Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: This article proposes that a number of mysterious figures in Milton's writing can best be understood as "quasi-persons," entities that occupy an ontological space on a spectrum between full literal personhood and symbolic metaphorical personification. 1 As will be explored more fully below, Milton writes in De Doctrina Christiana that the female figure of Wisdom (Sapientia) in the Book of Proverbs is presented "quasi personam" (as if a person) in the manner of poetry ("more poetico") (OCW 8: 284), and it is possible to translate Milton's Latin here as saying that Wisdom in Proverbs is a "quasi-person."Lady Wisdom is a key example of the category of "quasi-persons" in Milton's work but not the only one.Rather, she provides a gateway into an approach to Milton's fluid ontology of personhood that offers fresh insight into his heterodox understanding of the Son and the Spirit, the fluid identity of his muses in Paradise Lost, and the status of his Sin and Death.In the context of early modern literary studies, such an ontological spectrum has recently been posited by Henry Turner.Turner distinguishes between personation as "the mimetic representation of human beings and anything to which a quality of 'personhood' may be attributed" and personification as "the mimetic representation of an abstract idea in figural form" (473). 2 Yet the distinction between these two categories is not absolute for Turner: "When a personation or personality becomes exemplary in some way-the more its psychological or historical particularity is inflated by a general principle that applies across circumstances and occasions-the more it can be said to approach personification" (474).Turner thus implies a spectrum between the realistic mimetic representation of individual persons and the figurative representation of symbolic personifications.However, in his schema, this spectrum of degrees of personhood primarily relates to fictional characters in a literary universe.In the context of Milton's monist cosmology, however, 3 this ontological fluidity is objectively true of the cosmos, one inspired and infused with the flow of divine personality.In his monist universe, all beings other than God the Father emanate from the spiritual-material substance of God, and thus all persons other than the Father are arguably temporary and contingent forms of the divine intelligence.I take the lead here from an observation made by Marshall Grossman in the context of dealing with anxieties around the presence of Chaos in Paradise Lost as a form of existence that appears to predate God's creation of the cosmos and rival God's eternity: It might indeed be comforting to say that, as surely as Keats knew urns do not talk, Milton knew that pre-existence had no shape, color, or gender, and that to question the figures of Chaos and Night would be a naive failure to grasp the conventions of language.Working against this comforting supposition, however, is the fact that Milton's metaphors characteristically trail ontological residues.
Source: Milton Quarterly
DOI: 10.1111/milt.12496
Author: David Parry
Institution: University of Exeter
Language: English
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,760
OpenAlex ID: W4403340575