Volume 27, Number 11 · June 26, 1980
One Man's Milton
By Robert M. Adams
Poet of Exile: A Study of Milton's Poetry
by Louis L. Martz
Yale University Press, 356 pp., $22.50
An appreciation of Milton, Mark Pattison said, is the last reward of consummated scholarship. The remark, with its remote echoes of the proverb 'See Naples and die,' was made about a hundred years ago, when commentary on the poet might well have been housed in the six good-sized rooms that the younger Scaliger thought sufficient for a proper humanist library. Now that works of explication, criticism, biography, textual analysis, background information, and introductory explanation have multiplied beyond all calculations, what Pattison said is more true than ever. What sort of general three-hundred-page book can one write about Milton's poetic achievement when the pile of commentary is already so thick?
Review, 2960 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |