical forms of

Aeschylean drama in order to rival Milton's objective epic manifests

the power of the classical Greek world to engender a liberating,

imaginative subjectivity" ( 195). Ailan Hoagwood argues in a similar

vein that part of Shelley's project in Promerheus Unbound is to

internaiize and humanize the regenerative process. Hoagwood

asserts that Shelley "inverts the religions of Aeschylus, Dante, and

Milton only to conven theology to the metaphysics of mind" ( 133).25

Indeed, in Shelley's estimation, humanity needs to liberate itself

from the control of supposed deities by the exercise of human

faculties, foremost of which is love. Shelley reverses the Miltonic

hierarchy which places Cod above man by claiming that man is

potentially a god in his own right. As Webb puts it, Shelley "sees

Promethean man as his own god and his own ruler" (153).

Shelley claims in the preface to Prometheus LInbound that his

Prometheus is most like Milton's Satan, though "more poetical" and

2SAlso see Lucy Newlyn, Paradise Lost and rhe Romantic Reader(0xford: Clarendon, 1 993 ) . Newlyn argues tha t Promerheus Un bound is Shelley's 'kttempt to reviae Milton's inadquate conception of the redemptive process. dong lines that are considerably more favorable to human potential" (148).

"exempt from the raint of ambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for

personal aggrandizement" (98 1 ). Prometheus is not Satan though he

possesses some of the same quaiities as the fallen archangel. Linda

M. Lewis remarks that Shelley's Prometheus is rather a combination

figure who incorporates "not only the grandeur of Satan, but the

remorse of fallen Adam and, especially, the sublimeness of perfect

self-knowledge of the crucified Christ enduring pain for the welfare

of humanity." Lewis furthemore notes that Shelley's Jupiter " speaks

with the authority of Cod and the fallen Lucifer, the power of heaven

and hell" ( 157-8). In Prometheus Unbound, therefore, Shelley

collapses Miltonic boundaries between authority and servility, good

and evil, as well as inverting Miltonic hierarchies between reason

and imagination, god and man. What 1 hope to show in the section

that Follows is chat Shelley's breaking of boundaries and disrnantling

of hierarchies in the poem forms part of a larger grotesque aesthetic

in tended to construct revolutionary new rneanings from inherited

texts, and principally from Paradise Lost.

Prometheus Un bound, the Grotesque, and Revol ution

The Defence of Poeiry again provides insigh t in to Shelley's

artistic method in Prometheus Unbound by offering an account of the

poet as an emancipator of the human senses. Poetic liberation,

according to Shelley, requires a defamiliarization of conditioned

sensory responses: "Poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be

subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions" ( 108 5 1.

(Notably, in Prometheus Unbound, it is Prometheus' own curse to

Jupiter which holds hirn in thrall and it is his reclamation of the

curse that sets in motion the progress of revolution). Shelley further

remarks in the Defence that poetry "purges from our inward sight

the film of farniliarity" ( 1085). As Prometheus ü'nbound vividly

dramatizes, freedorn and renewal require a radical alteration of sight;

the eye, in other words, which is confused and disoriented at the

sight of "the half-fomed, the perplexed, and the suggestively

monstroustl (2S8), in Santayana's version of the grotesque, is k ing

reconditioned so as to allow for the activation of a revolutionary

impulse: a poetics which "creates anew the universe," as Shelley says

in his Defence, must appeal to the senses as they are defamiliarized

(1085).

Shelley's commingiing of generic forms in Prometheus Unbound

is an important aspect of this rnethod of defamiliarization. Described

by Shelley as "A Lyrical Drama," the work is a hybrid of artistic

forms. The denornination locates a tension between the demands of

dramatic representation, in w hich charac ter and event are

externaiized, and the demands of lyricism, in which character and

event are intemalized within the pet 's imagination. On the one

hand, Prometheus Un bound features visible and autonomous

characters, while on the other hand, its events are set in motion by

mere shadows and voices (Leighton 76). The text is furthermore

interfused with elements of epic (the descent into the undenvorld),

tragedy (Jupiter's fall from power), romance (the love benveen

Prometheus and Asia), pastoral (the celebration of a natural order in

Act 4), and numerous other genres. This method of sampling

effectively collapses boundaries of artistic expression. To the extent

that artistic categories are familiar, the text is a rnonstrosity for its

confusion and distortion of form.

Shelley's exposition of "character" in Prometheus Unbound

furthermore undermines the dramatic conventions with which his

audience would be familiar. The tex's Dramatis Personae (what does

one cal1 them?) teeter precariously between States of form and

forrnlessness, being and non-being. In this respect they de@ sense

perception. Demagorgon, for example, is describeci as "shapeless;

neither limb, / Nor form, nor outline" (2.4.6-7), and the Phantasm of

Jupiter is "A shape" (1.226), a "frai1 and empty phantorn" ( 1.241),

and a "Tremendous Image" (1.24G); Jupiter's messenger, Mercury. is

inmduced to the reader as follows:

Trampling the slant winds on high

With golden-sandalled feet, that glow

Under plumes of purple dye,

Like rose-ensanguined ivory,

A Shape cornes now,

Stretching on high From his right hand

A serpent-cinctured wand. ( 1.3 1 8-24)

Mercury's being is amorphous, and so the imagination must bring

order to bear, and so appeals to Homer. to Aeschylus, to Milton

perhaps, as possible avenues of reference. Yet as we make this

necessary cross-germination with other texts, Shelley is subtly

exposing our conditioned responses to art. The reader, in effect,

@ compensatesforwhatislacking,attemptstofilltheimaginativevoid

with precisely the cultural artifacts that Shelley is trying to rework

Other figures in the text, however, leave the mind floundering

helplessly for a point of reference. There is no means by which the

mind may conceptualize "The Earth" and "The Ocean" as dramatic

characters: they simply exceed the boundaries of sense. Likewise,

the jwtaposition of a character of human dimensions, like Hercules,

with a figure of undefinable limits, like the Earth, creates a sense of

grotesque disproportion. Philip Thomson's formulation of the

grotesque as "the unresolved clash of incompatibles" (27) is

particuiarly fitting. Again, Prometheus Un bound proves to be a work

which is constantly operating on the margins of dramatic possibility.

Sheliey also deviates radicaily from dramatic convention in

@ Prometheus llnbound in his manipulation of character autonorny, in

which distinctions between characters become blurred. Most

obviously, Jupiter may be seen as a component of hometheus'

character. As Prometheus pronounces in his opening speech "1 hate

no more," Jupiter, that hateful part of himself, loses hold of al1 power.

While no longer a part of Prometheus, Jupiter ceases to exist, and

" becornesu a "void annihilation" (4.3 54). Jupiter's immateriality again

underlines the tension in the poem between extemal and interna1

representation. Also, that Prometheus, the apparent revolutionary

hero of the poem, and Jupiter, the supposed tyrannical villain, are

each components of the other, emphasizes one important respect in

which Shelley is reworking his source material. As Newlyn argues,

"Redemption is made possible in Prometheus Unbound. . . by a

cancelling of the binary systern of moral polarities which has k e n

authorized by the Bible and perpetuated in Paradise Losr' ( 150). Our

understanding of character in Prometheus Unbound, therefore, is

never stable, but rather stranded in what Harpham has generally

called the "liminal" phase of the grotesque, wherein "images appear

to have an impossible split reference, and multiple forms inhabit a

single image" ( 1 3 ) . Let us explore the play's pervasive ambiguity from yet another

angle. We are at times led to believe that the play takes place solely

within the mind of Prometheus, the great creator; the play's

characters, from this perspective, are mere shadows which flit across

the creator's imagination. Thus at the outset, Prometheus larnents

that while he is bound to the mountain "shapeless sights corne

wandering by, / The ghastly people of the realm of dream, / Mocking

me" (1.36-8). Yer, at other moments, the world at large threatens to

leave its mark upon Prometheus, to have its way in shaping his

maiieable form. As the Furies approach in Act 1, Prometheus says:

Never yet there came

Phantasms so fou1 through monster-teeming Hel1

From the di-miscreative brain of Jove;

Whilst I behold such execrable shapes,

Methinks I grow like what I contemplate,

And laugh and stare in loathsome sympathy. ( 1.446-5 1 )

In this scene it is the mind o f Jove which seems capable of

O imprinting its image upon Prometheus. Where exactly creative

agency resides seems an open question in the play.

I t is Demagorgon who turns the tide of battle for the

revolutionary cause, and who has the climactic speech in the play,

yet he is mediated through the imagination of A s i a She must, in

effect, create him out of vacancy, or see within his " mighty darkness"

the "living spirit" invisible to the naked eye (2.4.3-7). In going in

search of the mysterious spell of Demagorgon, Asia is in search of her

own lang uage and imaginative powers. The " voice unspoken"

assigned to Demagorgon is in fact her own (2.1 13 1; kighton 9G).

Dernagorgon is a projection of Asia's creative capacity to imagine

with hope the possibility of revolutionary change.

It would seem, then, that it is Asia who exerts the creative

impetus in the play. Yet at the close of Act 1, Panthea reminds

Prometheus of exiled Asia and of " her transforming presence, which

would fade / If it were rningled nor with chine" (1.83 2-31. Asia's

very materiality seems in this passage to be contingent upon her

interfusion with Prometheus. The two figures are inseparable

aspects of each other. The insubstantiality of "character," in the

dramatic sense of the word, is again emphasized in Act 2, when

Panthea visits Asia and describes the change she has undergone with

Prometheus:

I saw not, heard not, moved not, only felt

His presence flow and mingle through my blood

Till it became his life, and his grew mine,

And 1 was thus absorbed, until it passed,

And like the vapours when the Sun sinks down,

My being was condensed. (2.79-86)

Asia, too, ultimately sees the presence of Prometheus in Panthea's

eyes (2.1.1 20). Is Panthea an autonomous character or rather a

manifestation, or component, of Prometheus? The play is cons tantly

demanding that we ask such a question, without ever providing an

answer. The forms which characters assume, and their relative

autonomy within chose forms, are always provisional; characters

interact within a state of constant flux - they fuse, bifurcate, are

created and dissolved -- at the discretion of no one clearly defined

governing creative agent. In Prome theus Un bo und, characters and

their forms are imperfectly perceived because the boundaries which

are required for differentiation, and thus orientation, are obscured or

aitogetherlacking. Thiskindofindeferrninacyis,aswehaveseen,a

defming feature of grotesque art, wherein nothing may be grasped as

a coherent whole. The use of a grotesque aesthetic is g e q n to

Shelley's main purpose in the work, which is to challenge the

reader's comfonable assumptions about art, and thus to stimulate

new imaginative possibilities necessary for redemptive change.

S patiaiity and temporality are likewise affectecl by

indeterrninacy in the play. As in "Mont Blanc," Prometheus Unbound

reveals an aesthetic of undefmed, incalculable space and time.

Hegel's perspective upon syrnbolic art as it assumes grotesque

proportions is again pertinent:

The particular form of sense, which is taken to express

not itself and its own characteristic meaning as a fact of

external existence, but a universal significance which lies

outside it, fails to satisQ the imagination until it has been

torn out of itself into vastness which knows no measure

or limit. This is the cause of al1 that extravagant

exaggeration of sue, not merely in the case of spatial

dimension, but also of measurelessness of time-du rations

. . . . (53-4)

Prometheus Unbound is clearly a play which strives toward

universafity through a dislocation of space and time. The mountain

to which Prometheus is bound is described as "Black, wintry, dead,

unmeasured; without herb, / Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of

life" ( 1.2 1-3). There is nothing here to which the senses may grab

hold. Sirnilarly, the action of the play would seem to defy constraints

of time. Prometheus sees his term of punishment as the passage of

"wingless, crawling hours," ( 1.48) and Asia cornplains: "How like

death-worms the wingless moments crawl!" (2.1.1 G ) . Time, like

space, impresses itself upon the imagination of the reader for the

very reason that it is lacking; just as it is the invisible peak of Mont

Blanc where one may tap into the mountainrs revolutionary power.

As a drarna, however, Prometheus Un bound may no t express

an aesthetics of negation without a mitigating presence. Drama

requires at least a minimalist plane of referentiality, otherwise it

ceases to be drama and becomes something altogether differen t. such

as lyricism. Prometheus Un bound may not. as a drama, escape

entirely what Hegel calls the " fact of external existence." I t is a work.

rather, which plays in the margins of externaiity and interndity,

referentiality and su blimity. For instance, while Prometheus'

mountain is imponderable for i ts desolation and boundlessness, it is

yet, in the stage directions to Act 1, located with geographical

precision in the "Indian Caucasus." Shelley well knows that it is

necessary to orient the reader before disorientation rnay follow. In

Shelley's view, however, as expressed in the Defence, poetry serves

ultimately, and at its highest level, to reorient sensibility and

consciousness: "It mates anew the universe, after it has been

annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted

by reiteration" (1085).

It is useful to consider the relevance of this statement to

Prometheus Unbound in terms of Shelley's use of language, and

especially dialog ical language. Throug h its corn plex and O ften

confusing interplay of dramatic voices, the play forges its own

unique method of communication on two leveis: between characters

in the play, and between poet and reader (while there is furthermore

an implied relationship between the reader and society). At each

level, the challenge lies in finding a suitably revolutionary voice.

And just as Sheliey found the renovated world to depend upon a

defamiliarization of form and shape, so does it depend upon an

overall scheme of h g uistic des tabilization. Shelley appears

especially modern to us as a writer who deviously challenges the

readerrs comfonable relationship with language - which is also the

kind of disruption and confusion we properly associate with the

grotesque in Literature. Importantly, an incomprehensible babbie of

voices would accornplish no thing. Shelley mus t find a regenerative

voice on the boundaries of sense and communication, on the "margins

of consciousness." It is only by successfully performing this

balancing act that new imaginative (and by extension social) spaces

may be accessed.

Throughout Prometheus Unbound the great difficulty of

communication and linguistic coherence is emphasized. In fact, the

play's two pivotal episodes - Prometheus' reclamation of his curse

and Asia's conference with Demagorgon - are fundamentally related

to the problem of finding a communicable voice. Prometheus needs

to recall his curse - his own misspoken voice - in order to be free

and to liberate the world. Yet he is unable to commune with the

non-sentient powers with which he is surrounded. Prometheus as ks

that his curse be repeated by the Mountains, Springs, Air, and

Whirlwinds of Earth, and she responds: a The tongueless caverns of the craggy hills

Cried, "Misery!" then; the hoUow Heaven replied,

" Misery!" And the Ocean's purple waves,

Climbing the land, howled to the lashing winds,

And the pale nations heard it, " Misery!" ( 1.108- 1 1 )

Sheliey has nature capable of thought and feeling, yet its manner of

expression is "tongueless," mute and senseless to the ears of

Prometheus. This breach of language and communication is indicated

by Prometheus' response to what he has heard: "1 heard a sound of

voices: not the voice / Which 1 gave forth" ( 1.1 12- 13 ). The voices

carry no meanhg for Prometheus, but are hollow and inarticulate.

Yet Prometheus persists with his questions, until the earth

responds "How can thou hear / Who knowest not the language of the

dead?" (1.136-7). Promerheus may not be answered in any language

he will understand. What we have is a distortion of dramatic

dialogue in which the principal actors are uninteiligible to one

another.26 As in "Mont Blanc" the question is raised whether nature

has a voice communicable to hurnanity. it is a question, in fact,

which confronts one of the central tenets of Romantic philosophy -

humanity's organic union with nature. The answer lies in shifting

the onus of inteliigibility from the external voice to the lisrener's

interna1 imaginative receptivity (Leighton 80). Prometheus' own

auditory perception is dislocated from its surrounding impressions so

it may be relocated internally. Prometheus hears a whisper, which is

describeci evocatively as "scarce like sound: it tingles through the

frame / As lightning tingles, hovering ere it strike" ( 1.133-4). The

breach of language is bridged by Prometheus himself, who attends to

the voice of his own inspiration (Leighton 81). He is then capable of

hearing his own curse, which once revoked, activates a revolutionary

impulse.

Yet there remain further linguistic barriers to be overcome

before revolu tion may be fuily realized. Asia's intercourse with

Demagorgon again involves a reformulation of language. Like the

curse in Act 1, Demagorgon hoards a treasured spell which needs to

2 G ~ u c h of mentieth century theater is preoccupied with explorîng the problems of communication which Shelley's play foregrounds. This is one reason that Prometheus Linbound, despite itr clasrical source and high Romantic lyrical style, seems to us today such a "modern" play.

be reclaimed. Asia and Demagorgon engage in a dialogical duel

which creates a lacunae of meaning. The dialogue amounts to a

turning back of every interrogation on the asker. Demagorgon, as we

have already noted, is given form only by virtue of Asiars questions.

Isabel Armstrong, in her essay "Shelley's Perplexity," astutely

observes, however, that by "being given form by the questions, he

gives them fonn, returning them upon themselves, externalizing

them and enabling a recognition which is the growing point of al1

thought" ( 100). Language in this instance, in direct contrast to the

exchange between Prometheus and W h , is repossessed through its

externalization: the revolutionary voice requires bo th lyricism and

drama. In order to obtain the anmers she requires, Asia must probe

the mystery of Demagorgon's imagelessness. This is a process of self- @ discovery through which verbalking gives form to imagelessness and

creates the possibility of further form which in turn depends upon

the opening up of new spaces (Armstrong 102). Asia's earlier

statement that "speech created thoughttt (2.4.72) is therefore

poignantly exemplified.

S hefley's manipulation and "de- formation" of ianguage is

furthemore demonstrated in Prome theus Un bound through the use

of paradox Paradox, as Armstrong no tes, "enables negation, and

ammation, creation and deniai, to be experienced simultaneouslyt'

(104). I t is a language construct which plays on the margins of

meaning. Paradox is closely aligned with our understanding of that

which is grotesque, as it accommodates a shift of vision. The

a language of paradox flickers between negation and assertion, yet in

its oscillation, as Armstrong points out, new meanings are discovered.

With each entry into "vacancy," as it were, paradox re-emerges in a

new form as a means of constructing experience ( 104). What

Harpham has said of the grotesque in general is especially true of the

grotesque as it approaches paradox: "The ambivalent presence of

rneaning within an ostensibly meaningless fom cons titu tes the real

threat, and the real revolution, of grottesche" (3 1).

Prometheus Unbound is a work governed by paradox

Demagorgon, of course, is essentially a paradoxical figure as he

coexists as a presence and as an absence. Asia, too, is represented in

Song by the "Voice in the Air" in paradoxical terms:

Life of Life: thy lips enkindle

With their love the breath between them;

And thy smiles before they dwindle

Make the cold air fire.

. * . . * . . . . . * f . . . . . . . .

Lamp of Earth! whereter thou movest

Its dim shapes are clad with brightness . . . . (2.5.58-67)

Paradox, like the grotesque, designates a condition of being just out

of focus, just beyond the reach of language or full comprehension.

Perception is never Rxed or sure, and so begins the process of

discovery through which an emergent reality may be forged.

Prometheus Unbound represencs Shelley's most comprehensive

and powerful assertion of humanity's capacity to achieve freedom

and regeneration, which, we find, the play promotes by engaging the

revolutionary power of a grotesque aesthetic. The grotesque is

integral to Shelley's purpose in the challenge it poses to notions of

rationalism and hierarchical order that, in the pet's view, are

inseparable from tyranny and hurnan bondage. The grotesque also

ailows Shelley to explode narrative expectations and ordinary

sensory cues, to destabilize and defamiliarize conventions of

language, shape, and fom; it was Shelley's hope in Prometheus

llnbound that through the transformation of categories of thought

and sense, new categories would be accessible. In this way, the

deliberate deforming of the world becomes an essential step in the

process of reforming it.

Conclusion

Milton, as we have seen, views revolution as a necessary step

to end tyrannical rule. The tyrant is guided by base passions and so

is unsuited to hold power. The legitimate ruler, on the other hand,

govems according to the dictates of right reason. In Paradise Lost,

Milton argues that God' s sovereignty is just because Cod rules in

accordance with divine reason and order. Cod's hierarchy is perfect

and inviolable, his kingdom a domain of rationality and order. In

this light, Milton shows Satan's and Adam and Eve's revolutions

against God to be unjust, the outcome of the passionate will

overcoming the divine rational will. Revolution in Paradise Los&

therefore, springs from the relinquishment (for with reason cornes

choice) of the divine image, which is the rational and the virtuous

part of God's highest mations. The loss of the divine image in fallen

angel and faen humanity is given visual and symbolic resonance

through the grotesque, which serves as an analogue of irrationality,

spiritual corruption, and alienation from God in the wake of

revolution. Examination of the grotesque in Paradise Lost clarifies

the grounds of Milton's political, as well as religious, points of view;

the Miltonic grotesque is unmistakably pejorative because the

revolutionary impulse with which the grotesque is so often

associated derives from a disregard for justice and proper limits.

Comparing Shelley's use of the grotesque with Milton's. we

more fully understand the extent to which the Romantic poet is

revising his predecessor, and the ways in which that revision is

conceptualized in art. The grotesque, we End, is the dominant mode

of artistic expression in Prometheus Unboond, and in its pervasive

opposition to rationality and order, effectively breaks down the

boundaries and overturns the hierarchies upon which Milton's

political and religious world view is grounded. Since Milton had been

the artistic and moral standard by which poets had measured

themselves for a century and a half, Shelley's reworking of the great

poet in Prometheus llnbound is a bold and radical poetic act. Shelley

seizes the fire of revolution in Promethean style by defamiliarizing

the known world and by calling into question standards of

normativity. His project will not allow of Limits, Miltonic or

otherwise, for what Shelley sets out to accomplish in Prometheus

llnbound is nothing less than the reinvention of the world.

What is often striking to the modern reader is the extent to

which the Romantics - and perhaps most of aU Shelley - believe in

the feasibility of revolution and the attainability of human

perfection. The great hopes initiated by Romanticism had by the

middle of the nineteenth century turned to dejection and

disillusionment. The experience of the brutish and unprecedented

savagery of world wars and political revolutions in this century has

further resulted in the demise of the idea of progress itself. In his

essay ""The Poe try of Barbarism," San tayana disconsolately remarks

that the twentieth century has witnessed a "long comedy of modem

social revolutions, so illusory in their aims and so productive in their

aimlessness" ( 149). It is not surprising, therefore, that modern art

should be so preoccupied with plumbing the depths of human

despondency, desperation, and impotence. Indeed, rnany of the most

powerful works of this century have explored increasingly bizarre

and immoderate topics of exorbitancy, violence. insanity, and

gro tesquerie.

What modern art so often responds to is the pervasive feeling

that life in the twentieth century may not be grasped coherently or

as a meaningful totality of experience; that instead modern life is

terrifyingly fragmented, or that the distinctions which had hitherto

provided Life with order, structure, and meaning have disappeared.

Within the theater of the absurd and the novels of black humor, for

instance, there is an attemp t to make sense of the modern

predicarnent by collapsing the boundary between laughter and tears.

Thomas Mann has remarked: "1 feel that, broadly and essentially, the

suiking feature of modern art is that it has ceased to recognize the

categorks of tragic and cornic, or the dramatic classifications, tragedy

and comedy. I t sees life as tragicomedy, with the result that the

grotesque is i ts mos t genuine style" (24 1 ) . Is there then any sense in which we may view the modern

grotesque in Sheiieian terms as an access to human emancipation?

Most observers do not think so. John R Clark writes: "Like the

romantics, we still caU for revolution, imagination, extremity, but

unlike them our manner is no longer exalted, earnest, serious, holy;

instead, we provoke the paroxysm of hopeless laughter and

desperate, unnaturai comedy" ( 1 3 ). The modem sensibility -- perhaps most poignantly captured by Kafka -- views the world at

large as unfathomable and forbidding. The world is too big and

a complicated even to understand, let aione to budge. The modern

grotesque, therefore, is characteris tically turned inward, exploring

the fears, guilts, and aberrations of tortureci psychic lives. As

Bernard Mc Elroy notes: "Not supernatural demons or devouring

chimeras, but exterml powerlessness and psychic dissoktiop are the

fears with which the modern grotesque plays, and that is the most

modern thing about it" (22).

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