Disability, Theories of Vision, and Milton's Poetry William John Silverman Jr

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2011 Seeing While Blind: Disability, Theories of Vision, and Milton's Poetry William John Silverman Jr.

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COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

SEEING WHILE BLIND: DISABILITY, THEORIES OF VISION, AND MILTON’S POETRY

WILLIAM JOHN SILVERMAN, JR.

A dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2011

The members of the committee approve the dissertation of William John Silverman, Jr. defended on March 3, 2011.

______Bruce Boehrer Professor Directing Dissertation

______Martin Kavka University Representative

______Anne Coldiron Committee Member

______Elizabeth Spiller Committee Member

Approved:

______Ralph Berry, Chair, Department of English

______Joseph Travis, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members.

For Leah Marie, John, and Wesley, who put up

with my absences while I pursued a dream.

Let’s spend some time together.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank God for the talent, drive, and strength that have enabled me to complete such a vigorous course of study. I must also thank my family, whose unwavering support has carried me through some of the darkest hours. Finally, I wish to thank everyone else who has made the completion of this work possible—I mean the completion of my degree, from course work, to preliminary exams, to the dissertation. Thank you, Bruce Boehrer, Anne Coldiron, Elizabeth Spiller, and Martin Kavka for your time and dedication in molding me into a better scholar and teacher. Your extensive knowledge of the material and subject matter and guidance were invaluable to the successful completion of my preliminary exams and dissertation. Thank you, Bruce Boehrer, for your understanding, ever-available advice, and for your diligence in helping me strengthen my mechanics. Thank you, Anne Coldiron, for keeping me on my toes and always thinking. Thank you, Elizabeth Spiller, for your suggestions that sharpened the focus of my argument. Thank you, Martin Kavka, for your insightful suggestions about organization and additional reading materials. Thank you to my colleagues and fellow graduate students who often took the time to act as a sounding board when I needed to hear myself talk. I would especially like to thank Brent Griffin and Kevin Carr. Press forward and fight on, gentlemen.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ...... vii INTRODUCTION: THE DILEMMA OF A BLIND POET...... 1

1. CHAPTER ONE: THE EYE AND HOW TO USE IT ...... 9 1.1 Galen ...... 14 1.2 Metaphysical Foundations of Vision in the West ...... 22 1.3 Islamic Medicine ...... 25 1.4 The Later Middle Ages ...... 27 1.5 Anatomy and Visual Theories of the Renaissance ...... 27 1.6 Mechanization of Sight ...... 31 1.7 Medicine and “Physick” of the Renaissance ...... 35 1.8 Milton’s Vision ...... 38

2. VISIONS OF BLINDNESS ...... 42 2.1 Disability Theory ...... 44 2.2 Blindness in Ancient Greece ...... 45 2.3 Disability and Blindness in the Biblical World ...... 55 2.4 The Middle Ages: Punishment, Compassion, Contempt, and the Comical ...... 59 2.5 Blindness in the Age of Milton ...... 64

3. BLINDNESS OF VISION: DISABLING THE EYE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ...... 74 3.1 Scepticism ...... 75 3.2 Body Image ...... 77 3.3 Optics ...... 79 3.3.1 Telescope and Microscope ...... 80 3.4 Robert Hooke ...... 83 3.5 Margaret Cavendish ...... 85 3.6 Milton and Experimental Philosophy ...... 88

4. MILTON’S EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE SENSES AND EVE’S FORTUNATE FALL ...... 105 4.1 The “Pemptarchie” of the Senses ...... 108 4.2 The Physiology of Sense and Knowledge ...... 113 4.3 Eve’s Fortunate Fall ...... 120

5. MILTON’S CHAOS, ORGANIZED: EMBODIMENT IN THE POETICS OF A BLIND MAN ...... 133 5.1 Embodiment ...... 134 5.2 Chaos Without ...... 138

5.3 Chaos Within ...... 143 5.3.1 Physiological ...... 143 5.3.2 Spiritual ...... 148 5.4 As Milton’s world Seems...... 149 5.4.1 Seemings of Sight ...... 150 5.4.2 Seemings of Sound ...... 153 4.3 Eve’s Fortunate Fall ...... 120 CONCLUSION: ON TO SAMSON AGONISTES ...... 159

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 163 Primary Sources ...... 163 Secondary Sources ...... 165 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 172

ABSTRACT

Seeing while Blind: Disability, Theories of Vision, and Milton’s Poetry demonstrates that Milton used his blindness as a literary trope to represent blindness and vision in his poetry. It also addresses how blindness affected the way Milton saw the world through his poetry. Milton invested a scientific interest in his blindness, as evidenced by his letters to Philaras. That Blindness had an impact on Milton’s poetry is a given that many readers take for granted. Many scholars have addressed the impact Milton’s blindness had on his poetry, and a few have even attempted to retroactively diagnose Milton’s condition, but some of the best work has situated Milton’s blindness in a cultural context. When Milton started to lose his sight, and realized how much he relied on sight as a poet, he likely realized the importance of advances in natural philosophy, and especially in “physick.” Therefore Milton pursued all medical avenues available to him in an effort to save his sight. Milton’s obsession to stave off blindness split him between the way he saw himself as a poet and the way he saw himself as a Christian. Milton identifies specific developments in natural philosophy and medicine that relate to one’s ability to see. This shows the poet’s interest in human endeavors to improve the fallen body and seek new ways to acquire the “wisdom at one entrance quite shut” (PL III.50). At the same time, Milton’s blind personas and characters often simultaneously lament blindness and rejoice in the divine guidance it solicits. Milton never seems able to reconcile this dichotomy, but it reveals more nuances in meaning as well as the greater influence experimental philosophy had on his poetry. As readers a few hundred years removed from the age of Milton, we cannot experience the world the way he did. Our senses are cut off from his experiences. However, through careful research and analysis, we can reconstruct Milton’s world. Though we have a much greater understanding of the way the body functions today, Milton’s world viewed the functions of the body through a different criterion. Milton still negotiates his world through other senses, which he uses to create new worlds and which he uses to access a wisdom not shut out by his blindness. Through his efforts, Milton creates a new way to see the world poetically.

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INTRODUCTION THE DILEMMA OF A BLIND POET

This study focuses on the works of John Milton, his treatment of blindness, and how his own blindness affected him and his work. Despite Milton’s enemies’ claims that his blindness was a punishment from God, the developing natural philosophy of Milton’s age begins to demystify blindness, a disability that some in ancient Greece had granted supernatural properties. Milton, too, looked at his blindness more practically, investing a scientific interest in his condition, as evidenced by his letters to Philaras. In his poetry Milton often applies “scientific” terminology to his blindness, though he sometimes appropriates that terminology for spiritual purposes, as he does with euphrasy and rue in Paradise Lost, Book XI. Throughout the course of this study, I juxtapose Milton’s spiritual approaches to blindness with his scientific and physiological approaches, which show that for Milton blindness was not a disability but an opportunity to see through other eyes, spiritual and the eyes of the mind, and also to see through the other senses. That Blindness had an impact on Milton’s poetry is a given that many readers take for granted. Many scholars have addressed the impact Milton’s blindness had on his poetry. From Eleanor Gertrude Brown and Marjorie Hope Nicolson to William Kerrigan and the most recent of scholars, such as Jennifer Sherman Roberts, critics have discussed the issues of Milton’s blindness to some degree. A few critics have even attempted to retroactively diagnose Milton’s condition, but some of the best work has situated Milton’s blindness in a cultural context.1 I take the argument further. Even though he wrote poetry, which often relies heavily on sight, Milton likely took his sight (as well as his other senses) for granted. We can find evidence of this in Milton’s early poetry. For example, we read in Milton’s Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle of the dangers of giving into fleshly appetites. Those appetites seek for their fill through a stimulation of the senses. In Milton’s Mask, sight stimulates lust and taste (or touch) becomes the fulfillment of

1 See Arnold Sorsby’s “On the Nature of Milton’s Blindness,” The British Journal of Ophthalmology (July 1930) and William Kerrigan’s Sacred Complex, respectively.

that sinful action. For example, Comus’s temptation of the Lady appeals to the eye and encompasses all the senses, but often returns to taste: Beauty is Nature’s coin, must not be hoarded, But must be current, and the good thereof Consists in mutual and partaken bliss ………………………………………… Beauty is Nature’s brag, and must be shown In courts, as feasts, and high solemnities Where most may wonder at the workmanship[.] (738-46) And Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth, With such a full and withdrawing hand, Covering the earth with odours, fruits, and flocks, Thronging the sea with spawn innumerable, But all to please, and sate the curious taste? (709-13) Advances in natural philosophy hold no ground in Milton’s Mask, where strength to overcome the weakness of the flesh comes from obedience. By the spirit, Thyrsis, or by the angels that protect the Lady, for example, we can see truth just as Lady sees through Comus’s lies. Milton’s later poetry shows a shift in the way he views the senses. I argue that Milton infused his late poetry with theories of vision (those ancient and contemporary to him) as a result of his relentless pursuit to preserve his eyesight and eventually forestall or cure his blindness. When Milton started to lose his sight, and realized how much he relied on sight as a poet, he likely realized the importance of advances in natural philosophy, and especially in “physick.” Therefore Milton pursued all medical avenues available to him in an effort to save his sight. Milton’s obsession to stave off blindness split him between the way he saw himself as a poet and the way he saw himself as a Christian. In other words, optics and theories of vision matter to Milton as a poet but not as a Christian. Throughout his later poetry, Milton identifies specific developments in natural philosophy and medicine that relate to one’s ability to see. This shows the poet’s interest in human endeavors to improve the fallen body and seek new ways to acquire the “wisdom at one entrance quite shut” (PL III.50). Poetry is, after all, a form of artifice as many viewed scientific instruments to be. At the same time, Milton’s blind personas and

characters often simultaneously lament blindness and rejoice in the divine guidance it solicits. Milton never seems able to reconcile this dichotomy, but it reveals more nuances in meaning as well as the greater influence experimental philosophy had on his poetry. As readers a few hundred years removed from the age of Milton, we cannot experience the world or life the way he or any other early-modern man or woman did. Our senses are cut off from their experiences; in essence, we are blind. We can never hope to experience the world the same way Milton experienced it. However, through careful research and analysis, we can reconstruct that world. Though we have a much greater understanding of the way the body functions today, Milton’s world viewed the functions of the body through a different criterion. Milton still negotiated his world through other senses, which he used to create new worlds and which he used to access a wisdom not shut out by his blindness—a wisdom that for Sidney lies in poetry. Through his efforts, Milton created a new way to see the world poetically, which made the blind Milton as observant as the seventeenth-century natural philosopher or natural historian. In the first two chapters I establish a foundation for the treatment of blindness medically and culturally in the Renaissance. In Chapter One I trace medical and philosophical traditions regarding vision and establish Milton’s concern with the physical aspects of vision and what being able to see means to him as a poet. I begin in ancient Greece and focus on theories of vision through the Middle Ages. A.C. Crombie’s work on the Atomists, David C. Lindberg’s Theories of Vision, David Park’s The Fire within the Eye, Nicholas J. Wade’s A Natural History of Vision, and Martin Jay’s Downcast Eyes, as well as various ancient texts in translation (Plato, Aristotle, etc.), provide most of the framework. On the medical side, I rely heavily on Margaret Tallmadge May’s translation of Galen’s On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, as well as the insightful commentary of Oswei Temkin’s Galenism and Rudolph E. Siegel’s Galen on Sense Perception. I was also fortunate to find, in translation, two key treatises on ophthalmology from the medieval Arab world that help show the transfer of ancient theories of vision into the early modern world via medieval natural philosophers such as Roger Bacon. This chapter establishes the medical history of the eye and vision in general with which Milton made himself familiar after he started to lose his sight. Chapter Two covers the same historical timeline as Chapter One but focuses on cultural representations of blindness as a disability. For Milton, the physical and cultural limitations

created by blindness give way to the spiritual side, which Milton resurrects from ancient Greek notions about the mystique that surrounded blindness. Eleftheria A. Bernidaki-Aldous’s Blindness in a Culture of Light and Herbert C. Covey’s Social Perceptions of People with Disabilities in History help establish the ancient Greek preoccupation with light as life. Milton mimics the importance placed on light throughout his late poetry, especially when using blindness as a literary trope. Nicole Kelley’s “Deformity and Disability in Greece and Rome,” Robert Garland’s The Eye of the Beholder, and Martha L. Rose’s The Staff of Oedipus: Transforming Disability in Ancient Greece helped me establish the tradition of disability in ancient Greece. Other western cultures through the Middle Ages built on the ancient Greek tradition. I, too, build on that tradition, with the help of Hector Avalos, Edward Wheatley’s Stumbling Blocks before the Blind, Edward Larrissy’s The Blind and Blindness in Literature of the Romantic Period, Zina Weygand’s The Blind in French Society from the Middle Ages to the Century of Louis Braille, Gabriel Farrell’s The Story of Blindness, William Paulson’s Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the Blind in France, and Moshe Barasch’s Blindness: The History of a Mental Image in Western Thought. Through these and other works I am able to construct a cultural foundation for the ambivalent treatment of blindness in Milton’s day, where his enemies use an outdated medieval model to try to discredit him. Milton, on the other hand, counters with a revived positive stereotype about his disability. Chapter Three continues to look at disability in general in seventeenth-century England. It addresses the scientific aspects of blindness and the general limitations of the eyes that many believed resulted from the Fall. Here, Milton finds himself more divided as he tries to reconcile advances in natural philosophy that aid learning with God’s role in providing knowledge spiritually. In other words, what can I learn from an imperfect instrument that God cannot show me himself or that I cannot learn from the reason with which God has blessed me? This chapter centers on the contemporary debate revolving around the human ability to overcome the Fall through artificial means. The idea championed by Francis Bacon finds its way into members of the young Royal Society, including Robert Hooke, who saw optical instruments as correctives for the human eye. Margaret Cavendish was opposed to the use of such instruments in acquiring truth. This debate was ongoing during Milton’s immediate work on his last great poems, especially Paradise Lost. Angelica Duran’s The Age of Milton and the Scientific Revolution, Karen Edwards’s Milton and the Natural World, Harinder Singh Marjara’s Contemplation of

Created Things, Stephen Fallon’s Milton among the Philosopher’s, and others lend special insight to Milton’s knowledge of natural and experimental philosophy in his day. Chapter Four takes a deeper look at the epistemological concerns that develop in Chapter Three. Here, I argue that Eve’s experimental approach to partaking the fruit provides a model, which Milton approved of, for acquiring knowledge. However, seeking knowledge comes with a warning. We cannot rely on the outward senses only. Man is “just and right / Sufficient to have stood” (Paradise Lost III.98-99)2 because of the rational sense, which makes choices based on the analysis of data gathered through the senses. Satan understands that he can successfully tempt Eve only if he can affect the way those senses collect data. Stanley Fish’s Surprised by Sin and Michael Schoenfeldt’s Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England lend much of the theoretical framework for this chapter. The final chapter brings the progression of these ideas into focus in a careful consideration of Milton’s poetics in Paradise Lost. This great epic, for Milton, demonstrates the power of the senses to reveal, create, acquire, and impart knowledge. I discuss how the blind Milton saw and how the Chaos the reader finds in the poem extends from the Chaos without to the chaos within Milton’s own mind that he must organize piecemeal, from memory and from data collected by his other senses, which allows him to present in the great visions of Paradise Lost the bodily experiences he collects from his other senses as unorganized matter. This is not to suggest that we can know the mind of the poet, but working backwards, we can learn more about the process Milton uses to create bodily experiences for his readers. By creating affect within his readers, Milton makes it possible for them to experience his sensations, to see what he “sees.” Bruce R. Smith’s work with historical phenomenology, especially his The Acoustic World of Early Modern England and The Key of Green proved indispensible for the theoretical approach in this chapter. The methodology or theoretical approach I use involves a threefold process. I rely heavily on cultural studies, which I ground in close readings of the primary texts. Disability studies, grounded in Lennard J. Davis’s work, helps to inform aspects of Milton the poet but also representations of the blind in his work and that of his predecessors. Finally, historical

2 All references to Paradise Lost come from Milton: Paradise Lost, Ed. Alastair Fowler, New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. All future references will be parenthetical, identified by book and line numbers, and sometimes further identified as PL.

5 phenomenology shows how Milton overcame his disability to provide bodily experiences for his readers. In other words, he embodies sensations created by the sights and sounds of his poetry. Throughout this study I employ several terms that need clarification. First, references to the senses in general, unless otherwise designated, will refer to the five physical senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting. The terms “vision,” “sight,” and “seeing” (unless otherwise designated) will all mean the physical act of perceiving an image with the eyes. Other occasions call for employment of the term “vision” as a sign or spiritual manifestation and further as a mental image, what Milton would have necessarily employed most often as a blind poet. In other words, such usage will follow the Augustinian distinction between “bodily,” “spiritual,” and “intellectual” vision as described in his commentary on Genesis. “Vision” in the context of the main title of Chapter Two also necessarily refers to representations or perceptions of blindness. Perception is also readily applied to all the senses, each capable of perceiving in its own vein or likeness: by sight, by sound, by smell, by touch, by taste. A troublesome term I employ throughout this study is “epistemology”: “The theory or science of the method or grounds of knowledge” (OED). I employ the term a little more broadly—though in a way still directly related to this definition—in order to facilitate continuity between the broad theories of knowledge acquisition I have encountered. One’s epistemology, for example, refers to that particular person’s specific belief about how he or she acquires knowledge or comes to “know” anything. Generally, I employ epistemology to mean a philosophy of knowledge acquisition and also the specific process by which said knowledge is attained. I also show the important epistemological role of the senses. Most specifically I discuss how by sight men and women come to know the physical, tangible world (other people, nature, specific phenomena as they happen, texts, etc.) and the intangible or abstract world (beauty and ugliness, for example), which is constructed by them or for them by others. The theories of vision discussed in this chapter emphasize light in at least one specific way. In the visual process, light manifests itself in one of two ways: from within or from without. For some theories light must come both from within and from without. The light from within is the fire in the eye, the visual ray, the visual spirits or pneuma, even the animal spirits, and sometimes the spiritual light, like the “celestial light” Milton invokes in Book III of Paradise Lost. Milton’s celestial light can help him to see in a greater capacity than any unaided physical act of seeing, and that light can even make him to see that which the physical eyes cannot see.

The light from without is any physical light, more particularly the sun. However, encounters with spiritual light from without are not unprecedented.3 Discussion of light leads to specialized terminology within the multitude of sources consulted. Specific terms include lux and lumen. I prefer Lindberg’s explanations of Roger Bacon’s use of both. Lux is the sun or “the luminous quality of the bright body” (Theories of Vision 124). Lumen is “the instrumental quality or species issuing from [lux]” (124) and “light … diffused through the whole world from the solar light” (113). I also employ lux as a referent to any “body” of light, and lumen as a referent to any light which emanates from that body. Augustine offers a taxonomy of light, differentiating between uncreated spiritual light and created physical light. The former, as Lindberg explains, is grounded in God as “the infinite uncreated light, the true light, and the source of all other light” (95). God gives his light to all men.4 This is Milton’s “celestial light,” making his belief synonymous with Augustine’s. “As John Pecham would later point out, Augustine held that ‘God is … light not figuratively, but properly’” (quoted in Lindberg 96). So God is light as the sun is light; and as the sun’s light emanates through the universe, so God emanates through the universe. Augustine’s God is “the archetypal light, and sensible light is the imitation” (96). Because God is the “uncreated,” primeval or preternatural light, “imitation” is the “created” light—light created by God as a type of his light. When coupled with Milton’s invocation of “light” to help him “see,” Augustine’s belief in the ability of light to help one see becomes all the more important epistemologically. For Augustine one must see in order to learn, spiritually and temporally. Augustine’s belief that Godly light is in all men is important to this study. God’s light is not something men and women can see, but by God’s light, they can see everything else, even “things invisible to mortal sight” (PL III.55). Another complicated term is the “soul.” This troublesome idea vexes the ancient, medieval, and early-modern worlds, and continues to be elusive in Milton’s own writings, especially when he makes clear steps toward monism. For many ancient and medieval philosophers and physicians, the soul controlled the senses. This is especially important in consideration of Augustine’s treatment of the soul and the body versus the flesh, where the Fall

3 Consider the light that blinds Saul on the road to Damascus in the New Testament. 4 Augustine bases his idea on Chapter One of the Gospel of John, where the light sent by God into the world “was truth, which illuminated all men that have come into this world.” From the Vulgate, John 1:6-9. Translation is mine. Augustine’s idea is more fully illuminated in De Civitate Dei X.ii and De Trinitate XIII.i.

of Man divides the soul, in a way, from the body and leaves the senses at the mercy of the flesh. To avoid confusion and to maintain consistency with those theories of the senses that give their control to the soul, “soul,” unless otherwise designated, refers to that vital substance within men and women that gives life and motion to the body and controls the senses. Although a lot of critics have addressed Milton’s blindness, of late it has been largely left alone, and many past studies have ignored the specifics concerned with Milton’s physical limitations and his own scientific approach to his blindness and how that is situated in his poetry. Some critics, like Barbara K. Lewalski, certainly have discussed how Milton’s blindness may have affected his ability to write poetry. Others, especially Joseph Wittreich, have discussed Milton’s spiritual focus, that insight or divine inspiration he believed God gave him “to justify the ways of God to men” (PL I.26) and “to see and tell / Of things invisible to mortal sight” (III.54-5) as compensation for his blindness. This study discusses more carefully the physical impact blindness had on the poet, how he continued to see physically as a poet (as he proclaims, despite his blindness, “yet not the more / Cease I to wander where the muses haunt” (III.26-7)), how it affected the creation of his poetry, and how all this fit into his scientific, philosophical, and spiritual perceptions of blindness. Milton reveals much of this through the painstaking process with which he teases out details in his poetry, using qualifiers like “seem” and using epic similes to paint a picture as accurately as a blind man can. Ultimately, I critique that process and show how Milton’s poetry works.

CHAPTER ONE THE EYE AND HOW TO USE IT

Let us, therefore, rely principally on the testimony of the eyes, for this sense of the body far excels the rest, and comes closer to spiritual vision … - St. Augustine

Milton’s letters to his friend Leonard Philaras contain important data about Milton’s failing eyes. The data reveal Milton’s understanding of seventeenth century medicine: “Certain permanent vapors seemed to have settled upon my entire forehead and temples, which press and oppress my eyes with a sort of sleepy heaviness, especially from mealtime to evening.”5 According to the Galenic model of the body, which dominated much of the Renaissance, the vapors Milton describes can result from his diet. Certain foods produce too many vapors, which if not expelled can build up in the head and cause blindness. The remedies for the buildup of vapors include creating friction on the head like combing the hair regularly in order to release the vapors. Physicians from the Middle Ages to Milton’s day prescribed this method along with exercise and proper diet. Although Milton explains numerous symptoms in his letters to Philaras, he demonstrates a deeper knowledge of specific eye diseases and cures in Paradise Lost. After telling the “holy light” of Book III’s invocation that his eyes “roll in vain / To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn,” the narrator explains why: “So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs, / Or dim suffusion veiled” (III.23-26). Gutta serena and suffusion were two well-known afflictions that robbed men and women of their sight in early modern Europe. The thick drop refers to an excess of humours that drip between the cornea and the crystalline humour—the inner lens of the eye that many anatomists, physicians, and natural philosophers from antiquity through the Renaissance believed was the seat of visual power. The thick drop of humours (caused by the buildup of vapors) caused mists in the eye that occluded vision. In his final letter to Philaras,

5 See the Complete Prose Works of John Milton. Ed. Don M. Wolfe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953-1982, IV.2, 869. Future references to these volumes will be parenthetical, citing volume and pages numbers as follows: CPW IV.2, 869.

Milton describes the effects of mists in his own eyes: “the mists, swimming, images, and vapors, and bursts of light are gone, replaced by pure black, marked as if with extinguished or ashy light, and as if interwoven with it. … Yet the mist which always hovers before my eyes both night and day seems always to be approaching white rather than black” (CPW IV.2, 860-70). Milton’s symptoms sound like a textbook case of gutta serena. Milton’s understanding of medical knowledge regarding the eyes has led to attempts to identify the cause of his blindness. Arnold Sorsby6 made one of the earliest modern attempts to retroactively diagnose Milton’s condition. Sorsby’s study offers a great starting point for further investigation. After asking, “How did Milton lose his eyesight?” or “What was the physical ailment that took Milton’s vision?” one must ask, “How did Milton think he lost his sight?” or “How did loss of sight affect Milton’s poetry or poetics or the way he viewed himself and his work?” Milton answers the first of the latter questions in Sonnet XXII. Milton tells Cyriak Skinner that he “lost them [his eyes] overplied / In liberty’s defense.” Milton’s answer for the actual affliction is more elusive.7 William Kerrigan takes some time in his Sacred Complex to situate Milton’s understanding of the nature of his blindness historically and culturally, invoking the Galenic model of the body still prevalent in the seventeenth century.8 Kerrigan lays the groundwork perfectly for others to pick up where he left off and expand on visual issues. Kerrigan and I both argue that one need not understand the real cause of Milton’s blindness. One cannot possibly understand the cultural and literary impacts of blindness or its impact on Milton and his work without first understanding vision the way early modern men and women understood it. One

6 See his “On the Nature of Milton’s Blindness,” The British Journal of Ophthalmology (July 1930). Sorsby makes many conjectures about the condition of Milton’s eyes, including calling him a “myope” (353). However, he also makes some fascinating observations about Milton’s hand-eye coordination, considering Milton’s declaration in the Second Defense: “I was wont constantly to exercise myself in the use of the broad sword, as long as it comported with my habits and my years.” It should be noted that Sorsby is also spelled as Sorseby, but far fewer references are made to the latter spelling. Other well known diagnoses of Milton’s eye condition are found in W. H. Wilmer, “The Blindness of Milton,” JEGP 32 (1933); Eleanor G. Brown, Milton’s Blindness (New York: Columbia UP, 1934); and William B. Hunter’s “Some Speculations on the Nature of Milton’s Blindness,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (1963). Glaucoma is the general consensus. 7 Milton actually believed he was predisposed to weak eyes and that “he inherited his weak eyes from his mother” (Lewalski 4). See also Aubrey’s explanation, cited in The Early Lives of Milton, ed. Helen Darbishire 4-5. 8 In his analysis of the passage from Book III’s invocation (“So thick a drop serene … and dim suffusion veiled”) Kerrigan says, “We infer from this passage that Milton believed himself a victim of gutta serena or suffusio obscura, in which a congealed … humour obstructed the optic nerves” (202). In fact, Kerrigan chooses, rightly, to focus “on the Renaissance idea of gutta serena” in relation to Milton’s blindness and “not on the much-debated question of what he actually suffered from” (See 203 and 321 n14).

must also understand the role of vision epistemologically and even spiritually in the daily lives of early modern men and women. Despite Kerrigan’s efforts few critics have situated Milton’s blindness in a cultural context. This leaves room to construct better the early modern attitude toward the senses in general, and vision more specifically. Such a construction would naturally lead to an understanding of the effects of losing one’s vision. Only recently have some critics considered the impact of cultural perceptions of blindness as well as the impact of blindness on literature in general,9 so it makes sense to look more specifically at the impact on Milton and his poetics. The only way to understand Milton’s blindness is through Milton’s understanding of it. This chapter develops the medical tradition involving the eye as Milton knew it. I trace the physiological and philosophical influences upon which theories of vision are founded and pay particular attention to epistemological concerns. Ultimately, this chapter shows that far more is at stake when the eyes fail than simply losing the ability to see. This chapter refers to the consequences of blindness, for which I discuss causes and remedies. I begin discussing vision and the various theories posited through the ages that focus on the physical act of seeing, because without knowing how Milton saw (or what he believed about how he and others saw), one can never know the impact of not seeing (or what Milton believed were the consequences of losing one’s vision). As any study that reconstructs an entire culture’s beliefs, understandings, and treatments of one particular phenomenon, this chapter reaches into the distant past to build a foundation for those beliefs. Even before the Atomists of the fifth, fourth, and third centuries B.C., the ancient world had developed some complex theories of vision. David C. Lindberg suggests that we can never know all that motivated the earliest discussions of light and the visual process, but “it seems clear that blindness and eye disease stimulated medical thought on the subject … and gave birth to the science of ophthalmology” (1).10 The history of visual theories is so broad and covers so many fields, Lindberg chooses to exclude pursuit of the “psychological and

9 See especially Tory Vandeventer Pearman’s “Refiguring Disability: Deviance, Blinding, and the Supernatural in Thomas Chestre's Sir Launfal” and Julia Miele Rodas’s “On Blindness.” Both are in the Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 3.2 (2009). 10 Despite its date, I have relied most heavily on Lindberg’s Theories of Vision because it is still one of the most comprehensive works on a general history of vision. The book has proven indispensible for tracking down the most influential theories still understood and accepted in Milton’s day. I have also relied on Nicholas J. Wade’s A Natural History of Vision, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. Wade’s book is more recent, but much of the historical summary is the same.

epistemological issues,” the issues with which I am most interested. Though Lindberg agrees that these issues are “often raised within the context of visual theory,” he contends that they “were never its central concern” (x). He chooses to concentrate rather on what he believes the ancients saw as the chief matters of visual theory: mathematics, physics, and physiology. Other critics contend that physics in the ancient world was primarily epistemological: “The aim of physics had been to explain how the human mind came to know the outside world” (Ronchi as quoted in Siegel 15). Thus begins Siegel’s study On Galen and Sense Perception, and Ronchi’s words find support with Aristotle, who opens his Physics with an epistemological discussion: “When the objects of an inquiry, in any department, have principles, conditions, or elements, it is through acquaintance with these that knowledge, that is to say scientific knowledge, is attained” (I.1). Aristotle addresses the process by which one becomes acquainted with and attains that knowledge in his Metaphysics: All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things. (I.1)11 In these works, Aristotle demonstrates a preoccupation with the acquisition of knowledge, and his heavy emphasis on the role of vision suggests that at least as far back as Aristotle epistemological concerns were a central issue to sight. The epistemological importance Aristotle and later philosophers and physicians place on sight makes it is easier to see the despair in Book III of Paradise Lost when Milton proclaims that “wisdom at one entrance [is] quite shut out” (III.50). The despair present in the invocation parallels the despair in Milton’s letters to Philaras. But Milton also writes to Philaras with hope: Although some glimmer of hope too may radiate from that physician [Thevenin], I prepare and resign myself as if the case were quite incurable, and I often reflect that since many days of darkness are destined to everyone, as the wise man warns,

11 All references to Aristotle’s Metaphysics come from W. D. Ross’s translation, and all references to his Physics come from R. P. Hardie’s and R. K. Gaye’s translation. Both are available online through The Internet Classics Archive at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.html and will be further identified parenthetically by Book and Part numbers.

mine thus far, by the single kindness of Providence, between leisure and study, and the voices and the visits of friends, are much more mild than those lethal ones … why should one not … find comfort in believing that he cannot see by the eyes alone, but by the guidance and the wisdom of God. (CPW IV.2, 870) Milton’s hope rested with the procedures of a particular physician, but also with the leisure, with the ability to study despite his blindness, and with the guidance he believed God granted him. Paradise Lost also shows hope in productivity and divine guidance. After the despair of the thick drop and dim suffusion, the narrator refuses defeat: “Yet not the more / Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt” (III.26-7). The man who wrote this verse shows that despair will not slow him. Also, the man who wrote so many letters to Philaras about his failing eyes refuses to be hampered by his affliction. When warned by doctors to stop writing, Milton explains, I seemed to hear, not the voice of the doctor … but the sound of a certain more divine monitor within. And I thought that two lots had now been set before me by a certain command of fate: the one blindness, the other, duty. Either I must necessarily endure the loss of my eyes, or I must abandon my most solemn duty. … Then I reflected that many men have bought with greater evil smaller good. … I resolved therefore that I must employ this brief use of my eyes while yet I could for the greatest possible benefit to the state. (CPW IV.2, 869). Milton’s letters to Philaras show a man willing to do whatever it takes to fulfill the duty with which he believed God had entrusted him. Paradise Lost shows a narrator whose knowledge of medicine demonstrates a desire to recover his sight despite accepting the blindness that may have resulted from the course of his duty. In Book XI, before Michael can show Adam the visions of the world to come, he must prepare Adam’s eyes to receive those visions. Michael explains to Adam the need to purge “with euphrasy and rue / The visual nerve” (414-15) that will allow Adam to see the visions Michael will impart. Michael uses three drops “from the well of life” (416) as part of the process to remove from Adam’s eyes the film that resulted from his partaking of the fruit which, ironically, “promised clearer sight” (411-414). It is a preparatory and cleansing process that recalls cleansing processes in the Hebrew Bible like the one required of Moses, Aaron, and Aaron’s sons to enter the tabernacle in the wilderness: “And thou shalt bring Aaron and his sons unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and wash them with water. … And Moses and Aaron and his sons … came near unto the altar, they washed; as

13 the Lord commanded Moses” (Exodus 40: 12, 30-32). This ritual was an outward representation of an inner (spiritual) process that prepared one for sacred duties or for viewing objects divine. The “washing” of Adam’s eyes in Paradise Lost is a physical preparation of the eyes that represents a spiritual preparation.12 It should be noted that, for Milton, the spiritual and physical are the same. Because Milton was clearly a monist13 when he wrote Paradise Lost, he could apply physical restoratives to the eye to prepare it for spiritual visions. The herbs Michael uses appear in multiple Renaissance texts, but their usefulness had been known for centuries.14 Milton’s use of euphrasy and rue demonstrates a specific awareness of eye restoratives. In his letters to Philaras, Milton reveals some attempts to preserve his failing eyesight. However, by applying this physical remedy to a spiritual affliction, Milton shows greater concern for insight, the ability to see within, as he tells the “celestial light” he addresses in Book III to “plant eyes” in his mind that he may “see and tell / Of things invisible to mortal sight” (50-55),15 and that he may see “by the guidance of the wisdom of God” (CPW IV.2, 870). 1.1 Galen Visual theory had a long history before Galen, but because his “physick” is so prominent in the Renaissance, I will use Galen to filter out aspects of ancient visual theories that do not pertain to this study. For Galen, the visual process began like every other bodily process or function in the humoural body, with the ingestion and digestion of food. Diet played a key role in the Galenic body. 16 What one ate directly affected one’s balance. One example of how this

12 This is no different than the outward performances the Law of Moses required as a reminder of spiritual things. 13 Milton’s progression toward Monism is effectively laid out by Stephen M. Fallon in his Milton Among the Philosophers: Poetry and Materialism in Seventeenth-Century England, Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1991. See especially Chapters 3-5. 14 Ali ibn Isa of Baghdad (ca. 940-1010) describes the use of rue as a remedy for certain eye afflictions in his Tadhkirat, translated by Casey A. Wood as Memorandum Book of a Tenth-Century Oculist, Chicago: Northwestern UP, 1936. Even earlier, Galen describes the use of “Eyebright water” (eyebright is another name for euphrasy) in his Art of Physick (see Nicolas Culpepper’s 1662 translation). The use of rue, euphrasy, and a multitude of herbs and plants find their way into the works of Alhazen, whose influence on Western medicine is already apparent in the thirteenth century in the works of Grosseteste and Roger Bacon. 15 It should be noted that the additional references in this chapter to Milton’s works and other literary works are meant to demonstrate connections with past psychological, physiological, and philosophical issues. Such references, especially Milton’s works, will be more fully addressed in later chapters. 16 Nearly every Renaissance book of “physick” uses Galen’s physiology. Modern discussions of his physiology can be found in Rudolph Siegel’s Galen’s System of Physiology and Medicine: An Analysis of His Doctrines and Observations On Bloodflow, Respiration, Tumors and Internal Diseases (1968); Oswei Temkin’s Galenism: Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy (1973); Margaret Tallmadge May’s introduction to her translation of On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, and others. Some literary scholarship that deals with

was believed to work demonstrates Galen’s influence over time. William of Conches, a French scholastic philosopher living about 900 years after Galen, explains the role of digestion in vision: Digestion of food (the second such) occurs in the liver; a dense vapor is thus produced, which is transformed into ‘natural virtue’ by passage through various members; part … reaches the heart … refined into ‘spiritual virtue,’ which passes through the arteries to the brain. In the rete … [it] is further refined until it becomes a luminous airy substance, which is sent … to the organs of sense. When the soul wishes to see … it emits the subtler part of the airy substance through the optic nerve to the eye; from there it issues through the pupil. (Lindberg 91) What is eaten and the type and amount of vapors produced strengthened or weakened vision. Additionally, the belching and flatulence caused by digestion produced vapors harmful to the eyes. Renaissance physicians believed that vision was directly affected by diet and exercise.17 While developing his visual theory, Galen needed to decide between the two prevailing theories of his day: extramission and intromission. The intromission theory came to Galen through Aristotle, but it was much older. Empedocles, a pre-Atomist philosopher, believed that all created things (made from the four elements: air, fire, earth, water) gave off constant “emanations,” which “run through” pores and cracks in other created things. Sensation is produced when “like meets like” (See Bailey 53). In other words, when part of an emanation fit exactly into the pore of a sense organ, it produced sensation. Empedocles’ like-for-like theory of perception reduced sensation to touch. The Atomists inherited the idea that sight was touch and expanded it. They also gave the “emanations” a material essence: “Idols (eidola) flow off, similar in shape to the objects from which they flow … visible things … and fall into the eyes … and sight results in this way” (104). The result was continuous vision because of the constant efflux of atoms from all things. There were at least two prevailing Atomist theories of this material efflux. First, each atom emanating from an object represented one specific part of the object, and each of the object’s parts came together within the eye in a shrunken image. The second theory was

Galen’s physiology include Disease, Diagnosis, and Cure on the Early Modern Stage, ed. Stephanie Moss and Kaara L. Peterson and Michael Schoenfeldt’s Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England (1999). Margaret Tallmadge May offers a fairly in depth summary of this process in the preface of her translation of On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body (53-4). See also Part 6 of Galen’s On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body. 17 For more on the role of digestion in humoural balance, see Part 6 of Galen’s On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body.

primarily Epicurus’ theory. A film that was a simulacrum of the object emanated from the surface of that object. The simulacrum was small enough that shrinkage of it was unnecessary. Despite theoretical differences, all Atomists believed sensations were caused by direct contact, but the real problem was reducing sight to touch. Democritus explained that a “hard” effluence of atoms enters the “moist” part of the eye and makes an impression like a stamp in wax (see Bailey 166). The composition of the eye makes this possible. It is spongy and moist, implying that moist eyes are better for seeing than dry eyes. Theophrastus’ account of Democritus’ description explains what the image is and how it came to be in the eye: “The image is not produced directly on the pupil, but the air between the eye and the thing seen is contracted and stamped by the object seen and the seer” (quoted in Bailey 167). The stamped air then stamps the eye. Democritus’ description is one of the earliest known of how the composition of the eye effects vision. Galen came to rely heavily on anatomy and physiology to develop his own visual theory. Aristotle retained the intromission of the Atomists—the eye perceives by receiving images—but he refuted the Atomist notion that sight be reduced to touch. Aristotle questioned the ability of atoms to reassemble properly in the eye or of an atomic film to reach the eye unaltered if at all, considering all the atoms in the air. Aristotle’s theory was based on two important factors, a transparent medium and light rays (from without). In his De Sensu Aristotle places a transparent medium in the void between the eye and the object of sight. Transparent is “the nature and property of all substances” (from De Sensu 439 a 21; translated by Siegel 29). The substance in this case is either the air or light.18 The image (or “species”)19 of the object is transported through the medium, which is activated by the light from without. When the image reaches the eye, vision occurs. Light is essential for this transference to take place: “Light is the energy, the active force of the transparent” (De Anima 418b 10ff). David Park provides a helpful illustration of the Aristotelian species in his book The Fire within the Eye. Aristotle’s species “do not move” like atoms emanating from an object, but they “spread by a process called

18 Aristotle’s own words on the nature of the medium can be found in De Sensu: “That without light vision is impossible has been stated elsewhere; but, whether the medium between the eye and its objects is air or light, vision is caused by a process through this medium” (I.2). Aristotle admits that even he cannot distinguish the true nature of the medium, but he knows it exists. 19 Aristotle’s “form” or “species” is not material, but only an image of the object. Aristotle’s theory goes through multiple but minimal evolutionary processes through Roger Bacon in the twelfth century, where it will come to be known more popularly as the Theory of Species.

multiplication, just as our shadow on the ground, as we walk along, is not really a moving thing but is continually being recreated in a new place” (Park 100). The more the species multiply the weaker the species become, making it difficult to see objects from farther away. Because Aristotle’s eye is composed of water, the image is produced by making an impression in the eye’s watery substance. As the image progresses toward the eye, it moves (impresses) the air with each multiplication. The form impresses the air immediately before it over and over until that form reaches the eye. “In Aristotle’s terms, the eye becomes a matrix, in which light implants its substance” (Lobanov-Rostovsky 199). Implanting knowledge in the eye makes the Aristotelian eye “a womb of light, conceiving the world within itself in passive acceptance of its form” (199). The eye pregnant with knowledge creates an image like the spirit Milton addresses in the opening invocation of Paradise Lost: And chiefly thou, O spirit, that dost prefer Before all temples the upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for thou knowest; thou from the first Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread, Dove-like satst brooding on the vast abyss, And mad'st it pregnant[.] (I.17-22) Of that spirit Milton goes on to ask, “What in me is dark, illumine” (I.22-3). Milton constructs at the outset of Paradise Lost an Aristotelian, passive reception of knowledge. In this case it is the spirit from which Milton receives knowledge and illumination rather than light. But we find in Book III, that the spirit is God’s light. Also, an eye pregnant with knowledge is congruent to chaos pregnant with all the material that becomes the known universe. The final chapter shows that this is an important distinction for understanding Milton’s creative process after he loses his sight. Also, Calling the species a “form” sets it apart from material theories and fits the visual process into Aristotelian causality: the material cause is the object of vision, the species is the form (formal cause), the medium is the efficient cause,20 and the final cause is visual perception and knowledge. This is the beginning of Aristotle’s epistemology: knowledge is unattainable without the senses.

20 It may be argued that the eye or its possessor is the efficient cause; however, it is the medium that is the primary cause of the change. In other words, the medium produces the image that the eye sees.

Galen’s and Aristotle’s theories of vision originated with the same ancient sources, but each retained a different aspect. Aristotle denounced touch while developing intromission. Galen completely discounted intromission while retaining touch. Galen’s use of touch in his visual theory came from Plato through the Stoics. Plato developed a complex theory of vision based primarily upon extramission. In simplest terms, the eye emits visual rays (light, fire, spirits, etc.) that return images to the eye and cause vision. Much of Plato’s theory is laid out in the Timaeus (45bd, 46a, 67c), where he also venerates the head (lord of all that is in us) and the eyes (68).21 The eyes are the first organs to give light (68). Plato describes the light as a refiner: “The pure fire which is within us and related thereto they [the gods] made to flow through the eyes in a stream smooth and dense” (68).22 Plato’s purpose is theological but also physiological: When the light of day surrounds the stream of vision, then like falls upon like, and they coalesce, and one body is formed by natural affinity in the line of vision, wherever the light that falls from within meets with an external object. And the whole stream of vision, being similarly affected in virtue of similarity, diffuses the motions of what it touches or what touches it over the whole body, until they reach the soul, causing that perception which we call sight. (68) The light reflected off of the object of vision mixes with the light shooting from the eye, and they return an image to the eye. The image of the object then makes its way to the soul. Plato identifies with Empedocles’ “like-for-like” theory. There is also clear Atomist influence on Plato’s pathology: the stream of vision “touches” and the image “touches” the body. The Stoics accepted Plato’s extramission theory and introduced pneuma into theories of perception. In simplest terms, the pneuma is the substance of the air. However, coming from within, it is much more complicated. Because the role of the pneuma in visual perception changes little between the Stoics and Galen, I rely on Galen’s explanation of the process. Essentially, air drawn into the lungs will eventually pass through “‘venous arteries,’ and [is] conveyed directly to the left ventricle of the heart, where it becomes the vital pneuma on which all the vital processes depend” (May 46). It then passes through arteries and finally to the brain where it becomes still finer: the “psychic pneuma,” which is distributed through the nerves “and

21 All quotations from Plato’s Timaeus come from Benjamin Jowett’s translation available at http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html and are identified parenthetically by paragraph number. 22 Aristotle refuted Plato’s theory with deductive logic: “If vision were the result of light issuing from the eye as from a lantern, why should the eye not have had the power of seeing even in the dark?” (De Sensu I.2).

controls sensation and motion” (47). The role of the finer pneuma in the visual process happens in three phases: “sensitization of the space for the optical transmission by pneuma; reception of the incoming image by the cerebral pneuma in the eye; and conduction of the pneuma carrying the image to the brain” (Siegel 71). Like earlier theories, light is essential. The fusion of light, the pneuma, and the object in the eye created the image. The pneuma acted with the air as a medium like nerves (Siegel 77). The Stoics knew nothing about general anatomy or the function of the nerves compared to Galen, but the fundamental aspects of their pneuma and Galen’s were the same. The Stoic pneuma was the glue holding the universe together and giving it form because of tension, the characteristic property of pneuma (Park 44). The Stoic pneuma “sensitizes the air next to the pupil. Light from the sun or some other source activates the air, and then, as Diogenes Laertius says, ‘the thing seen is reported to us by the medium of the air stretching out toward it, as by a stick’” (44). Laertius’ description is based upon two Stoic philosophers, Chrysippus and Apollodorus.23 Dallas G. Denery II argues that “in these ancient accounts, imagining the air as a stick had one distinct advantage. It explained how a distant visible object could … be immediately before the eye” (93 n. 50). What changes between the Stoics and Galen is the extension of the pneuma. For the Stoics, the pneuma from the eye “sensitizes the air,” taking advantage of the pneuma already present. The pneuma then acts as a medium that “reaches” out to the object of vision. Galen’s pneuma shoots from the eye and makes contact with the object, but it acts the same way Laertius explains, stretching toward the object of vision “as by a stick.” The continuous tension created by the connection between the eye and the object allows the eye to perceive, to feel, or to “see.” The pneuma is also acted upon by light from the object, which alters the pneuma and returns that alteration to the eye. The “stick” became the common model for many in antiquity: “The air adjoining the pupil is excited by visions and formed into a cone which is stamped on its base by an impression of the object of vision, and thus perception is created similar to the touch of a stick” (Alexander of Aphrodisias; quoted in Lindberg 9-10). One possible source for the stick analogy was the blind man using a stick to “see” or “recognize by touch otherwise unrecognizable objects” (Siegel 39). So the blind man still “sees” with the proper use and sensitization of his stick.

23 See Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. R. D. Hicks, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1950), vol. 1, p. 261.

The pneuma for Galen was the fire in the eye theorized by Plato. Emilie Savage Smith says, “Galen often speaks of a ‘luminous pneuma’ … going to the eye” and that “pneuma proceeds to the eye along the hollow optic nerve and retina, leaves the pupil, and interacts with the surrounding illuminated air so that this coalescence of pneuma and illuminated air then serves … (the eye) in a manner analogous to that of the nerve serving the brain” (117). Smith’s summary of Galen’s extramission theory is almost identical to Plato’s theory. Stoic influence is also evident in the nerve analogy. The pneuma is the stick through which sensation is produced. Like his predecessors in visual theory, Galen held the eye in high esteem, and stops just short of calling sight divine when he says that “the visual faculty [is] sent into the eyes from above” (Usefulness 472); the eye is also “the most godlike of the instruments” (491). Also like his predecessors, Galen tied his epistemology to perception. Oswei Temkin’s summarization of Galen’s epistemology reveals an Aristotelian influence: “All men are endowed by nature with perception and intelligence, which are the sources of knowledge” (11). Aristotle was highly interested in the epistemological role of vision, as is evidenced by the opening of his Metaphysics, so his theory of vision made sight a foundation for knowledge acquisition. The idea that knowledge passed into the brain through the senses was not new to Aristotle. For Atomists, like sensation, “thought too takes place when ‘idols’ come in from without: for neither sensation nor thought can grasp anything apart from the ‘idol’ which falls upon them” (quoted in Bailey 104). The material nature of sensation and thought pushed Leucippus to tweak Atomic theory around sense perception and thought until his theory of the mental process became a “continuous habit of regarding thought as a kind of ‘visualization’” (Bailey 105). If seeing is thinking; then thinking is seeing. So the blind poet, like Homer, or the blind seer can literally see with the mind—an implication Milton makes when he asks for eyes to be planted therein (see Paradise Lost III.50-55). The constant efflux of the Atomists meant that the eye “sees” many things at once. Epicurus argued that, though this is true, only one object can be the focus. The object of focus has our attention because we physically direct our eyes to it. At any moment there are idols crowding around our eyes, so we may get a passing glance, but to actually see an object we must “look” at it and “confirm” it (Bailey 410-11). Confirming an object must necessarily involve cognition. Just as with pre-Atomists, reason played a specific role in determining the quality of

sense perception. So for pre-Atomists, Atomists, Aristotle, and Galen, knowledge is acquired by reason’s analysis of observed phenomena. Galen’s belief in the limitations of sight also goes back as far as the pre-Atomists. Anaxagoras believed that the eyes perceived the truth, but they cannot tell us the underlying reality which one knows by reason to be there. Anaxagoras used snow as an example. Snow appears white while reason dictates the underlying reality is that snow is black: “Snow is white; but snow is congealed water; water is black: therefore snow is black” (Bailey 62). Anaxagoras’ explanation of snow’s underlying reality had a paradoxical impact on the epistemology of vision: one’s eyes can and cannot deceive. The snow, like all substances, has “a portion of everything.” With the snow, one sees its dominant characteristic, which is a true characteristic, but one cannot see its essence—the black water which makes it up. Milton addresses the trouble of underlying reality when he has Satan disguise himself as a stripling cherub to deceive Uriel and then as a serpent to deceive Eve in Paradise Lost. Human vision is limited to appearances.24 Eve cannot possibly recognize the essence of the serpent possessed by Satan. After all, when she confesses her fault she declares, “the serpent beguiled me.”25 Milton gives Uriel similar limitations: neither man nor angel can discern Hypocrisy the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone. (III.682-84; emphasis added) Milton believes, like Anaxagoras, that the eyes can identify true characteristics, but cannot see the underlying reality. When Satan deceives Uriel and Eve, he appears as a stripling cherub and serpent, respectively. Uriel and Eve can only report what they see. Both must rely on the light of God or divine reason to discern the truth. From the pre-Atomists to Galen, and from Galen on to Milton, reason was important to the eyes’ ability to acquire knowledge. Galen’s knowledge of anatomy showed him the corruptibility of the eyes. That corruptibility was a threat to one’s ability to acquire knowledge. Galen made specific references to blindness and some of its causes. For example, light, which gives sight, can also take it away (Usefulness 473). Also, a painter looking at white canvas too long can go blind. Milton often looked at a “canvas,” employing his eyes in the task of writing throughout his life. Galen also

24 1 Sam. 16: 7, “But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.” 25 Gen. 3:13 (my emphasis).

describes the toll on copyists who weakened their eyes from writing on white parchment for long periods (Siegel 81). Milton’s father worked as a scrivener, but we know nothing of his having eye trouble. John, Sr.’s lack of eye trouble despite a life of reading and writing likely provided further evidence for Milton that he had inherited his mother’s weak eyes. Galen attributes blindness to multiple sources. Blindness can be caused by a lack of pneuma (Usefulness 476) or by old age, damaged optical nerves, or glaucosis, which he calls the most common occurrence (483). All these conditions have an outward sign. For example, eyelid trouble is a sign of eye disease (487). Glaucosis (the clouding of the lens in the eye) is another likely condition Milton suffered from. Glaucosis was important to Galen because it proved the seat of visual power was in the crystalline lens (or humor) as opposed to the cornea. Galen believed glaucosis was caused by a “mass of humors” that had seeped into the space between the crystalline lens (or humour) and the cornea (See May 464 n3). Considering Milton’s medical knowledge, his descriptions of his onset of blindness, and his reference to specific conditions in Paradise Lost, he at least suspected a mass of humors had built up in his eyes. Galen had no real contemporary competitors in theories of vision. The closest was Plotinus, who came the next century. He perpetuated the extramission theory, believing that light from within was essential to the visual process. In his most definitive statement on the matter, Plotinus argues, “That huge illumination … pouring outwards comes at last to the extreme bourne of its light and dwindles to darkness; this darkness, now lying there beneath, the soul sees and by seeing brings to shape” (The Six Enneads IV.3.9). The darkness sounds like the object of vision, and the description of seeing by the darkness at the edge of the light points toward Milton’s “darkness visible” (PL I.63). Plotinus otherwise added nothing to visual theory. According to Siegel, “Hellenistic science did not produce another doctrine of vision comparable to that of Galen. The few ophthalmological treatises of late antiquity which have been preserved deal mainly with diagnosis and therapy of eye diseases” (117). Siegel chooses not to elaborate. 1.2 Metaphysical Foundations of Vision in the West St. Augustine of Hippo is important for at least two reasons. First, he marks the transition of visual theory into the theological realm. Second, he is a prototype for Milton in his treatment of light and inasmuch as he appropriates natural philosophy and medicine for spiritual purposes as Milton often did in his poetry, though with an important difference. Because Milton

was a monist, medicine could treat the whole.26 Although Augustine did not speak about an in- depth theory of vision, he demonstrates in his writings that he was clearly an extramissionist: Surely the emission of rays from our eyes is an emission of a certain light. And it can be gathered that this light is emitted, since when we look into the air adjacent to our eyes we observe, along the same line, things situated far away. Nor does this light sensibly fail, since it is judged to discern fully objects that are at a distance, though surely more obscurely than if the power of sight should [itself] be sent to them. Nevertheless, this light that is in vision is shown to be so scanty that unless it is assisted by an exterior light, we cannot see anything. (Commentary on Genesis; quoted in Lindberg 90) Two essential things arise from Augustine’s understanding. First, Augustine clearly places the visual power within the eye, not in the object, not in a medium between the object and the eye, and not where internal and external lights meet. Second, the light in the eye is not enough to produce any quality of vision without the aid of exterior light. Augustine’s theory is Plato’s extramission theory, and this intermingling of light makes its way into Paradise Lost. The inner light, however, is less physical than spiritual (metaphysical) for Milton, and the external light is both physical and spiritual at certain moments. Milton’s light is physical when the narrator feels the “vital lamp” (III.22). Milton’s light is spiritual (metaphysical) when the narrator calls it “celestial” and when it must “shine inward” (III.52-2). This inward light is like Augustine’s, whose philosophy of light does not allow for light’s existence without God. Of additional importance to Augustine is the role of the flesh, or outward man, versus the role of the inner man. Medieval dualism created a plane for the metaphorical battle of good and evil: the corrupt and degenerate flesh fights to enslave the elevated mind or soul, which controls the senses. For now, only the epistemological consideration of the bodily senses vis-à-vis the inner man’s divine reason is important. Because the fallen eyes cannot compete with the reason God gave man,27 he needs other eyes. Milton asks for other eyes that he might see invisible things. This is Augustine’s visio spiritualis, “the kind of vision by which we represent in thought

26 The body was both physical and spiritual for Milton, and the distinction depended on how refined its matter was. 27 Stanley Fish points out the role of the fallen eyes in the reader’s involvement in Paradise Lost. See his Surprised by Sin, especially Chapter 6.

the images of bodies even in their absence” (quoted in Biernoff 26). This is the vision Milton needs to write his poetry, and it is only with light (from within) he can accomplish it. Augustine’s emphasis on light reemerges in Robert Grosseteste’s thirteenth-century philosophy of light. Although Grosseteste never made specific divisions to explain his philosophy of light, Lindberg takes time to indentify four strands that he believes adequately account for Grosseteste’s entire philosophy:28 1) The Epistemology of Light, the “process of acquiring knowledge of unchanging Platonic forms is considered analogous to corporeal vision”; 2) Metaphysics or Cosmogony of Light, “Light is regarded as the first corporeal form and the material world is the product of the self-propagation of a primeval point of light”; 3) Etiology or Physics of Light, “All causation in the material world operates on the analogy of the radiation of light” (everything happens because of light); and 4) Theology of Light, which “employs light metaphors to elucidate theological truths” (95). The first strand Lindberg identifies suggests, with many ancient philosophers, that by light, sight is made possible, so it is light that gives us knowledge or “enlightens” us. Milton’s “Hail, holy light, offspring of heaven first-born” (III.1) is reminiscent of the second strand. That holy light “didst invest / The rising world of waters dark and deep” (III.10-11). Considering that for Milton (and Augustine and Grosseteste) God is light, the idea that light creates makes sense.29 The light of creation is the offspring of God, whose light is unapproachable, dwells from eternity, and is “Bright effluence of bright essence increate” (III.4-6). Milton’s invocation to light grows out of this to include the power of creation by the light of vision, and Milton’s persona wishes the light of vision to “shine inward” that he, too, may create. The third strand Lindberg identifies gives light motion, and light gives motion or life to all things. Examples of the fourth strand can be traced at least back to John’s gospel, where Christ is “the Light.” Augustine and other church fathers continued this tradition. That light illuminates “with its fullness every mind” (Pseudo-Dionysius, On the Divine Names; quoted in Biernoff 41). Grosseteste “described divine illumination as a ‘spiritual light which is shed upon intelligible things and the eye of [the] mind and which has the same relation to the interior eye and to intelligible things as the corporeal sun has to the bodily eye and to visible things’”

28 See Theories of Vision, 94-100. 29 Hector Avalos identifies the importance of seeing in creation in his study on the visiocentricity of the Book of Job. See his “Introducing Sensory Criticism in Biblical Studies: Audiocentricity and Visiocentricity.” This Abled Body: Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies. Ed. Hector Avalos, Sarah J. Melcher, and Jeremy Schipper. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007. 47-60.

(quoted in Lindberg 96). This is Grosseteste’s version of Augustine’s visio spiritualis. For Augustine, Grosseteste, and Milton, light is the source of all knowledge and action, because it is the source of all creation. So the study of light “reveals the very workings of nature, the operations of causes, and the production of effects” (Lindberg 97). Lindberg has pointed out that, theologically, optical material only appears in Biblical commentary, like Augustine’s, and in commentary on the Sententiae of Peter Lombard. Of the commentary on the Sententiae, only Durandus of Saint-Pourcain (d. 1334) is important. The most interesting aspect of his theological-philosophical inquiries is his sophistry. He wonders “‘whether angels know a thing through its essence or through species,’ and turns … to the human act of perception, concluding that qualities are not perceived through their species but through extension of the qualities themselves in the medium” (Lindberg 140; emphasis added). Durandus retains Aristotle’s medium and form but not multiplying species. Rather, it is the qualities of the object reaching toward the eyes. What is also interesting about Durandus’ initial sophistical inquiry is that Milton provides an answer in Paradise Lost.30 After Satan disguises himself as a stripling cherub, he asks Uriel for directions to earth, and Uriel is unable to detect him; Uriel cannot see Satan’s essence or cannot detect the cherub’s “underlying reality.”31 So Satan “beguiled” Uriel, “regent of the sun,” and “the sharpest sighted spirit of all in Heaven” (III.689-91). For Milton, angels see, and likewise men and women see, only the species or the extended qualities of a thing. It is important to understand this for Satan’s tempting of Eve. Also, Milton makes an important connection between Uriel’s title (“regent of the sun”) and his ability to see. For it is the sun, lux, that provides the light, lumen, by which all can see. 1.3 Islamic Medicine Many early Middle Eastern eye treatises show that eye disease continued to drive study of the eye.32 As far as the act of vision, however, such treatises perpetuated ancient theories.

30 I do not mean to suggest that Milton was familiar with Durandus’s inquiry; however, there seems to be an air of angelolatry in that inquiry. Fowler suggests, “always mistrustful of angelolatry, M[ilton] tends to make his good angels unsuccessful” (210 n681-5). 31 See p. 21 of this chapter for an explanation of Anaxagoras’ “underlying reality.” 32 The earliest I have come across is The Book of Ten Treatises on the Eye Ascribed to Hunain Ibn Is-Hâq. Hunain identifies eye diseases with a comprehensive list of remedies. Some of these remedies are dangerous, like “white vitriol” (which is sulfuric acid). Other remedies are harmless: milk, whites of eggs, fennel, and chamomile, among many others. A similar book, the Tadhkirat of Ali ibn Isa appeared the following century. It contains similar information and adds “Rue,” which is an “expellant of thick viscid humors. [And] Mixed with honey it relieves obscuration of vision (which it sharpens) and cleans the eye of oncoming cataract” (70-1). Ali was clearly influenced by Galen’s humoural body in his description. Thick humors could obstruct eyesight.

The most widely known visual theories came from al-Kindi, Averroes, Avicenna, and al-Hazen. By the end of the period, Middle Eastern natural philosophers almost completely displace Galen’s visual theory. Averroes, Avicenna, and al-Hazen preferred Aristotelian intromission. Lindberg points out that during this period “we are … able to perceive the chasm separating various approaches to the problem of sight” (Lindberg 57). He means, mainly, the mathematical versus the physical approaches. “In place of … geometrical achievements,”33 which I mostly avoid, “we find a discussion of ocular anatomy and physiology and an analysis of physically possible modes of radiation” (57). The latter focus is the immediate concern of this study because mathematics cannot explain blindness or the epistemology of vision. Nicholas J. Wade, referring to Plato’s influence on Euclid, suggests that the mathematics of vision showed “little concern for perceptual experience” (2). Focus on the physical aspects of sight and “perceptual experience” will continue to steer us clear of purely mathematical approaches, help us sift through treatises that synthesize approaches, and lead us to the physical mode of vision as Milton understood it and to the consequences of losing that vision. As for “physically possible modes of radiation,” Milton makes clear his understanding of the importance of the radiation of light in his invocation to light in Book III of Paradise Lost. He asks the “celestial light” to “purge and disperse” all mist from his mind, and “all her powers irradiate” (III.51-5). By the seventeenth century, the radiation of light became the fundamental basis for seeing. Al-Hazen was the first major figure to synthesize the prevailing anatomical, physical, and mathematical models and theories of vision, and he retained visual rays in his theory in order to explain this phenomenon.34 In line with Aristotle, al-Hazen consistently mentions “form.” Each point on the surface of a body radiates in all directions, and each point of radiation is a particular form. Because the eye is constantly bombarded with forms radiating from all objects, it will naturally “see” everything, but it can only confirm what it focuses on.35 Al-Hazen’s

33 These include work with refraction, based mostly on the angle at which a particular line of light from an object enters the eye. 34 “Whereas Galen believed that vision was effected by the emission of a visual pneuma … [al-Hazen] supported the theory of visual rays reaching the eye from the object” (Temkin 122 n73). The theory is Aristotelian with Galenic elements. 35 Al-Hazen’s confirmation works by two categories of visual perception: Aspectus – “a first glance that yields only a superficial perception of the object,” and Intuitio – “which provides a ‘certified’ impression” (Lindberg 85).

confirmation, aside from the geometry, is identical to Epicurus’.36 Al-Hazen’s theory was widely accepted for centuries. 1.4 The Later Middle Ages The Middle Ages shifted heavily to optics, the application of mathematics to vision, so only William of Ockham is important here because of his emphasis on epistemology. He bases his visual theory on intuitive and abstract cognition. Intuitive cognition “enables one to know with certitude … an object … [and] whether or not it exists, whereas abstract cognition provides no knowledge regarding the existence of things” (Lindberg 141). For Ockham, all this knowledge happens in an instant: “both the senses and the intellect have direct, unmediated apprehension of their objects”; and unmediated apprehension makes possible “certitude and a defense against … skepticism” (Lindberg 141). Ockham believed that the firm grasp of an object came simply by seeing that object. The unmediated apprehension is possible because the object is the cause of the act of seeing. Ockham places the power of seeing solely in the object. He made the eye passive and reified the implications of Aristotle’s visual theory. If the object, not the eye, is the cause of sight, everyone must logically see the same thing because the object produces the same images, qualities, or species of itself. Therefore, the eye can be relied upon as “a defense against … skepticism” (141). This is the state of vision passed to the Renaissance. 1.5 Anatomy and Visual Theories of the Renaissance Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, who called himself Paracelsus, is the first important figure here because of his epistemology. Paracelsus was a fanatic about experience (see Jacobi xliv). He abhorred the scholastic method: “My proofs derive from experience and my own reasoning, and not from reference to authorities” (quoted by Jacobi liii). Because Paracelsus is less well known than Galen, I will briefly describe his basic physiology and medical-philosophical theories. First, every created thing is of the one (primordial) matter, prima materia or limbus (21) in which is found the three basic substances: mercury, sulfur, and salt (14). These three substances formed everything in the four elements. Like Anaxagoras, for Paracelsus, in everything lies the form of everything. While most Humanists tried to save Galen from Arabistic interpretations, Paracelsus relentlessly attacked

36 See p. 20.

humoural medicine and lashed out against his colleagues who clung to anatomy, “the dead carcass,” instead of considering the living body as a whole (Jacobi lxiii).37 For Paracelsus, man is an exact microcosm of the universe. Man’s balance is not found in humours but in tastes. Sour is cold and dry or melancholic; Bitter is hot and dry or choleric; Sweet is cold and moist or phlegmatic; Salty is hot and moist or sanguine (19). Like Galen, disease affected the balance of the Paracelsian body, and that disease had two realms: matter (material, physical) and spirit (75). Paracelsus based his medicine on four main pillars: philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, and virtue (59-60). In each he gave place for God because disease was a battle between good and evil within the body, similar to Augustine’s battle between spirit and flesh. Paracelsus claimed that only God can cure diseases, for which he provided cures: “God created all things to serve man” (Jacobi xlvi). Paracelsus further claimed that some diseases were punishments from God. Milton’s enemies often suggested that his blindness was a punishment from God. Paracelsus placed great faith in the science of alchemy, for he believed that “without alchemy, everything remains meaningless; to study it … is to become seeing” (Jacobi xlvi). Alchemy gives the natural philosopher and the physician eyes to see nature and acquire knowledge from it. But nature is chemically broken, and must be fixed. Through alchemy nature can regain its original unity.38 Only through alchemy, “the external stomach,” can “nature and the human being … be joined and brought together in health and in diseases” (quoted in Weeks 153). Paracelsus also describes the physical body in alchemical terms. He recognized “that there has to be an alchemist within the body, effecting digestion and the transformation of substances” (Weeks 65). Because man is a microcosm of the universe, all changes in the universe, including its creation, also occur through chemical processes. Alchemy can remake (or purify) the world as the body’s alchemy “remakes” the food it ingests. Walter Pagel has shown that a common Renaissance belief held “that all thinking depends upon sensual perception and the unification of images provided by the various senses by the sensus communis” (“Contributions” 100). The sensus communis receives all sense

37 Paracelsus cast off a many others in his Paragranum: “Avicenna, Galen, Rasis [Rhazes], Montagnana, Mesue, and others, after, and not I after you!” (quoted in Jacobi lv); hence the name Paracelsus, “equal to (and greater than) Celsus,” a second century Epicurean philosopher and opponent of Christianity. 38 See Walter Pagel, Paracelsus, Basel: S. Karger, 1958, pp. 52, 113-14; and Charles Webster, Paracelsus: Medicine, Magic, and Mission at the End of Time, New Haven: Yale UP, 2008, pp. 147-48.

perceptions, and it is situated in the anterior part of the brain. Images received into the brain are then digested and pass into the middle ventricle (of the brain). Finally, the last ventricle of the brain collects and stores ideas and sense perceptions (100). “Brain function, then, is seen as a sequence of processes of ingestion … thinking is the digestion of sensory impressions, i.e., the separation of something pure from the impure” (100-1). This process is in harmony with Paracelsus’ physiology. The brain enacts its own alchemical process when it digests thought (or sensory perceptions into thought) by reason to create knowledge just as the stomach digests food into energy and nutrients for the body. The process also establishes pathology for Milton’s recall of visual data while writing his later poetry. Milton used his reason and imagination (digested materials) to relate all his collected ideas and sense perceptions. He also used his reason and imagination to create new ideas and sense perceptions. Paracelsian man has two influences operating in him: light (firmamental), which is wisdom, art, and reason; and spiritual (suggestive of light as a medium by which we see). Man sees by light and “nature has a light that shines like the sun; and as the light of the sun [which allows man to distinguish colors] exceeds the light of the moon, so the light of nature far exceeds the power of the eyes,” and by the radiance of nature’s light one can know it (43). Paracelsus mentions a third light “through which man experiences, learns, and fathoms the supernatural. Those who seek in the light of nature speak from knowledge of nature; but those who seek in the light of man speak from knowledge of super-nature” (43-4). Paracelsus’ epistemology relies on light from without (how we know nature) and light from within (how we know God). Paracelsus’ inner light incorporates thought and functions like the uncreated light:39 “Thoughts give birth to a creative force that is neither elemental nor sidereal. … Thoughts create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy, from which new arts flow. … When a man create[s] something, he establishes a new heaven, as it were, and from it the work that he desires to create flows into him” (45). The light of reason is greater than the light of nature, and with that light, man can create the same way the uncreated, original light creates, for that light is in us: “For He Himself [God] says he is in us” (45). The reader hears this echoed in Milton’s “what in me is dark / Illumine”40 (PL I.22-3) and “so much the rather thou, celestial light, shine

39 See my definition of terms in the Introduction, pp. 5-7. 40This incorporates Augustine’s visio spiritualis again, to some degree. Also, considering Grosseteste’s widespread influence in early modern science and theology, his “divine illumination” must also be considered as a possible source for Milton here. See pp. 28-29 of this chapter for Grosseteste’s visual theory and illumination.

inward” (III.51), by which Milton implies, “that I may create the invisible to be seen.” Light is so important because it is that by which we see, and the ability to see grants us knowledge. For Paracelsus seeing is knowledge and knowledge is the ability to see. Hence Milton’s blindness is literally wisdom shut out at one entrance. Though Paracelsus never speaks to a specific theory of vision, he made it clear that the eye can still be relied on “for certitude and a defense against the possibility of skepticism” (Lindberg 141).41 Anatomical work excelled in the Renaissance, but it did little to advance theories of vision despite important discoveries. Charles Daremberg argues that in historical context Andreas Vesalius’s Fabrica “was nothing but a revised, corrected, and much improved edition of Galen’s anatomical writings” (quoted in Temkin 134-35). Daremberg makes a fair assessment, but he would likely agree that, in terms of sight, “revised, corrected” anatomical models of the eye helped advance visual theory. Vesalius proved that optic nerves were solid and leaned toward the retina as the seat of visual power. He was skeptical of Galen’s belief in the role of the crystalline humour, which Vesalius referred to simply as a specillum, “looking glass” (Lindberg 173). Though he did little with visual theory, Vesalius’s anatomy of the eye aided later theories. Johannes Kepler’s initial interest in optics was fueled by astronomical phenomena, probably beginning with the 10 July 1600 solar eclipse. Astronomical phenomena perhaps fueled Galileo’s own interest in vision. Kepler recognized that all “astronomical observation depends for its validity on a proper understanding of visual theory” (Lindberg 187). Galileo said little about visual theory, but he did delineate all senses, especially the “other four,” as nothing more than “shapes and numbers and motions” (Assayer 277). As for sight, Galileo called it “the sense eminent above all others” (277). Lorraine Daston calls this a “Renaissance commonplace” (“Galilean Analogies” 304) and a clear part of Milton’s culture, and the foundation upon which he would have built his own understanding of vision. Kepler’s own familiarity with this idea would have no doubt forced him to construct a careful theory.

41 The quote is based on William of Ockham’s theory, but more should be said in regards to Skepticism. It was passed down from Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism, and it became a key to denouncing the senses. The suspension of judgment the Pyrrhonist employs suggests that the senses, especially the eyes, can never perceive the truth. It takes the basic tenants of Pyrrhonism to an extreme specificity. Rather than simply discounting experimental results for the sake of not knowing whether they can ever permanently prove unchangeable, the Pyrrhonist argues that the five senses are “blinded.” First, they are blinded by a lack of even knowing whether they are the only senses that will ever be available to us. A fuller discussion is best left to the cultural views of blindness addressed in Chapter Two.

Kepler’s problem with perspectivists was that they were still stuck in the ancient world, where the eye must “feel” (touch). However, advances in anatomy helped refute many ancient theories. Felix Platter’s proof of the lack of pneuma in the lens, and Vesalius’s proof that the crystalline humour was simply a “specillum,” left only one possibility for the seat of visual power, the retina. Kelper’s Theory of the Retinal image is almost completely geometric.42 For the physical understanding of vision, Kepler deferred to others, but clearly believed in “spirit,’ “species,” and “impression” to some extent, evidenced by his Paralipomena.43 Additionally, Kepler has a rather unique connection to Galen, as far as the role of nature: “Nature has devised an excellent plan” in its placement of the retina (Paralipomena; quoted in Lindberg 202). Kepler’s acknowledgement of nature, echo’s Galen’s acknowledgement of nature and a Creator, and neither is far from Paracelsus’ belief that God gave us eyes to see and know Him and nature. For Lindberg, Kepler does not “revolutionize” as much as he advances medieval vision; neither does Kepler mechanize vision, as others argue,44 but he did set the stage for mechanization. 1.6 Mechanization of Sight In order “for sense perceptions to inform the new natural knowledge” and to address the growing “demands of the visual culture,” Stuart Clark argues, “they [perceptions] had to be seen as signs … standing in relation to [natural events] … ‘as words … signify objects’” (336). This is where the mechanical approach of Descartes and Hobbes provided a foundation. Descartes and Hobbes began with a simple explanation for visual disparities: “The world was never what it appeared to be,” despite the long accepted theory of species and the widespread faith once placed in the eye; therefore, “it could hardly matter that individual visual perceptions repeatedly failed to live up to its [the world’s] ‘reality’” (Clark 336). Because no species are transmitted, neither films, nor atoms, men and women see only an image created in their minds and not the thing itself. This dichotomy created the need for an epistemological overhaul. Descartes constructs an inanimate world to explain his mechanical philosophy in Du Monde (The World), or Treatise on Light. For Margaret J. Osler “The study of light and vision played a central role in Descartes’s philosophy. … [and] it was one of the most thoroughly

42 Lindberg describes the entire process in Theories of Vision, pp. 193-202. 43 Ibid., p. 204. Lindberg quotes at length from this text, pp. 152-53. 44 See Crombie’s “Mechanistic Hypothesis,” p. 54; “Early Concepts of the Senses,” pp. 108-11; and Straker’s “Kepler’s Optics,” pp. 423-24, 450, 482, 498, 521-23. Lindberg also cites these. See pp. 207 and 281 n 123.

developed aspects of his mechanical philosophy” (139), but despite his innovations, “his treatment of light and vision was rooted in ancient and medieval discussions” (124). The likely source for Descartes’s use of light in his theory of vision is al-Hazen (see Osler 124-5). The difference is in the action of the light that enters the eye. For Descartes, light and vision are both products of matter in motion. Descartes believed that light was part of everything: either a thing produces, reflects, or receives (observes) light. One sees because of light’s interaction with things, and that interaction is caused by motion. Descartes differentiates between objects and what one sees: “In putting forward an account of light, the first thing I want to draw to your attention is … a difference between the sensation we have of it … and what is in the objects that produces that sensation in us” (The World 3). Descartes’s lux is like Roger Bacon’s.45 It is the luminous body or the object emitting light; however, the lumen for Descartes is merely one’s perception of it, not actual emanating light. The perception is based on Descartes’s secondary qualities, which “result from the interaction between the primary qualities and our senses” (Osler 126). All these perceptions and interactions are caused by motion, and motion is caused by light that is also caused by motion.46 In order to explain his theory of visual perception, Descartes uses three comparisons, or illustrations, in his Optics, but only the first is relevant: “Consider light as nothing else … than a certain movement or action, very rapid and very lively, which passes toward our eyes through the medium of the air … in the same manner that the movement or resistance of the bodies that this blind man encounters is transmitted to his hand through the medium of his stick” (quoted in Osler 129). This is the exact analogy the Stoics used to reduce sight to touch. In his earliest known statement on sense perception Descartes invokes Democritus and Aristotle: perceptions occur “in the same way in which wax takes on an impression from a seal” (Rules X:412; quoted in Wolf-Devine 18). There is no touch here, only motion, which is the displacement of particles in the medium. “Nothing material passes from the object to our eyes to make us see … [and ]

45 See definition of terms in the Introduction, pp. 5-7. 46 Descartes uses fire to explain the motion of light: “When it burns wood or other similar material we can see with our eyes that it moves the small parts of the wood, separating them from one another” (The World 6). From there, Descartes sets up a pathology for light and motion by first identifying three elements made of the same matter that differ only because of their size: fire has the smallest particles; air has slightly larger particles; and earth has the largest particles (see Osler 126-7). Descartes’s air acted as a medium to transfer the motions of the light. For Descartes, rays of light are composed of streams of particles in motion, and when these motions strike the surface of the eye, they cause a sensation of light. The soul interprets the motions of light in the eye as an image (129).

32 there is nothing in the object similar to the sensations we have of it” (Osler 130). The eye then transfers the motions to the brain instantaneously, “just as pulling on the ends of a very taut cord makes the other end move at the same instant” (Optics; quoted in Osler 134). The taut cord is like the stick and like Galen’s analogy of the pneuma as a nerve. The resultant motions produce images in the brain, but those images cannot be compared directly to the object that produced the original motions; “otherwise[,] there would be no distinction between the object and its image” (Optics; quoted in Osler 135). For Thomas Hobbes, just as for Descartes, one’s perception does not resemble anything in reality. There are no species: “Images of objects are in the fancie, and … they fly not through the air” (See Tuck, “Hobbes and Descartes,” 25-26). Hobbes argues that “whatsoever accidents or qualities our senses make us think there be in the world, they are not there, but are seemings and apparitions only” (The Elements of Law and Natural Politic 3-4). Paradise Lost is wrought with “seemings.” Throughout the poem many things “seem” and are often “like” another thing but are rarely identified as that particular thing in and of itself. For example, Satan often appears “godlike” or “like God,” but he is not God. It is a concept just as readily applied to skepticism, where the Pyrrhonist can only describe things as they “appear” or the way they “seem” to a particular individual. Things may appear or seem like something else entirely to another person. It was, for the Skeptics of the Renaissance, the definitive proof of the subjectivity of vision. The only way to address the problem was to use language; therefore, many natural philosophers were reduced to descriptions, analogies, and similes that employed “like,” “seem,” and “appear.” Galileo employed such techniques to describe astronomical phenomena he saw through the telescope. And aside from the elusive descriptions of Satan, the blind Milton employed the technique to describe images as they appeared in his mind. The problem was that everyone produced a completely different image in his or her mind. One of Hobbes’s earliest statements on vision and light appears in a letter to William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle: “motion is only in [the] medium, and light and coulor are but the effects of that motion in [the] brayne” (Letter 21; 38). Noel Malcolm argues that “optics was the one [science] that most strongly engaged Hobbes’s attention, because of its implications for epistemology” (218). So “we can safely say that the entire Hobbesian project was built on the

foundations of a theory of vision”47 (Clark 333). The foundation of Hobbes’s philosophy is the same as Descartes’s, with whom Hobbes aligns himself: Descartes “hath sett forth the true principles of this doctrine, namely that the images of objects are in the fancie, and that they fly not through the aire … but are made in the braine by the operation of the objects themselves” (“A Minute or First Draft of the Optics,” quoted in Clark 344). The operation is motion, by which one sees and knows. Like Descartes, Hobbes argued that the image in the brain is the result of motion and is not the object “seen.” The blind man’s stick analogy works here, too. The difference is that the impressions are made by motion, and the mental images and real objects cannot match up (see Clark 345). “In a sense, both Hobbes and Descartes consider the relationship between vision and the visible world as the product of an illusion” (Prins 138). Nothing is as it “seems.” For Hobbes sight is reconciled through language by an artificial consensus. Bernard Gert cautions readers not to take at face value Hobbes’s own words regarding the epistemological nature of the senses (158): “For there is no conception in a mans mind, which hath not at first … been begotten upon the organs of Sense” (Hobbes, Leviathan 13). One must not infer this is a restatement of the Scholastic claim that all intellect is a direct result of the senses. “Hobbes differs from standard empiricism in that he appreciates that language is included in that which was first begotten upon the organs of sense, and he explicitly says of understanding that it is ‘nothing else but conception caused by speech’” (Gert 158; see Leviathan Chapters 2 and 4).48 For example, Hobbes considers a man blind since birth who gains the use of his eyes. When this blind man looks at different colors, he can tell the difference between them, but someone must teach him what consensus has determined to signify each color (from Elements of Law; see Clark 346). Galileo would agree: “I think that tastes, odors, colors, and so on are no more than mere names so far as the object in which we place them is concerned, and that they reside only in the

47 Much work has been done to demonstrate Milton’s awareness of Descartes’s and Hobbes’s mechanical philosophies (See especially Stephen M. Fallon’s Milton among the Philosophers). Considering that awareness, Milton no doubt understood that their projects were founded on theories of light and vision. 48 Hobbes elaborates additionally in Chapter 3: “There is no other act of man's mind, that I can remember, naturally planted in him, so as to need no other thing to the exercise of it but to be born a man, and live with the use of his five senses. Those other faculties […] which seem proper to man only, are acquired and increased by study and industry, and of most men learned by instruction and discipline, and proceed all from the invention of words and speech. For besides sense, and thoughts, and the train of thoughts, the mind of man has no other motion; though by the help of speech, and method, the same faculties may be improved to such a height as to distinguish men from all other living creatures” (23; emphasis mine). By speech (and the invention of words) man can place his senses them on a surer foundation.

consciousness” (The Assayer 274). Some of the best known natural philosophers of the seventeenth century relied on artificial constructions of the visual world as did the blind Milton. An artificial visual construction of the world rests solely on the idea that the object is one thing and the perception of it is another. Hobbes makes this most clear in the first chapter of his Leviathan, “Of Sense.”49 For Hobbes, just as for Descartes, nothing we “see” or perceive in our minds resembles anything in reality. So it is with what the blind Milton saw in his mind, and Hobbes’s and Descartes’s theories of vision had a profound impact on Milton’s poetics. 1.7 Medicine and “Physick” of the Renaissance Nearly every Renaissance treatise on the eye has a recipe for eyebright water.50 It is made up of herbs and water for consumption or for instilling in the eyes, much like the way Michael instills three drops into Adam’s eyes “from the well of life” (PL XI.416). Milton also mentions fennel in the serpent’s temptation of Eve. For the serpent, the fruit has a “savoury odour” that “more pleased my sense / than smell of sweetest fennel” (IX.579, 580-81). Fowler points out that fennel was thought to be part of the serpent’s diet to renew it and sharpen its sight in spring (Fowler 504 n581-3). Milton reveals an understanding of this in An Apology: “now I know it was this equall temper of his affections that gave him to see clearer then any fenell rub'd Serpent” (1642, p. 29). The serpent’s promise that the forbidden fruit offered clearer sight is now much more suggestive. Milton was familiar with Renaissance eye treatises, which were numerous, though they mostly contained the same information. I will focus primarily on two of the most prevalent, beginning with Walter Bayley’s A Breefe Treatise Concerning the Preservation of the Eye Sight.51 Bayley’s findings rest heavily on his eyewitness accounts of successful treatments as

49 The thoughts of men “are … a Representation or Apparence, of some quality, or other Accident of a body without us; which is commonly called an Object” (13). The quality or accident is light. More accurately it is matter in motion, which “pressing, rubbing, or striking the Eye makes us fancy a light” (14). This leads into his argument against species and material efflux, “for if those Colours … were in the … Objects that cause them, they could not be severed from them” (14). And finally, “though at some certain distance, the reall, and very object seem invested with the fancy it begets in us; Yet still the object is one thing, the image or fancy is another” (14). 50 A few examples include the anonymous Eye cleard; or a preservative for the sight, Walter Bayley’s A briefe treatise touching the preservation of the eie sight, and Andre Du Laurens’s A discourse of the preseruation of the sight. Complete lists of herbs for preserving sight or curing eye afflictions are also found in John Gerard’s Herbal and Elyot’s Castel of Helth, where he calls fennel and eyebright “Thynges good for the eyes.” Other works on eyesight, eyes, and their preservation include Jacques Guillemeau’s A treatise of one hundred and thirteene diseases of the eyes, and eye-liddes (translated by Anthony Hunton and published in England in 1622) and George Hakewill’s The vanitie of the eye (which was “First begun for the comfort of a gentlewoman bereaved of her sight”). 51 The edition I use here was published in Two Treatises Concerning the Preservation of Eie-sight (1616).

well as on others’ “testimonies.” Of particular interest to Milton may have been the testimony of a man whose sight began to decay at age 40: “Hee told me that … he did vse Eiebright in ale for his drinke, and did also eate the powder thereof in an egge three daies in a weeke, being so taught by his father, who by the like order continued his sight in good integrity to a very long age” (11). Many testimonies attribute sharper sight and its longevity to particular treatments. Aside from all these testimonies, the preservation of eyesight is still influenced by Galen. Bayley claimed vision was affected by diet, exercise, “wind,” “vapors” caused by belching, not combing one’s hair enough to release vapors, etc., and he cites many sources, from Galen to Avicenna. We know that Milton was “windy.” He tells Philaras, “I noticed my sight becoming weak and growing dim, and at the same time my spleen and all my viscera burdened and shaken with flatulence”52 (CPW IV.2, 869). Flatulence was thought to cause excess vapors. It is easy to speculate about how far Milton was willing to go to preserve or recover his sight while reading various treatments for the eyes. Bayley lists an array of unusual ingredients, including the urine of a child. More dangerous treatments include bleeding or applying “oyl of vitriol” (sulfuric acid). Purgation was thought to help rid the body of excess vapors and humours. Bayley also counsels to participate in “Exercises [which] are needful,” especially after “the excrements are voided” (16). He also warns of “overplying” the eyes: “I wish you might after meate for beare writing by the space of three hours” (16). The other work I wish to focus on is Andre Du Laurens’s A discourse of the preseruation of the sight.53 For Du Laurens, the brain possesses the goodliest powers—“all the instruments of motion, sense, imagination, discourse and memorie” (3)—and the seat of reason (6). The senses are also faithful and “proper messengers of the soule” (9). Du Laurens’s epistemology is Aristotelian and Paracelsian: “nothing … can enter the understanding part of our minde, except it passe through one of these five doors” (the senses) (9). Du Laurens does not praise the senses without warning: “For oftentimes doe they make captive [reason]” (11). It is dangerous to rely solely upon the senses because they can steal one’s liberty: “How many soules have lost their libertie through the sight of the eyes?” (12).54 Du Laurens suggests that the senses are entrances for more than just wisdom. Milton would ask men and women to judge for themselves as he does in Areopagitica: “Read any books what ever

52 Kerrigan addresses the issue between Milton’s digestion and blindness (Sacred Complex 202-3). 53 Published in 1597, it was translated into English by Richard Surphlet and published in England in 1599. 54 The Old Testament story of David and Bathsheba comes to mind, not to mention Eve to some degree.

come to thy hands, for thou art sufficient both to judge aright, and to examine each matter” (1005). One must use reason to judge “aright” what the senses collect. In Chapter III, Du Laurens continues the tradition that “the Sight is the Noblest of All the Rest of the Senses,” and he offers four proofs. The first proof, the variety of objects sight represents to the soul, recalls Aristotle’s Metaphysics, where sight “most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things” (I.1). Du Laurens argues that everything is invented or discovered because of sight (13). Sight also provides a testimony of God by allowing men and women to view his works and creations (14). The second proof is sight’s means of operation. Unlike the other senses, sight works in an instant (16). For example, we see lightning before we hear thunder (17). The third proof is the “certaintie of the function. For it is out of all doubt that this is the most infallible sence, and that which least deceiueth” (17). The idea, widely held in the Renaissance, can be traced back through Paracelsus and Ockham. In the Renaissance, then, to see was certainly to believe (and to know). In the fourth proof, Du Laurens perpetuates the belief that there is fire in the eyes. That fire in the eyes is “the light, which is of an heavenly offspring, and which the poets call the eldest daughter of God” (18). Of that light Milton says, “Before the sun / Before the heavens thou wert” (PL III.8-9), and by that light, God created the heavens and the earth. Du Laurens ultimately argues, “we were borne only to see” (18), and by that sight, men and women attain knowledge. Despite a heavy Galenic influence on his anatomy and physiology of the eye, Du Laurens adheres strictly to the Aristotelian intromission theory. The remainder of Du Laurens’s discussion of the eye and sight covers eye injury, disease, and particular remedies and preservatives similar to what many others describe from Galen to Bayley and beyond. Perhaps most intriguing is Du Laurens’s identification of all the causes of blindness (see 48-49). Du Laurens’s counsel for the preservation of sight (see 59-65) reads a lot like Walter Bayley’s.55 Du Laurens also offers a special warning regarding the passions, which “doe much hurt the sight, but above the rest, melancholike dumpes and much weepings.” And his final chapter, “Select and choice remedies” (65), is little more than a regurgitation of other processes and recipes

55 Du Laurens advises maintaining a good diet and breathing good air; avoiding bad wind and bad light; knowing what color is good, what meat and drink are good, and what bread is good; and understanding “the proper use of salt, spices, herbes, and fruites.” Also the quality and quantity of drink can make a difference, as well as watching and sleeping and exercise of the whole body and of the eye.

already mentioned.56 Treatises like Bayley’s and Du Laurens’s were so widespread in the Renaissance that it is safe to assume Milton was aware of all their suggested remedies. 1.8 Milton’s Vision Throughout this chapter I have identified aspects of vision and blindness in general and Milton’s blindness as the poet himself described it. The most careful descriptions about Milton’s failing eyes are in his own words. In Sonnet XXII Milton reveals important psychological and physical aspects about his blindness. His eyes are “clear / To outward view, of blemish or of spot” and “Bereft of light.” Further, Milton is supported by “the conscience … to have lost them [his eyes] overplied / In liberty’s defense, my noble task.” Psychologically, Milton wants his reader to understand that he has accepted his condition, the result of his “noble task.” Milton explains the psychological toll further in terms of things which he can no longer see—sun, moon, stars, man, woman, etc.—much the way he lists similar things in Book III of Paradise Lost: day, even, morn, vernal bloom, human face divine, etc. Physically, Milton describes a condition that offers no outward manifestation of his blindness. This is important because early modern physicians believed that eye diseases had clear outward signs. Milton’s diction adds further depth to his view. “Bereft” means “forcibly deprived, robbed, having lost the possession or use of” (OED). It speaks both to punishment and robbery, perhaps by some evil force or simply disease, which was a manifestation of evil for Paracelsus. When compared to the persona in Sonnet XIX “When I consider how my light is spent,” the reader cannot help but consider the removal of a talent too long wasted. Milton’s descriptions of his blindness to Leonard Philaras are more intimate: “I noticed my sight becoming weak and growing dim … And even in the morning, if I began as usual to read, I noticed that my eyes felt immediate pain deep within and turned from reading, though later refreshed after moderate bodily exercise” (CPW IV.2, 869). Barbara K. Lewalski points out that Milton also makes known in this letter that “‘It is ten years, I think, more or less’ since he began to notice these symptoms” (599 n104), and she cites Edward Phillips’s revelation that Milton was “perpetually tampering with Physick” (EL 72). Milton certainly knew as much about the eye as anything else, so how much of Milton’s “later refreshed after moderate bodily

56 Du Laurens mentions the purging of the body and of the brain, the use of herbs and plants (euphrasy, rue, fennel, etc.), the friction created by the rubbing the head (like combing), and even the washing of the head (see 65- 71).

exercise” is his attempt to delude himself based upon contemporary prescriptions? Exercise is supposed to help, so it did. In another letter when Milton describes the warning he received from doctors, he mentions their “learned predictions that if I should undertake this task [the business of replying to the royal defense], I would shortly lose both eyes” (CPW IV.1, 587-8). The “learned predictions” suggest a precedent for Milton’s condition. One commonly assumed cause of blindness shared by a host of ancient and early modern physicians fits. Like Galen, whose painter or copyist too often looked at white canvas or paper, Milton’s doctors based their predictions on his profession as a writer and translator who too often looked at paper. By 1651, according to Lewalski, Milton “may have been trying some last desperate measures to stave off blindness … [and] a later letter to … Philaras contains a poignant account of his symptoms and sensations at this time” (259): “some months before my sight was completely destroyed, everything … still seemed to swim, now to the right, now to the left” (CPW IV.2, 869). Milton continues on to talk about “vapors,” in harmony with the humoural excess dripping between the cornea and crystalline humour, but the idea that his sight was destroyed is violent. Milton suggests the action of an agent. He doesn’t say “before I lost my sight” or “before my sight was gone,” but before it was “completely destroyed.” Cyriak Skinner “referes to the ‘Issues and Seatons’ used in an effort to save or retrieve the sight of Milton’s blinded eye, concluding that the treatment may have hastened the loss of his other eye’ (EL 28)” (Lewalski 259-60).57 The treatments included “piercing the skin just below the hairline, [and] passing through the holes a hot cautery with a diamond point and then a needle with a thread dipped in egg white and rose oil … [and] cupping, bloodletting, caustics applied to the back of the head, and violent laxative purges” (260). Pursuit of these treatments shows Milton’s confidence in or desperation for treatments that claimed to cure eye ailments. Milton understood the medical practices and theories regarding the eye in his age. His self-proclaimed pursuit of medicine, procedures, and even men of “physick” are evidence of that, as are his careful explanations of his condition that reveal knowledge beyond that of the average man of letters in the Renaissance. This chapter has also made clear that Milton’s understanding of vision rested on the same foundation as general Renaissance theories of vision. Milton’s understanding reached into the ancient world, where his knowledge of ancient texts would have

57 Kerrigan refutes sources that suggest any treatment hastened the loss of Milton’s sight (203-4).

39 given him easy access to an understanding of ancient theories. Pre-Atomists like Anaxagoras provided Milton with the foundation for a basic theory of cognition. Knowledge comes through the senses and mostly through sight. Sight always perceives the true characteristics of a thing, but reason is necessary to ascertain the underlying qualities. Although the senses cannot teach all things, one can learn nothing without them. So it is for Milton: “Objects divine / Must needs impair and weary human sense” (PL XII.9-10), but blindness can shut out “wisdom at one entrance” (III.50). It is why Milton asks the “celestial light” to “shine inward” (III.52-3), and the things he sees that are invisible to mortal sight are the underlying qualities or essences of things. The importance of reason to discern visual perceptions is also found in the works of Galen, Paracelsus, Du Laurens, and many others. The Atomists provided Milton with a framework to work against. Milton attacks the effluence of atoms when describing chaos. When Satan traverses chaos, so eagerly the fiend O’er bog or steep, through straight, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way, And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies: At length a universal hubbub wild Of stunning sounds and voices all confused Borne through the hollow dark assaults his ear With loudest vehemence. (II.947-54) Fowler notes that these lines are “miming the atomized, unstructured state of chaos, and its hectic confusion of sense-data” (948-50n). In these lines we find the same criticism Aristotle had for the Atomists’ theory of vision. If all things are constantly emanating atoms, those atoms must necessarily be altered by colliding into one another. The nature of chaos provides no clear path for the atoms, so the material efflux that comes in contact with Satan has been altered so much that he cannot rightly perceive its smell, touch, or sound. Buried within these lines is also a critique of Aristotle. Milton’s use of “dense” and “rough” are terms similar to those that Francis Bacon identifies in his Novum Organum as “Idols or mis-apprehensions arising from the mutual contracts, and also citations of Men … For Men are associated by speech, but words are imposed according to the vulgar capacity; therefore a vitious and an improper imposition of words doth wonderfully mislead and clog the

Understanding” (5). Bacon goes on to explain that these “mis-apprehensions … are of two sorts. 1. The names of things which are not … 2. Or the names of things which are but confused, ill determined, rashly, and unequally abstracted from things” (8). The latter are faulty, vague, or misleading names for things that do exist. According to Bacon, abstract qualities and value terms can be a particular source of confusion; e.g., “moist,” “useful,” etc. (8-9). Hobbes’s own problem with such abstract words was undoubtedly influenced by Bacon, but also the result of Hobbes’s visual theory. Abstract words such as “moist” and “useful” do not paint an accurate enough picture for the senses. Like many ancient and medieval philosophers, Milton placed a great deal of importance on light. His invocation to light in Paradise Lost is evidence of that. The invocation also demonstrates the need for light in order to see, without and within. From Plato to Hobbes, physical light provided the basis for the eyes to see. From Plato to Paracelsus, spiritual light provided the basis for the eyes to see spiritual things within, like Milton’s “holy light.” Plato’s and Paracelsus’ divine light was also responsible for creation, like Milton’s “holy light.” The additional references made to Milton’s poetry and prose in this chapter have further connected Milton to ancient and medieval theories of vision and light. Such connections also demonstrate the influence of these theories on seventeenth-century culture in general. Throughout the remainder of this study, the philosophical, physiological, and theological treatments of sight and its instrument, the eye, will continue to provide the framework in which I approach Milton, his culture, and his work. This framework will provide an understanding of the effects of vision and blindness on Milton’s poetry, and in the following chapter it will help demonstrate the general cultural perceptions of blindness and its consequences.

CHAPTER TWO VISIONS OF BLINDNESS

Ancient literature represents blindness in many ways. Often blindness is healed or sight is improved, but neither is always literal or physical. In the Iliad Diomedes was not physically blind, but Athena “lifted the mist … so you can tell a god from a man on sight” (V.140-2). Similarly, Aphrodite tears “away the cloud / That curtains” and “films” Aeneas’ “mortal sight” (Aeneid II.795-6). The restoration of Saul of Tarsus’s sight is physical and spiritual. Scales fell from his eyes, “and he received sight” (Acts 9:18). In Paradise Lost Adam’s sight is enhanced by the removal of a film (XI.411-20). Alastair Fowler (Milton 621 n411-12) cites a Renaissance source for Milton’s preparation of Adam’s eyes: That cloud of flesh in which for times of old All mankind wrapped is, I take from thee, And from thy senses their thick mist unfold, That face to face thou mayest these spirits see … (Tasso Jerusalem Delivered 18.XCIII.737-42) Tasso suggests that mortal eyes are clouded by flesh and cannot see spiritual things. Milton echoes this idea in Paradise Lost when Michael tells Adam that “objects divine / Must needs impair and weary human sense” (XII.9-10). Despite these and numerous classical, biblical, and contemporary examples of a hero or servant of God having sight restored or improved, Milton does not ask for divine restoration of his physical sight. And in his poetic representations of blindness, when one of his blind figures is on the verge of questioning God on the role of his blindness, “Patience … prevent[s] / That murmur” (Sonnet XIX.8-9).58 Despite his fervor in tracking down curatives for the eyes and doctors who may have been able to help him,59 Milton does not actively seek divine intervention60 like the man next to the pool at Siloam begging Jesus to heal him (see John 9)—an account meant to unlink sin and disability in the Christian

58 There is some debate as to the numbering of Milton’s sonnets. Although I quote from the John Carey edition of the sonnets, I take my numbering from the recent edition of Milton’s poetry edited by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon. 59 See Milton’s letters to Philaras, especially the ones I identify in chapter one. 60 There is nothing extant in Milton’s surviving writings or in other’s writings about him except for his brief mention to Philaras that he would not refuse aid, which may be divinely offered (See CPW IV.2.868).

mindset—and so, likewise, Milton avoids such divine intervention in poetic representations of blindness. The conspicuous absence of invocations for divine aid to recover sight in Milton’s poetry has to do with more than just acceptance for his own condition. Milton wrote to Philaras: “I … resign myself as if the case were quite incurable,” and he finds comfort in believing that “he cannot see by the eyes alone, but by the guidance and the wisdom of God?” (CPW IV.2.870). Milton has not just resigned himself to physical blindness, but he also intends to see more by divine guidance. Therefore, he constructs for Sonnet XIX a poetic representation of one kind of acceptance. And Sonnet XIX is also the foundation of the way Milton would contemplate blindness and would, perhaps, come to understand his own blindness more specifically. The contemplation of blindness in Milton’s oeuvre was only partially influenced by contemporary sources and culture. Milton chose not to align his poetic representations of blindness with the restoration or improvement of the eyes in the above examples because he chose a model more relevant to his station as a poet-prophet who needed divine aid to write. Shortly after the allusions to gutta serena and dim suffusion in the invocation to Book III of Paradise Lost, the narrator identifies himself with key blind figures from antiquity: “Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides, / And Tiresias and Phineus prophets old” (III.35-6). Of all the blind men and women in history, real and fictional, Milton identifies these men, so it is important to understand their blindness culturally to help us better understand Milton’s approach to blindness. Like chapter one, this chapter is historical in nature. It focuses on social (cultural) constructions of blindness from ancient Greece to early modern England and how those constructions led to treatment of the blind. The Middle Ages introduces numerous negative stereotypes that find a mixed reception in Renaissance art and literature, which makes the treatment of blindness in the early modern period the most ambivalent of the periods I discuss. The broad overview of blindness does shows a trend toward tolerance, but many medieval prejudices continued through the seventeenth century. These prejudices, along with heavy classical influence, shaped Milton’s understanding of blindness and the way he approached it in his literature. While some limited work has been done to situate Milton’s medical condition culturally, less has been done to situate Milton’s blindness culturally in terms of the treatment and presentation of that disability. Blindness often invited questions about one’s moral status, and it often reclassified people in terms of their station. I argue that Milton’s enemies’ views of

blindness as a punishment reflect an outdated, negative stereotype of blind persons, so Milton chose to combat it with a revived positive stereotype. This battle to define and redefine blindness constructed Milton’s own “visions” of blindness as much as anything else. In the end, I argue how, and with what results, Milton deploys blindness in his poetry as a literary trope and resource, in reconciliation with and sometimes at odds with the tenets of others. 2.1 Disability Theory In the last twenty years the theoretical approach to disability in literature has helped to identify the presence and purpose of the disabled in literature, and it has helped define disability and identify society’s role in constructing it. Martha L. Rose has gone as far as to argue that all disabilities are a social construction; however, other critics limit the role society plays in constructing disabilities61 because those identified as “disabled” are at least “differently-abled.” Most critics agree that the idea of disability means something different depending on the time and place. Within the last five to ten years disability studies has made significant progress in identifying and redefining disability from the ancient to the medieval worlds. In ancient Greece, although many people were socially identified by a disability, a term for disability or any equivalent did not exist. Many disabled were more closely aligned with terminology synonymous with deformity or teratological classifications. Therefore, the use of the terms “disability” and “deformity” poses a problem. Without an ancient Greek equivalent, use of the term “disability” is, at best, an attempt to impose a modern definition on an ancient condition. Nicole Kelley suggests that Greeks’ “estimation of an individual’s physical (dis)ability depended on how well he or she was able to meet the demands of family and civic life” (34). So a person who society calls disabled today might have never been viewed as “disabled” in ancient Greece if he or she met the demands prescribed for his or her station. Likewise, “any definition of deformity is bound to be partial and subjective … It is the eye of the beholder … which determines the standard of presumed normality” (Garland 5). For example, Polyphemus may appear to be deformed because he is a Cyclops, but it is Odysseus and his “binocular” companions who appear deformed to the Cyclops (5). Additionally, congenital blindness is interpreted as a deformity and a disability, but the onset of it later in life is merely a disability (5-6). Rose has argued that disability has always varied from one

61 See Robert Garland’s Eye of the Beholder (“Introduction”) and also Nicole Kelley’s “Deformity and Disability in Greece and Rome” in This Abled Body, pp. 31-46.

individual to another (2). Therefore, I use disability and deformity throughout this chapter (and the next) reluctantly but with the idea that “these terms still are able to capture the Greco-Roman notion that physically extraordinary individuals fell short of bodily or aesthetic ideals” (Kelley 34). The problem of these terms extends into the early modern world, but their use offers clarification and consistency when addressing the physical limitations identified throughout the periods this chapter covers. My approach to understanding the treatment of the blind in religious and literary texts utilizes Edward Wheatley’s religious and social models of disability.62 Wheatley’s focus on the Middle Ages allows him to cover a broad expanse of English and French literature on the subject and to identify most of the stereotypes. The stereotypes I address are those most directly involved in the construction of blindness as a disability in Milton’s day. Despite my focus on the blind Milton in my attempt to reconstruct the life of blind persons in the Renaissance, I encounter the same problem as Wheatley—written accounts of how a blind person lived are rare—so I rely heavily on religious and literary texts as reflections of cultural perceptions. Throughout this chapter and the next, different aspects of disability studies inform different time periods. In the ancient world I focus on identity and representation, and in the medieval and early modern worlds, I address how disability became a memento mori for the fate of the “normal” body (see Davis Disability Studies Reader XV). Lennard Davis has argued that we must historicize disability “in similarly complex ways to the way race, class, and gender have been theorized” (xvi). So this chapter historicizes blindness by demonstrating the treatment of the blind, society’s reactions to the blind, and the identity of the blind, through society at large, the blind person’s own work, and the blind person’s disability. Ultimately, as Zina Weygand contends, I mean “to take into account the image the sighted have of blindness and the blind” (5- 6), and also to take into account the image the blind Milton had of blindness and of himself. 2.2 Blindness in Ancient Greece Milton’s specific reference to four blind men from the ancient Greek world provides a good starting point. Ancient Greek literature provides us with multiple blind characters, but

62 See his “Introduction” and Chapter 1, “Crippling the Middle Ages, Medievalizing Disability Theory,” in Stumbling Blocks for the Blind. Wheatley “medievalizes” disability theory. Wheatley also explains the difficulty in trying to reconstruct the life of an actual blind person from the Middle Ages. The process of reconstruction is made easier for me insomuch that this study focuses on one such individual for whom we have a substantial amount of records (his own writings and that of others).

Rose warns “it is fallacious to transfer attitudes seen in the grand sweep of legend and tragedy to everyday life and to generalize” the way ancient cultures viewed blindness (79). Rose argues against Herbert C. Covey, who claims that “many Greeks viewed blindness as a fate worse than death. They saw blindness as a punishment from the gods” (Covey 192). Rose continues: “there is not enough relevant information to make … [such] conclusions about ancient Greek society” (79). We must not ignore Rose’s argument, but other critics contend that though we should be careful not to identify fiction with fact and simply generalize,63 or in this case we should be careful not to identify the fictional lives of the blind with the factual lives of the blind, both Eleftheria A. Bernidaki-Aldous and Nicole Kelley agree that ancient literature can be a reflection of society’s treatment of the disabled without suggesting such accounts are direct reflections of how they lived their lives. Finally, William Paulson suggests that blindness is not a phenomenon that exists independently. In other words, blindness is not merely the disability. Blindness “is also a cultural category constituted by those who write and speak of it” (4). Therefore, it is not a stretch to assume that cultural representations of blindness inspired literary examples or that those literary examples, in turn, inspired cultural representations of blindness. Homer, Tiresias, and Oedipus Rex “dominate most discussions of blindness in the ancient Greek world” (Rose 79). Oedipus’ blinding and subsequent blindness construct a complex ancient attitude towards this disability. For Bernidaki-Aldous Oedipus’ blinding is about the loss of light. In Greek drama, when a character is going to die, he or she almost always bids farewell to the light (11). Oedipus bids farewell to the light before blinding himself and before dying: “O light, I look upon you for the last time now” (Oedipus Tyranus 1182).64 The concept behind Oedipus’ self-inflicted blindness is echoed a few centuries later in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “If thy right offend thee, pluck it out” (Matt. 5:29). Oedipus will no longer “look upon” the light he invokes, perhaps because he no longer feels worthy of it: “the polluted person should not offend the sunlight with his presence” (Bernidaki-Aldous 22), or in this case, by looking upon it. Understanding this is important because “blindness can be understood in this context as some kind of death—at least a partial death” (18). Again, one cannot help but see a connection to Christian beliefs. This “partial death,” Oedipus cutting himself off from the light, might be

63 Another example of generalizing comes from Berthold Lowenfeld’s The Changing Status of the Blind: From Separation to Integration: “The two ways in which separation was practiced with the blind are annihilation and veneration” (14). 64 From the Oxford Classical Texts, translated by Benidaki-Aldous.

46 termed a spiritual death, which Christians would later understand as a separation from God. The ancient Greeks saw light “as ‘pure’ and ‘holy’” (21), and Christians later see God as a light that is pure and holy. In fact, light has been important for many religions: “Some faiths … have fashioned themselves ‘religions of light’; others … assigned a special role to sun gods like Apollo.” Light has found its “way into countless religious systems” (Jay 11-12). In nearly every religious system, then, the absence of light means the ultimate privation and even unimaginable horror. Well did the Chorus say to Oedipus, “Thou wert better dead than living blind” (Oedipus Rex 1:125).65 Light is not only necessary for sight; the chorus suggests that it is necessary for life. Milton does not invoke Oedipus as a blind figure, but he uses the Greek tradition of reverencing and addressing light in the invocations of Paradise Lost.66 One difference is that rather than offering a valediction the narrator of Book III greets the light after a “venture down / The dark descent” (19-20). Milton’s narrator cannot see the light, but he feels it: “Thee I revisit safe, / And feel thy sovereign vital lamp” (III.21-2). The key word here is “vital,” a highly charged word in seventeenth century natural philosophy that suggests the functions of all living things are animated by an immaterial force residing within them. Milton, then, makes light (“vital lamp”) life; it is that “soul” that gives life and controls the senses. Despite Milton’s belief that light is life, he does not align blindness with death, here, even metaphorically. This invocation of “holy light” and request for insight echo what Bernidaki-Aldous and Covey see as a Greek trend: though blindness was regarded as the “ultimate form of human suffering,” it can also be the “means of wisdom, insight, and power” (Bernidaki-Aldous 4). Milton’s poetic connection to the ancient Greek preoccupation with light is strengthened further by the tragedy he wrote in the Greek tradition, Samson Agonistes, where, like Paradise Lost, light plays a prominent role. Although there is a temptation to align Samson with Milton, Milton makes a clear separation of himself from the blind hero.67 There are similarities between Milton and Samson: “Milton like Samson is blind and under the thumb of triumphal enemies” (237). However, arguing that Samson is Milton is difficult.68

65 From Sophocles, trans. F. Storr, Loeb Classic Library (London: Heinemann, 1928). 66 See especially Books III and VII. 67 The most notable difference is Samson’s view of his blindness. Samson sees it as a punishment, and he also refers to himself as a sinner: two things Milton never says about himself. 68 One of the first to make the argument against Samson as Milton was Eleanor Gertrude Brown, whose 1934 study Milton’s Blindness warns that unlike Samson, Milton neither saw his blindness as a punishment nor

Milton loads the beginning of the poem with references to light and darkness, life and death. Each reference connects the poem to the ancient Greek tragedies’ regard to light and life: Light the prime work of God to me is extinct, And all her various objects of delight Annulled, which might in part my grief have eased, Inferior to the vilest now become Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me They creep, yet see … (70-75) In the beginning, God created light and by that light, He created everything else. The use of “delight” stands out because it is a compound word incorporating “light.” On Milton’s part the word can be read as a kind of transliteration: the Latin derivative de compounded with the English light. Reading the word this way creates multiple levels of meaning where Samson is concerned. “All her various objects” literally means everything, which has been created or brought to pass “out of” (de) light. Additionally, the Latin sense of the word as a prefix often negated the meaning of the word to which it was attached. So “all her various objects of delight / Anulled” creates a double negative for emphasis. The objects to which Samson refers are darkened and they also no longer exist for Samson because the light, to him, is extinct. Samson also identifies the eminence of sight. Even the “vilest” creatures excel Samson because they can see. Yet Samson still feels the presence of light: I dark in light exposed To daily fraud, contempt, abuse and wrong, Within doors, or without, still as a fool, In power of others, never in my own; Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half. (75-79) Samson knows his darkness is exposed in the light through which others see and take advantage of him. He is at the mercy of others, whether his captives or his guides. Images of the blind man and his guide abound in medieval and Renaissance art. It was an image that seemed to press upon writers and artists alike (see Barasch 104). Bernidaki-Aldous suggests that the blind man or woman’s need for a guide and even the old man or woman’s need for assistance are a sign of

identified himself as a sinner. Stephen Fallon is one of the most recent to make the same argument. Though “Milton writes about blindness [in SA] with a visceral poetic power informed by intimate and bitter experience” (Milton’s Peculiar Grace 252), Fallon comes to the same conclusion as Brown.

weakness. The stereotype that the blind and aged were weak and dependant on others reaches well into the Renaissance. A blind man led by a guide relinquishes his power (Barasch 148). Consider the account of Poor Tom (Edgar) leading Gloucester to his expected demise. Even then Gloucester does not have power over his own life. In a sense, blindness means to be powerless, and that is perhaps why it is so easily compared to castration.69 The above lines from Samson Agonistes end with a direct correlation of light to life and offer a unique perspective of Milton’s Sonnet XIX. When the persona considers “how my light is spent, / Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide” (1-2), one must consider that he refers to a half-life. As Samson cries, “Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half” (79), Milton’s blind persona considers darkness as death, or a precursor to death. Half of his days are or half of his life is gone with his eyesight. Samson’s sun is dark (86), so there truly is no “hope of day.” The following lines more clearly connect light and life, so no hope of day means no hope of life: Since light so necessary is to life, And almost life itself, if it be true That light is in the soul She all in every part; why was the sight To such a tender ball as the eye confined? (90-94) Samson’s question is revelatory for disability studies. Here the hero wonders why the eyes are made so vulnerable if they are to house the noblest sense. Samson might as well ask why some are consigned to a state of blindness. Samson’s question, I will show in the next section, is not without a biblical precedent: Why does God allow disabilities? More specifically, why did God “To such a tender ball” confine sight? For if the eyes were not so easily quenched, Then had I not been exiled from light; As in the land of darkness yet in light, To live a life half dead, a living death … (98-100) Again, Samson echoes “ere half my days,” where blindness is “a life half dead.” Samson consigns himself to death; he “sees” no deliverance from darkness, his true captivity; and he is ready to commit himself wholly to the state to which blindness had already confined him.70

69 For a readily accessible discussion on blindness and castration see Jay Halio’s “Gloucester’s Blinding,” in Shakespeare Quarterly 43.2 (Summer 1992), pp. 221-223. 70 Stephen Fallon’s assessment of lines 75-89 has Samson bewailing “his blindness.” Then Samson “accepts the justice of this and his other afflictions, bewails his blindness anew, and so repeats the cycle” (Milton’s

Milton’s specific references to Thamyris, Maeonides, Tiresias,71 and Phineus focus less on the loss of light and despair and more on inspiration. Robert Garland explains that “Thamyris is an example of the motif of deformation as a punishment for presumptuous behavior” (100). In the Iliad, Homer explains that the Muses “maimed him [Thamyris], they ripped away / his voice, the rousing immortal wonder of his song / and wiped away all arts of harping from his mind” (2.691- 3).72 Thamyris’ “presumptuous behavior” involved pride, a vice often responsible for spiritual blindness in the Bible. Thamyris boasted “that he could outsing the very Muses” (Iliad 2.689). Pausanias disagrees with the supernatural account of Thamyris’ punishment: “My view is that Thamyris lost his eyesight through disease, as happened later to Homer. Homer, however, continued making poetry all his life without giving way to his misfortune, while Thamyris forsook his art through stress of the trouble that afflicted him” (Description of Greece 4.33.7).73 Other than Pausanias, I am aware of no source contrary to the account in the Iliad. The immortal or even divine wonder of Thamyris’ song is more than his harp or even the “Orphean lyre” of which Milton sings (III.17). It is his poetic gift, like Milton’s “other notes” (III.17), for the poet sings what he knows, and most often the poet knows only what he has seen. Therefore, Thamyris’ poetic sight was taken from him by the Muses. Milton introduces a similar concern in Sonnet XIX when he identifies that one talent which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide, Doth God exact day-labour, light denied? (ll. 3-7) Milton’s persona alludes to the Parable of the Talents, insomuch that he does not wish to lose his talent by hiding it. It is important to point out that Milton’s persona has only one talent. This is an argument against reading the persona as Milton, who was not only an accomplished poet but

Peculiar Grace 252-3). Fallon compares Samson’s laments to those of Milton in the invocation to Book VII of Paradise Lost, “where Milton laments his blindness, finds consolation in inner sight, laments his blindness anew, and again finds consolation” (253). Fallon then identifies that important distinction between Milton and Samson: the character accepts the blame but the poet does not. 71 There are at least two spellings for Tiresias, the other being Teiresias. I use the first because Milton does. 72 All references to Homer’s Iliad come from the Robert Fagles translation (New York: Penguin, 1990). 73 From Pausanias. Pausanias Description of Greece. Trans. W.H.S. Jones and H.A. Ormerod. 4 Volumes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1918. Also available online at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Paus.%204.33.7&lang=original

also a gifted statesman, teacher, linguist, scholar, etc. Milton would not speak of himself in terms of such limitations, unless he viewed the writing of poetry as the only talent he was still able to perform despite his blindness. Some critics have argued that he speaks specifically about his writing poetry. Barbara K. Lewalski calls Milton’s talent “the ability to write in the noblest forms of poetry and prose” (305). The debatable date of the sonnet makes this interpretation one of the most plausible in a biographical reading, especially if Milton composed the poem shortly after completely losing his sight. The privation and loss may have caused, initially, some deep contemplation and anxiety for Milton about what he could now do with himself. If there is a chance that the sonnet was composed at a later date, then there must also be at least one alternative interpretation because Milton never stopped writing poetry. In fact, Milton wrote his greatest poetry after he was blind. With the help of his many amanuenses, he still possessed the ability to write. Like Sonnet XIX, the general consensus among critics is that Book III’s invocation is spoken by Milton rather than a fictional persona.74 In the lines immediately following the references to gutta serena and dim suffusion, a biographical reading makes it clear that Milton has never lost the ability to write poetry and that he never considered poetry a lost cause: “Yet not the more / Cease I to wander, where the Muses haunt” (III.26-7). Despite his blindness, Milton has not ceased to wander that place of poetic inspiration, the “Aonian mount” above which he soars to pursue “Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme” (I.16). Although readers might safely consider specific references to blindness in Milton’s poetry as references to his own affliction, I prefer to see Milton’s representations of blindness as poetic or literary tropes. At best, Milton certainly used his blindness as a source. Therefore, the persona of Sonnet XIX, if he is a poet, likely refers to the same talent which the Muses took from Thamyris: the poetic vision. The poet sees the world in a different way and uses poetry to help others see the world he or she sees. The Muses not only robbed Thamyris of his divine song (refused to give him inspiration), but they maimed him, ensuring that he could no longer express the world the way that he saw it. So even if readers accept that Milton is the persona of Sonnet XIX, he

74 Just two examples will suffice: Franklin R. Baruch’s “Milton's Blindness: The Conscious and Unconscious Patterns of Autobiography.” John Milton: Twentieth-Century Perspectives, Volume 1: The Man and the Author. 240-251. New York, NY: Routledge, 2003; and even more recently, Stephen Fallon’s Milton’s Peculiar Grace: Self-representation and Authority. Ithaca, NY: Cornel UP, 2007, especially chapter 8, where Fallon talks about how Milton has inserted himself (politically and otherwise) into his poems.

51 may refer more specifically to his poetic vision—the ability to see the world the way no one else sees it because he can no longer see the world. Milton likely would have preferred Pausanias’ account of Thamyris’ blinding, since none of Milton’s representations suggest divine punishment. Milton uses Thamyris because Thamyris was a great poet robbed of a specific talent probably before he was able to write anything of note,75 though he was great enough to boast in the face of the Muses that he could best them. Other accounts suggest that the prize Thamyris sought in his contest against the Muses was the Muses themselves, sexually.76 Thamyris’ sexual pursuit reintroduces the motif of Oedipus’ story: blindness as a punishment for sexual sin. Milton’s narrator is equal with Thamyris in fate (they both lost their sight, perhaps by disease, if one accepts Pausanias’ account) and renown (both were known for their poetry). However, the blind figure invoking the celestial light in Book III shows the utmost respect for his Muse, which takes on the characteristics of the spirit of God more than it takes on characteristics of the pagan sisters. Neither would Milton, the champion of virtue in his Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle, ever admit that his divinely inspired sage engaged in some degree of sexual sin. Maeonides is Homer’s surname, and perhaps not a greater poet lived in ancient Greece. Very little is known about Homer’s blindness, though the consensus (anciently and modernly) is that he was blind. No one knows for sure how Homer lost his sight, but there is plenty of speculation. Pausanias, quoted above, believed that Homer lost his sight because of disease. In fact, Pausanias’ remark has a quotidian tone. Pausanias makes his speculation about Thamyris clear: “My view is that Thamyris lost his eye sight from disease” (my emphasis). He finishes the remark with a statement of fact: “as happened later to Homer” (my emphasis). Pausanias does not speculate about Homer by saying “my view.” There are no other definitive accounts, though Plato alludes to Homer’s blindness in the Phaedrus. In the dialogue with Phaedrus, Socrates suggests that “Homer … never had the wit to discover why he was blind, but … Stesichorus … knew the reason why [he himself was blind] … for that was the penalty which was inflicted upon him for reviling the lovely Helen.” And after he realized his error, “[Stesichorus] at once purged himself. And the purgation was a recantation” (100-01). Stesichorus’ recantation helped him regain his sight. Stesichorus’ story is unique, for often the blind poet or seer never regains his

75 No writings of Thamyris have survived. 76 Bernidaki-Aldous cites Apollodorus’ account (62-63).

52 sight, especially when it is the result of punishment, though he is often compensated for that loss. Both Bernidaki-Aldous and Moshe Barasch77 read the account in the Phaedrus as indicative of Homer’s blinding. Socrates mentions Homer in the same breath as Stesichorus because they were blinded for the same reason, except “Homer … never had the wit to discover why he was blind.” Nowhere in the Phaedrus does Plato explain who handed down the punishment or how it was administered, though the gods were likely involved, for blindness was often regarded as divine punishment from the pagan to the Christian world. Perhaps, then, if Homer had had “the wit” he, too, could have had his sight restored. There are multiple accounts of Tiresias’ blinding. In some, Athena punishes him for spying her bathing. She then compensates him with prophecy, long life, and a stick that allows him to travel without a guide.78 In Hesiod’s version,79 Hera and Zeus were arguing about who derived more pleasure from sexual intercourse (men or women), and they turned to Tiresias to settle the dispute.80 Hera blinded Tiresias when he sided with Zeus. “But Zeus granted him the gift of prophecy.” In both accounts of Tiresias’ blinding, ancient writers again identify blindness with divine punishment as a consequence of a sexual crime. Tiresias’ resulting gift of prophecy brought him renown, but it did not save him from ridicule because of his disability. There existed some “veiled animosity … between the blind and the sighted” (Garland 29). Before losing his sight, Oedipus, in Oedipus Tyrannus “taunts his adversary [Tiresias] with being a crafty charlatan ‘who has vision only to lookout for his own advantage but is blind in his art’ (l. 388f)” (29). Considering the ambivalence and sometimes outright disdain for Milton from his enemies in England and on the continent, to some members of his own family, he could not help but see blindness similarly. Frustration from his daughters might have had this affect. Milton provided for them, but perhaps they believed Milton looked out “for his own advantage.”81 For the Thracian king Phineus, blindness is one aspect of a triple punishment, which included old age and starvation. Like Tiresias and Thamyris, the accounts about how and why

77 See Bernidaki-Aldous’s, Blindness in a Culture of Light (especially pp. 60-62) and Moshe Barasch’s Blindness: A History of the Mental Image in Western Thought (especially pp. 41-42). 78 Tiresias’ stick, the ability to “see” by touch, may be the Stoics’ inspiration for the stick-like pneuma that allowed them to reduce sight to touch. 79 It is recounted by Apollodorus; see Garland 100-01. 80 Tiresias had spent seven years as a woman after separating snakes he found copulating. He turned back into a man the same way. Therefore, Tiresias had a unique male perspective on experiencing life as a woman. 81 Drawing from several sources, Lewalski discusses specific details Milton’s relationships with his daughters in The Life of John Milton (See Chapter 12, esp. pp. 407-09).

Phineus lost his sight vary. Either the gods blinded Phineus for prophesying too much and revealing their secrets, or the Argonauts blinded him for blinding his own sons. Milton’s association with Phineus is far more elusive than his association with the previous three men other than Phineus’ being a great prophet. However, Milton does make at least one other direct reference to Phineus. When Milton describes the onset of blindness to Philaras, he quotes from the Argonauts, where the “Salmydessian seer Phineus” describes his own onset of blindness (CPW IV.2.869). In every case, save the contrary account of Pausanias, these four men were punished for either some degree of sexual crime or for offending the gods. And in these circumstances, punishment contrasts what Milton wrote about blindness. The progression of the identification of these men is clear. Blindness can make a man more than a poet. Tiresias, became a great prophet, and in Paradise Lost with the help of the spirit, Milton’s narrator sings of the beginning and prophesies of the future, like Moses and other great prophets sing in the Bible. It is not coincidental that Milton identifies blindness with prophets in an invocation to light (PL Book III) where his narrator prays for divine guidance or revelation, essential requirements for any prophet. Sight, though considered a prerequisite for secular knowledge,82 is not a prerequisite for divine knowledge. Milton’s idea of the classical model of blindness is as accurate as he could have known or understood in the seventeenth century. Though many blind beggars lined the streets of ancient Athens (see Bernidaki-Aldous 6) and some disabled were treated with disdain, blindness was also an essential attribute for the poet, and many did not think it possible to be a poet otherwise: “A certain Kallistratos remarks to Dio Chrysostom (Or. 36.10-11), ‘All these poets are blind and people do not think it possible for anyone to become a poet otherwise.’ To which Dio himself replies, ‘Their poets have contracted blindness from Homer, as though from ophthalmia’” (Garland 33). Also, the blind bard Demodocus receives special treatment in the Odyssey. “A god has given him the special gift of delighting our ears with his song” (8.43-4),83 so at the Phaeacians’ court, Demodocus sits in a silver-studded chair in the center, where he is provided with a separate table for his food (8.65-70). Some critical speculation suggests that Demodocus

82 See again Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics, and Aristotelian thought through the Renaissance as I have shown in chapter one. 83 References to the Odyssey come from E. V. Rieu translation (New York: Penguin, 1991).

was read as a Homeric self-portrait (Barasch 132).84 Gabriel Farrel suggests that the character of Demodocus is indicative of Homer’s feelings regarding blindness (4). Finally, and perhaps just as important to Milton, knowledge and sight are semantically linked in Greek through words like idein, eidos, and idea (Garland 34), and a higher kind of knowledge reserved for the elect was found in a seer’s capacity to decipher a hidden meaning. There is a “tendency of the visionary tradition to posit a higher sight of the seer, who is able to discern a truth denied to normal vision. Here the so-called third eye of the soul is invoked to compensate for the imperfections of the two physical eyes. Often physical blindness is given sacred significance, even if at times as a punishment” (Jay 12). Milton was aware of the sacred significance given to blindness in ancient Greece and was likely aware of other abilities attributed to the blind.85 However, we cannot assume that the veneration reserved for the few highly talented blind would have extended to the majority (Garland 34). The exceptional blind are rare, but that exclusivity neither kept Milton from equating his poetic blind figure with four exceptional blind in the ancient world, nor did it keep him from portraying blindness as requisite to seeing things spiritually and more poetically. 2.3 Disability and Blindness in the Biblical World Milton’s investment in one ancient Greek model of blindness was only part of what was, for him, an attempt to portray a divine understanding of this disability. Milton also draws on a biblical model that addresses God’s purposes in allowing for disabilities. In the introduction that begins their collection of essays on disabilities in biblical studies, Hector Avalos, Sarah J. Melcher, and Jeremy Schipper quote a specific midrash on Psalm 34: “How manifold are Thy works, O Lord! All those which Thou hast made in wisdom (Ps. 104:24), David meant: Thou hast made all in wisdom, and hast made well, except for madness. And David said to the Holy One, blessed be He: ‘Master of the Universe, what profit is there for the world in madness? ... is this beautiful in thine eyes?’” (Braude 408-9; quoted in Avalos et al. 1). “David’s question to God understands disabilities as a great unsolved mystery. Essentially, he asks why certain disabilities exist. … According to this midrash, when the Philistines capture David, God grants him a temporary cognitive disability” (Avalos et al.1). The story to which the editors refer is

84 See also Robert Lamberton’s Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition, p. 10. 85 Aristotle suggested in his Eudemian Ethics that “the blind remember better, being released from having their faculty of memory engaged with objects of sight” (1248b 1-3). From Aristotle. Aristotle in 23 Volumes. Vol. 20. Trans. H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1981. Also available online at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0050:book=8:section=1248b&highlight=blind

found in 1 Samuel 21:10 – 22:1, where David “feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard” (21:13). As a result, the Philistines decide David is not worth the trouble and let him go. The midrash suggests that God granted David the madness, or at least the ability to feign it well. “Through this experience … God shows David how a disability is not a divine oversight within God’s created order. Rather, when framed within this theological discourse, disability becomes a means of divine deliverance” (Avalos et al. 1). My own research reveals that blindness in the Bible often appears in one of two contexts: punishment or deliverance.86 Both contexts construct a religious attitude toward the blind that is on one hand suspicious and on the other compassionate. One of the greatest biblical examples of blindness as a punishment is also one of the greatest examples of blindness as deliverance. When God sent angels to warn Lot to depart from Sodom, “men of Sodom, compassed the house … And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them” (Genesis 19:4-5). In the Bible, “know” in this context is often a euphemism for sex, and the association became stronger when patristic writers like Augustine in The City of God (16.30) identified the Sodomites’ sin as homosexuality. In this sense, they are punished for their “unnatural” desire; it is a desire evoked by their eyes, for they saw the “men” enter Lot’s house. God strikes the men of Sodom blind, and by their punishment, God delivers Lot. Without their sight, the men’s desires are rendered powerless. Wheatley suggests that “the Sodomites are symbolically castrated, rendered impotent, because of their homosexual desires” (Stumbling Blocks 135). The implication is that blindness prevents sin both as a deterrent for those yet free from that sin and as a preventative measure for those who have received the punishment. If nothing else, this blinding of the Sodomite men as well as the story’s exegeses throughout the Middle Ages87 constructed a cultural perception of the blind based upon divine punishment for transgression, and more specifically sexual transgression. The biblical construct is similar to the construct in ancient Greek mythologies and legends about the blind. The theme of blindness resulting from sin appears multiple times in the Bible, and every instance further

86 Deliverance usually comes by means of healing that blindness. 87 Augustine’s De Civitate Dei is probably the most influence text, here. However, in recent years, Peter Damian’s Liber Gomorrhianus (ca. 1051), which speaks out strongly against homosexuality, has received growing attention. Damian addressed the work to Pope Leo IX. For a commentary on Damian’s work see Larry Scanlon’s “Umanned Men and Eunuchs of God: Peter Damian’s Liber Gomorrhianus and the Sexual Politics of Papal Reform,” in New Medieval Literatures, Vol. 2, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), pp. 37-64.

strengthened prejudices towards the blind, who I will show in the next section were suspected of every vice by the late Middle Ages. Two New Testament accounts of blindness are especially important for Milton’s portrayal of blindness. First, the New Testament offers a challenge to the standard stereotypes of blindness and what became the late medieval belief: an outward manifestation of a spiritual deficiency. In chapter 9 of the Gospel of St. John, Jesus encounters a man born blind. The disciples ask, “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” (v. 2). Despite Jesus’ teachings (“Judge not, that ye be not judged” [Matthew 7:1]), the disciples are restricted by well-established stereotypes. Jesus’ reply is simple and direct: “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him” (John 9:3). Here we have a unique biblical account that offers further clarification of David’s question about disability. In his Brief Commentary or Exposition Upon the Gospel According to St. John (1646), John Trapp argues that “God sometimes afflicts for his own glory, but sinne is never at the bottome” (47-8). Whether Milton knew Trapp’s exegesis does not change the fact that, as I intend to show, Milton would have likely read John 9 the same way. In other words, when Milton uses his blindness as a literary trope he takes it beyond common cultural constructions. God may afflict the poet or the seer, or allow his blindness for God’s own glory. Saint Paul, too, was afflicted (disabled) by God for His own glory. Milton’s references to Saint Paul88 reveal a clear respect for the Publican turned Apostle. Milton makes his familiarity with Paul’s conversion and blindness clear in The Reason of Church Government. Likening the reformation of the church to a smoothly carved marble statue, Milton references Paul’s conversion, where scales fell from his eyes “that were not perceav’d before” (CPW I.796.5-6). In other words, to reform and to clean up the doctrine until it is smooth, something must be chipped away or “invisible” scales must fall away. Paul’s blindness is better understood in the details of the story found in Acts 9, where Saul of Tarsus is “yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord” (v. 1). But on the road to Damascus “suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: And he fell to the earth” (vs. 3-5). The light blinded Saul.89 Jesus commanded him to go to the city, “and it shall be told thee what thou must

88 There are over 50 references in Milton’s prose, not including De Doctrina Christiana. Many of them are in matters of doctrine, and several of those are in support of Milton’s arguments for divorce in the divorce tracts. 89 “When his eyes were opened, he saw no man” (v. 8).

do” (v. 6). So Saul waited on the Lord for three days. The three days of darkness is certainly not without a symbolic equivalent. Like the Greek preponderance to equate darkness and blindness with death, so Saul spent three days in a symbolic death like the New Testament’s report of Jesus’ three days of literal death before the resurrection. Saul’s resurrection, his return to light at the hands of Ananias, is also a rebirth, for “immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized” (vs. 18). Through Saul, who became Paul, God made his works manifest. And Paul, like the blind seers of ancient Greek literature never really saw, or did not have the divine sight until he was blind. Paul illustrates this principle when he preaches to the Corinthians, “For we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). Milton refers to the same scripture in his Reason of Church Government.90 The Bible also demonstrates that seeing is not at all requisite for receiving inspiration from God. In his commentary on specific themes in the Hebrew Bible, Hector Avalos identifies the Deuteronomistic History (comprising of Deuteronomy through 2 Kings) as heavily audiocentric. Within that history is a conspicuous instance of the Hebrew God communicating only through the sense of hearing. In 1 Kings 12, when Jezebel seeks the life of Elijah, an angel warns him to flee into the wilderness. The voice of the Lord then commands Elijah to “stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by”; however, He was not in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire, but in “a still small voice” (vs. 11-12). The Lord did not come to Elijah in a form that required his sight or his sense of touch, but only his hearing. The invocations in Paradise Lost, even the plea to God in Sonnet XIX are evidence of a poet who believed that “the works of God [can] be made manifest in” disabilities even without God’s curing them. Milton’s blind narrator in Paradise Lost wishes “to justify the ways of God to men” (Paradise Lost I.26), and he can only do that if the spirit can raise and support him “that to the height of this great argument / I may assert the eternal providence” to justify those ways (I.23-26). Milton’s blind figure also wishes to “see and tell of things invisible to mortal sight” (III.55). And that is only possible if the celestial light will shine within and “plant eyes” (III.53). In the beginning, this narrator asks the heavenly Muse to sing of the beginning, or if Sion hill Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed Fast by the Oracle of God, I thence

90 See CPW I.778.10-16.

Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous song[.] (I.10-13) Milton infuses each invocation with multiple petitions for “aid.” In this particular petition there is an underlying plea for God to manifest his work through a poetic persona that can sing freely of God’s work. Fowler notes that for “Siloa,” “The curative purifying pool of Siloam (‘which is by interpretation, Sent’: John 9:7) may be intended, in self-referring analogy with the blind disciple given sight and insight by Jesus” (Milton 59 n11).91 Yet none of Milton’s poetry calls for the restoration of physical sight. However, in the tradition of the examples that opened this chapter, Milton’s narrator seeks to have his spiritual sight or insight enhanced. Milton shows once again that blindness is a prerequisite for great poetry and especially for divine, spiritual insight. Blindness, as manifested in Paradise Lost, is a divine calling, and a disability through which God may manifest himself. Like the blind beggar next to the pool at Siloam, and like Saul of Tarsus, “they also serve who only stand and wait” (Sonnet XIX.14), for “they that await upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31). 2.4 The Middle Ages: Punishment, Compassion, Contempt, and the Comical In the Middle Ages blinding as a punishment included crimes other than sexual sin, though blinding still incited that connotation, especially unexplained blindness. For example, one legend about the founding of the city of Oxford tells of Frideswide, a princess, who “is devoted to Christ and to the preservation of her virginity. A nameless king, intent upon marrying her, pursues her from Oxford to the forest and back again” (Wheatley 137). Frideswide counts on her faith and virtue to save her. After she offers a prayer for protection, “a divine blow strikes [the king] blind” (137). When the king realizes his sin, he asks Frideswide for forgiveness and regains his sight. Interestingly, “the next episode in [Frideswide’s] narrative … tells of a girl ‘whom a devil had struck blind nearly seven years previously’ who is miraculously cured by the water with which Frideswide washes her hands” (Wheatley 138).92 Frideswide was eventually canonized as the virgin patroness of Oxford, but her story was far less well known outside of Oxford. Chaucer was familiar enough with this story that in “The Miller’s Tale” he gave Alison’s husband John an oath upon Frideswide’s name. This evokes a literary lineage that

91 See also Paul Lauter “Milton’s ‘Siloa’s Brook,’” NQ 5 (1958): 204-05. 92 For greater detail, see John Blair’s Saint Frideswide, Patron of Oxford (Oxford: Perpetua Press, 1988), 27.

likely provided Milton knowledge of a non-biblical tradition of blindness as a punishment for sexual sin as well as a non-biblical tradition that involved divine protection for virginity. Both themes figure prominently in Milton’s Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle, and echoes of Frideswide’s tale, the episode which follows it, and her canonization are also evident. The villain of the Mask, Comus, has an insatiable appetite and a penchant for sorcery based upon his parentage: Bacchus and Circe. Comus’s very existence depended on sexual sin perpetrated by visual stimulation when “This nymph [Circe] … gazed upon his [Bacchus’] clustering locks” (l. 54). Milton’s take on blindness in the Mask is metaphorical but directly related to blindness as punishment. Comus has excelled “his mother at her mighty art” and offers “to every weary traveler, / His orient liquor in a crystal glass, / To quench the drought of Phoebus” (63-6). In a metaphorical sense, Comus’s liquor is the travelers’ (each his or her own) temptations, just as it will become a temptation for Lady later in the poem. The liquor will quench the thirst of their burning desire, “the drought of Phoebus.” Once they indulge that temptation, they change Into some brutish form … And they … Not once perceive their foul disfigurement, But boast themselves more comely than before And all their friends, and native home forget To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty. (70-7) For these travelers, their rolling “with pleasure in a sensual sty” blinds them to the world they have left behind as well as to their disfigurements, which are “the visible mark of transgression or an invisible moral defect” (Weygand 16). The Lady resists Comus’s “drought,” and both she and her brothers expect divine protection for her because of her chastity. When the Lady falls under Comus’s spell, Thyrsis, the attendant spirit, identifies “a gentle nymph” (823) who may be able to help. For that nymph, Sabrina, is a “virgin pure” (825) who loves maidenhood and “will be swift / To aid a virgin such as was herself / In hard-besetting need” (854-56). Sabrina lost her life “flying the mad pursuit / Of her enraged stepdame” (828-29) and not a would-be rapist as did Frideswide. Sabrina drowned but was revived by Nereus and his water nymphs “And underwent a quick immortal change / Made goddess of the river” (840-41). Sainthood is the closest a man or woman can come to divinity or godhood in Catholicism, so Sabrina’s godhood is equivalent to Frideswide’s

canonization. The song to Sabrina (ll. 858-88) is an invocation, a prayer for assistance like the prayer to a patron saint. Sabrina then saves Lady with “Drops … from my fountain pure” (911). The symbolism of water in both the healing of the blind girl in Frideswide’s tale and the healing of Lady in the Mask is clear. The water cleanses each girl from the sinful action of another. Like the blind girl who was miraculously cured with water touched by Frideswide, the virgin, so Lady (the virgin) is also miraculously cured with water touched by a virgin. Although, to some degree, each story is secular, both invoke a higher power. These tales are reminders of God’s deliverance by and from disability—the role Milton gave blindness before he became blind. Not all blindness was unexplainable. Aside from the legends that inspired particular representations of blindness, the Middle Ages perpetuated many stereotypes of the blind. Some stereotypes came as a result of blinding as a punishment, which evoked images of the criminally blind. Punishment by blinding was not common in England. Such a punishment was more widespread on the continent and especially in France. The prominence of blinding as a punishment in medieval France is evidenced by the French aveugle from the Latin ab oculis (“without eyes,” “eyeless,” or “wanting eyes”). Wheatley cites the “earliest extant written appearance” of the term comes from the twelfth-century Vie de saint Alexis and that “it seems … plausible that the word would have entered the language through legal rather than medical Latin, where it would have very precisely described the condition of those who underwent this terrible mutilation” (29-30). The punishment literally left those punished “without eyes.” It is not surprising that usage of the term always carried connotations of punishment, so the identification of a blind man could not help but invite suspicions concerning his moral character. The punishment was widely accepted, biblically supported, and even recommended by saints, some of whose accounts claim spiritual blinding as a punishment, too. However, it was a punishment most often reserved to be carried out by the king for crimes such as betrayal, treason, and poaching. Though not prevalent in England, blinding as a punishment did exist there for a time immediately after the Norman Conquest. Later, blinding as a punishment in England came to be understood “as a particularly exotic, foreign form of cruelty administered by the barbaric ‘other’” (42). This English view did not stop the spread of the stereotype that all the blind were criminals, which created a European-wide epidemic of distrust of the blind.

The distrust born out of blinding as a punishment was only part of what caused disdain for the blind in the Middle Ages. Wheatley has argued that much of the animosity towards the blind in France resulted from the sympathy and respect that developed for the blind in the form of charity and alms encouraged and required by the social system, perpetuated by the Catholic Church. Jonathan Beck takes a different stance. He argues, “the ‘ambiguity’ of the blind person [in the Middle Ages] … is rooted in the primordial human terror of separation in its various forms: mutilation, castration, annihilation. All of which point not to ‘cruelty,’ but to fear” (164). Beck’s argument shares the fear of Lennard Davis’s memento mori approach in disability studies. The sighted alienate and ridicule what they fear in order to separate themselves from the reminder that their eyes are just as vulnerable. And blindness itself is a separation in various forms. It is a separation from the complete body (like any disability), and like castration, it is suggestive of privation and no increase. Hence Jean Dufournet’s conclusion: “Bref, rire des aveugles au Moyen Age était sans doute le plus sûr moyen d’exorciser la terreur d’une infirmité très répandue,” [In short, to laugh at the blind in the Middle Ages no doubt was the safest way to exorcise the terror of one extremely widespread infirmity] (80; translation mine). Dufournet’s conclusion suggests that the performance of blindness for comic relief in the Middle Ages was a way to skirt the anxiety which the appearance of the blind evoked. Performing blindness in medieval France and England was often part of a public spectacle like the one described by “an anonymous bourgeois chronicler” in 1425 Paris (Wheatley Stumbling Blocks 1) were popular enough to be portrayed in the margins of illuminated manuscripts.93 The chronicler recorded the following ‘entertainment’: “Four blind people, all armed, each with a stick, were put in a park, and in that location there was a strong pig they could have if they killed it” (1). A riotous “game” ensued, where spectators watched the blind men fumble about, whacking each other when they thought they had whacked the pig. Perhaps the most common setting for the performance of blindness in the Middle Ages was the theatre, where Le Garçon et l’aveugle (The Boy and the Blind Man)94 was highly popular. Written in the mid thirteenth century, it is the oldest comic text extant from French drama. The play features a blind man who has acquired a fortune through his begging. The blind man is greedy, drunk, over-indulgent, lewd, and otherwise immoral. These are just a few of the

93 Wheatley reprints one such in Stumbling Blocks for the Blind; see p. 3. 94 I use the translation by Reginald Hyatte in Allegorica 9 (1987): 165-193.

stereotypes that existed in other literature about the blind, who were also seen as noisy on account of their begging. The plot is simple. The blind man needs a guide and asks the boy to guide him. The boy, who states in an aside that he hates blind people then disguises his voice, slaps the blind man, and later steals his money and clothes. The purpose of the play is to humiliate the blind man physically and take his possessions. The “whack the pig” game and the play fit both Beck’s and Dufournet’s arguments and suggest that laughter, especially about the blind, is “the involuntary expression of an illusory feeling of superiority” (Beck 168)—a suggestion Beck takes from Baudelaire. Not everyone in the Middle Ages was laughing at the blind. Returning to Wheatley’s argument that the disdain came as a result of the compassion shown to the blind, there were a lot of men and women who looked upon the blind with compassion, especially the king of France. Louis IX granted particularly special treatment to the blind and built a hospice specifically for them. The Quinze-Vingts (founded in Paris in 1265) catered only to the blind. It was a community for the blind set up like a monastery. The hospice was supported by the state and some of the monies the blind acquired through beggary. The blind of the Quinze-Vingts were identified with a badge, as were most other “authorized” beggars in medieval France, but the blind, especially those living in the hospice received special royal treatment. Suggesting that “Louis’s hospice effected a significant rupture in the social construction of blindness”: while their lives likely improved, a greater public profile “led to envy and contempt” (Wheatley 55). A case in point is the entertainment that involved the four blind men and the pig. This game took place “in the rue St. Honoré, the location of the Hospices des Quinze-Vingts” (56). Where more compassion and special treatment existed for the blind more contempt for the blind also existed. Quinze-Vingts was only the first of many hospices built specifically for the blind. Gauthier notes that many of them were built in the north—Meaux in 1351, Caen in 1364, Rouen in 1478—(117), and “the north is also the origin of most of the satirical literature about the blind” (Wheatley 58). Many people saw this special treatment as the approval of a slothful and greedy life. The growing stereotypes evolved into a clearer and often unfair social construction of blindness. In addition to their social construction of this disability, some sighted were responsible for growing suspicions of the blind. Many mendicants feigned blindness in order to gain more sympathy and money in their beggary. The special treatment of the blind made impersonation of them irresistible, and it led to specific rules for admittance into the Quinze-

Vingts and other hospices for the blind. A blind person had to swear that because of blindness, he or she could not make a living (see Wheatley 58). Unlike France, in England blindness “existed as a relatively unmarked disability” (no special treatment, hospices, etc.), “and therefore the blind were not generally singled out for ridicule in art and literature” (60). So Wheatley’s social model of the blind (disabled) holds true for France, where special treatment of the blind made them more subject to social reactions. I will show later that lingering practices of the medieval treatment of the blind outside of religious circles made it easier for Milton’s enemies to deride and belittle him in writing. Also, the religious model of blindness (disability), which remained prominent in England would have made it easier for Milton’s English enemies to see his blindness (and, therefore, to construct blindness in general) as a divine punishment. 2.5 Blindness in the Age of Milton Blindness did not figure as prominently in sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe, but artists, poets, and social reformers in the Renaissance did construct new figures of the blind while giving them familiar attributes. For example, The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes, His Fortunes and Misfortunes (the first of the picaresque novels)95 tells the tale of Lazarillo, who is employed by an old blind man who teaches him the nuances of his profession as a beggar and a scoundrel. The blind man is no longer the easily deceived fool of medieval farce because he is a “master-in-beggary” (Weygand 33). This evolution of the blind beggar is perhaps the result of a greater understanding of blindness. His craftiness is aided by enhanced senses. However, despite popular representations that suggest otherwise, most of the blind in the Renaissance were not reduced to beggary. Juan-Luis Vives (a Spanish humanist living in the Netherlands), argued that no poor man whose age and health permit him to work should be allowed to remain idle, and he compiled a long list of known occupations of the blind including singing; using a wine press; making boxes, baskets, trays, and cages; and spinning thread. Vives argued that “laziness or indolence, and not a bodily defect, is the only excuse they may put forward for doing nothing” (quoted in Weygand 28). Though Vives’s text was well known throughout Europe, it had no effect on putting the blind to work (29).

95 First French translation 1560.

The lack of expectations for the blind may have lain in the fact that blindness still was viewed as a horrible fate that often evoked compassion because there was probably no other period where vision was as highly valued. “Who is there who would not wish to lose the senses of hearing, smell, and touch, before losing sight? For he who loses his sight is like one expelled from the world, when he does not see it any more, nor anything in it. And such a life is a sister to death” (Leonardo da Vinci, Treatise on Painting; quoted in Barasch 115). Humanists in the Renaissance revived Greek sentiments regarding sight and blindness, light and darkness. Unimpaired vision was also a means of “scientific” cognition, which was extremely important to the development of natural philosophy. The revival of classical models and the inheritance of medieval stereotypes mean that the Renaissance image of blindness was not uniform. There was still some remnant of blindness as a punishment for sexual sin if we accept Jay Halio’s argument that Gloucester’s blinding, under the surface, is a punishment for his admitted adultery or at least fornication with Edmund’s mother. William Harrison’s Description of England supports Halio’s argument. In the section “Of Sundry Kinds of Punishment Appointed for Offenders,” Harrison does not include blinding as a punishment for treason, the crime of which Cornwall and Regan accuse Gloucester. On the other hand, we already have seen that ancient (even biblical) and medieval punishment for fornication and other sexual sins included blinding and sometimes castration.96 Renaissance suspicions of the blind and disabled in general also found their way into visual art. David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder use Brueghel’s drawing of “cripples and beggars” (1550-55) as a starting point to identify “the importance of disabled figures to artistic portrayal” (4). The drawing is a collage of nearly thirty disabled men and women. At least one is blind (led by a guide) while others are deformed, missing limbs, or otherwise disabled. This drawing and Brueghel’s other paintings that portray disabilities are evidence of what some call an unflinching devotion to detailing the “misery of the human condition” (4). Lennard Davis’s memento mori view of disability is especially relevant here. Because of the frequency of disease, poor hygienic conditions, the rate of infection, and numerous other considerations, no man or

96 Edgar suggests that Gloucester’s sexual sin is the cause of his blindness in Act V.170-73: The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us: The dark and vicious place where thee [Edmund] he got Cost him his eyes.

woman in the Renaissance was safe from disability. Like death, disability could call on any one at any moment. Brueghel “detailed ‘crippled’ differences faithfully while simultaneously metamorphosing those differences into social satires” (Mitchell & Snyder 5). Mitchell and Snyder cite as an example Brueghel’s Blind Leading the Blind (1568),97 where lack of sight equates to wayward leadership. The title is an allusion to Jesus’ description of the Pharisees as recorded in the New Testament: “Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch” (Matthew 15:14). Like the alluded to foolishness of the Pharisees, Barasch suggests that “the connotation of sinfulness, or at least foolishness … cannot be overlooked” in Brueghel’s painting (111). These are men, like the Pharisees, who cannot be trusted to lead or choose the right way, something Milton’s enemies claimed about him. The painting’s title is a literal description of it. Five blind men walk in a queue with a sixth (the leader) already fallen into a ditch. The men are identified by their beggarly garb, sightless eyes (closed, eyeless, or whitened over), and walking sticks. Each of the five follows the one in front by holding his stick or placing a hand on his shoulder in an act of unreserved trust. Weygand identifies other analyses, which suggest that the painting is not about the blind but about faith (Weygand 35). These contrasting interpretations only add to the ambivalence towards the blind in each period. But despite the ambivalence, some choose to focus only on the negative connotations: “On the back of the wood panel upon which The Cripples was created, Brueghel sardonically scribbled, ‘Cripples go and be prosperous!’” (Mitchell and Snyder 5). Mitchell and Snyder call this “contrasting deployment of disability … a device of artistic innovation that entrenched disability’s associations with corruption” (5). Like Vives had already advocated, the disabled and especially blind men and women, who were often otherwise able, were expected to contribute to society rather than to place a burden upon it. Weygand on the other hand, especially in the case of the blind, saw continuously conflicting connotations or treatment of blindness: “Whether they provoked laughter or horror, the blind at the beginning of the modern era were on the side of misdeed … and despite open-mindedness of certain humanist authors, blindness was still the object of feelings too ambiguous to produce a real revolution in the social treatment of those afflicted with it” (Weygand 35). So by the time Milton loses his sight, a blind person could expect contrasting treatments that likely depended on

97 Moshe Barasch refers to this painting by the alternate title The Parable of the Blind.

that person’s previous status. If negative associations can positively affect another’s definition of disability that is certainly the case for Milton, who fought against negative stereotypes. However, alternative artistic representations of blindness in the Renaissance provided a different context for viewing this disability. Religious and secular representations of the blind, from the real to the illusory, prior to the Renaissance carried mostly explicit connotations of sinfulness, and even some Renaissance representations fail to make significant progress beyond those images. The continued pursuit of a religious model, however, is apparent in paintings. One example is Caravaggio’s Conversion of Saul, of which there are two versions. In both versions, Caravaggio’s Saul performs blindness. In one painting Saul lies on his back with his eyes closed and with outstretched arms as if searching in response to the voice of the Lord. Otherwise, there is very little action. A man and horse stand calmly above him. In the other painting, Saul covers his eyes while in the act of falling. Standing over him are two frightened men “hearing a voice, but seeing no man” (Acts 9:7). One man, only visible from the neck up, hangs his head and covers an ear with his hand. The horse also looks frightened, frothing at the mouth, with its head turned awkwardly in the direction of two figures above: an angel holding the Lord, who reaches to Saul. Caravaggio’s painting is a reminder of the horrific nature of blindness. From Saul covering his eyes and with his mouth agape, to the horse’s frothing mouth, the scene exudes fear. The horse’s fear is different. It appears to see the angel and the Lord, something that the verses in Acts do not specify, but Caravaggio takes an artistic license, perhaps based on the ability of Balaam’s ass, which saw the angel of the Lord when hard-hearted Balaam could not (see Numbers 22). As “the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam” (v. 31), so he would open Saul’s eyes. Despite the fury of the Lord in physically blinding Saul, Caravaggio offers a visual representation of Saul being “saved” spiritually as much as David was saved physically from the Philistines. Saul, who becomes Paul, has his sight restored physically while having it enhanced spiritually. Unlike David, Saul is not delivered from a specific enemy but from himself. The invocation of classical models in the Renaissance produced one prominent non- Christian blind figure: Homer. One of the most famous representations is Raphael’s fresco in the Stanza della Segnatura (in the Vatican) representing Parnassus (the Greek mountain consecrated as the home of Apollo and the Muses). For Moshe Barasch, “it is a pictorial statement about blindness” (131). In addition to Apollo and the Muses, Raphael has depicted a group of poets,

like Petrarch and Dante. However, the most prominent figure among them, standing out from the rest, un-obscured, is a blind Homer. The undisturbed full view of Homer has only one parallel—Apollo. Raphael depicts Homer as a “venerable, awe-inspiring sage, an old man who somehow conveys the sense of the aged possessing secret knowledge. He turns his divinely animated face upward, as if he were looking at some celestial revelation … or listening to a voice coming from heaven” (Barasch 132). This secular representation, as described by Barasch suggests an important religious connection. The obviousness of Homer’s blindness leaves little doubt that it was Raphael’s intention. Homer is not deformed, and his eyes are not covered but simply sightless. Therefore, Homer cannot look “at some celestial revelation” unless a revelation was literally shone into his mind. However, “listening to a voice coming from heaven” is just as likely for the blind poet or seer to receive inspiration. Like Avalos’s audiocentric reading of the Deuteronomistic History in the Hebrew Bible, in which history we find Elijah receiving inspiration on a mountain from the voice of the Lord, so Raphael has Homer stand on a mountain as if listening to the voice of God. If Barasch’s analysis is accurate, then Raphael’s representation of Homer, in some ways, is a little dangerous in a religious culture that emphasized the visual; and perhaps it became more dangerous after the advent of the Reformation, just a few years away. By the end of the century, Protestants would place more faith in hearing the word than in what their eyes could see.98 Raphael’s depiction of Homer’s blindness is wholly new and “stronger than in any ancient representation of the poet that could have been known in Renaissance Rome” (Barasch 134), and the painting also suggests a link between blindness and supernatural vision. In late antiquity, Proclus reveals that Homer’s blindness became a metaphor for transcendent vision (133).99 The idea all but disappeared in the Middle Ages, perhaps because blindness was too often linked with guilt and conceived as the wages of sin to be associated with a revered sage. There was a “shift of emphasis from the careful observation of the external world to introspection, to focusing on the inward experience, an ‘illumination,’ as distinguished from

98 This is a more complicated and controversial issue than I have space to treat fairly. For insightful commentary on iconoclasm, see Margaret Aston’s England’s Iconoclasts, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988; Carlos M. N. Eire’s War against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin, New York: Cambridge UP, 1986; Sergiusz Michalski’s The Reformation and the Visual Arts: the Protestant Image Question in Western and Eastern Europe, New York: Routledge, 1993; and Adrian Streete’s Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern England, New York: Cambridge UP, 2009. 99 Barasch cites Proclus’ In Platonis Rem Publicam Commentarii l. 193-94 (see n36).

ritual performance, that was steadily gaining in significance” (134). Whether Milton was familiar with the painting and this artistic movement is irrelevant at this point because Raphael’s representation of Homer is part of the Humanist movement and the classical revival that sought to portray the greatness of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, especially their most revered figures. Raphael’s classical view of blindness strengthens the notion that in the case of the seer and the poet blindness was preferred because it allowed for uninterrupted focus inward. Blindness, then, could be understood not only as necessary for the seer/prophet, but also for the artist and poet. In relation to Milton, the most important aspect of Raphael’s representation is Homer’s position. He is standing on Parnassus, the height of poetic inspiration, and though he is only a few feet from Apollo and the Muses, Homer’s face is turned upward. Homer is seeking a higher inspiration. It is not a coincidence that the Greek sun god Apollo is also the god of poetry. If we accept Covey’s and Bernidaki-Aldous’s conclusions about the ancient Greek obsession with light, the sun god enlightening the mind of the poet makes perfect sense. However, Homer looks not to Apollo or the Muses. In fact, there is one other important detail. Homer is standing, while Apollo is sitting. Homer has transcended the paganism with which he was originally associated. He stands preeminent in the painting. Like Milton’s “advent’rous song” (PL I.13), Raphael’s Homer seeks to “soar / above the Aonian mount” to pursue “things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme” (I.14-16). Therefore, waiting on the Lord, perhaps even waiting on inspiration, Homer and Milton’s blind figure in Paradise Lost “shall mount up with wings as eagles” (Isaiah 40:31). This analysis leads from a secular representation back to Christianity, especially considering that Raphael painted this fresco in the Vatican. In the same mode as Raphael, Milton also synthesizes classical, biblical, and contemporary representations of blindness in order to construct a new poetic representation of that disability. We find Milton’s synthesis in Samson, whose connection to ancient Greek traditions about the blind encompasses more than light. The misery with which Milton portrays Samson evokes a sense of pity for the blind man. That pity is easily won for a hero, but what about the “enemy”? The ambivalence with which the blind were represented in ancient Greek literature is perhaps no more apparent than in Euripides’ Cyclops, where the Greek idea that blindness is the “ultimate form of human suffering” (Bernidaki-Aldous 4) is just as clear in the fate of Polyphemus. Despite the comic tone of the scene, the blinding of the Cyclops by

Odysseus evokes pity because of Polyphemus’ pathetic performance of his new disability. William Arrowsmith adds, “it is because neither Cyclops nor Odysseus has any genuine moral dignity, because both … are … brutal and corrupt, that the bloody blinding of Polyphemus can come as close to pathos as it does without becoming any less comic” (8). And the reason the blinding of Polyphemus, despite being a just punishment, can evoke such pity from the Greek audience is precisely because “blindness in the Greek mind is always viewed as a horrible fate … [which] gives rise to waves of pity in the Greek heart” (Bernidaki-Aldous 39). Euripides’ dialogue shows it best, as the now angry Cyclops describes to the Chorus all he knows about his attacker—the name “nobody”: Polyphemus: Nobody destroyed me! Chorus: Then, no one has injured you. Polyphemus: Nobody blinded my eye! Chorus: Then, you are not blind. Polyphemus: Don’t you see? (672-676) Polyphemus’ final question here is a plea. It is the harsh reality of a blind person’s helpless reliance on others. More specifically it is the blind person’s reliance on the sight of others. But the exploitation of Polyphemus’ blindness does not end there. He continues to perform his disability for the audience while the Chorus directs him into various obstacles. This is one of the best examples of performing blindness on the Greek stage. Though it was meant to be farcical, neither the seriousness of the Cyclops’ distress nor his anger can be overlooked. Polyphemus’ anger reveals a lot about his nature, perhaps as a Cyclops or perhaps as a blind figure. In her careful look at specific figures of speech that invoke blindness, Julia Miele Rodas attempts to trace origins for “blind rage.” Rodas wonders which came first, the blindness or the rage: “While the expression implies that blindness is an unfortunate result of rage, there is … an enraged blind man who exists apart from [that] meaning … a wraith that tempts us to believe that the blindness came first, that the rage is the byproduct, a lashing out by the sightless creature, robbed of his vision” (123). In the case of Polyphemus, Rodas specifically cites the Cyclops’ rage at being blinded, but she seems to warn that this monstrous creature acted no less impulsive (“blind”) before losing his eye. “His violence is a blind force, random; the men he kills and eats are selected [carelessly] … without looking, he clutches the two who are nearest and consumes them entire” (124). So it is that the “appetites of the blind are always suspect:

unseeing, they will eat anything” (125). In Samson’s case, “even the heroic blind are bitter and dangerous creatures” (126). Samson was betrayed, even by those who claimed to love him. He often seems a dupe, like the Cyclops, but Milton writes a Samson who controls his rage and keeps it focused. He does not flail about in the metaphorical and real darkness like Polyphemus. Because Samson is blind and shares other similarities with Milton it is tempting to put Samson’s words into Milton’s mouth. Perhaps Samson provided an outlet for the blind Milton. But if we are to accept the persona of Sonnet XIX as Milton himself, then perhaps he had already lamented enough. A better reflection of Milton’s own “blind rage” is the fact that he never identified correctly the author of Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum Adversus Parricidas Anglicanos (The Cry of the Royal Blood to Heaven Against the English Parricides), which derided and belittled him. The Clamor also demonstrates that the negative treatment of blindness was far from eradicated by the mid to late seventeenth century. Milton was clearly in his anger when he responded to this tract, and perhaps his enemies laughed at his Cyclops like rage as he too groped in the dark to find who had wronged him. Peter Du Moulin, the one who wrote the Clamor, gladly admitted as much in his Parerga, Poematum Libelli Tres: “I looked on in silence, and not without a soft chuckle, and seeing my bantling laid at another man’s door, and the blind and furious Milton fighting and slashing the air, like the hoodwinked horse-combatants in the old circus, not knowing by whom he was struck and whom he struck in return” (quoted in Lewalski 288). Milton’s enemies saw him as an angry blind man. In fact, Alexander More’s “epistle to Charles II, signed by [Adriaan] Vlacq, excoriates Milton as a Cyclops manqué” (Lewalski Life 289).100 It is not enough to call Milton a Cyclops, but More suggests in the very word “manqué” that Milton is a general failure. Du Moulin’s admission reveals more important notions about the way Milton’s enemies represented the blind poet. Du Moulin refers to games or a specific entertainment in which blindness was performed. In this case, a show was put on by horse-combatants who wore hoods to “blind” them from their attackers. Du Moulin’s ties to France (his Father’s native country) may have also supplied him with tales of other blind entertainments, like the four blind men who chased the pig with sticks and ended up beating each other for the entertainment of onlookers. Many people in the late Middle Ages and, according to Du Moulin’s reference, many people in the late Renaissance exploited blindness for the purposes

100 More quotes lines from the Odyssey and calls Milton “a monster horrible, deformed, huge, and sightless” (see CPW IV.2.1045).

of entertainment. Milton’s enemies treated him no differently than these blind men were treated by their audiences. Milton was baited into performing his blindness for the entertainment of men like More, Du Moulin, and later Samuel Parker, whose role as student turned attacker resembles that of the boy who offers to assist the blind man in Le Garçon et L’aveugle. And Milton’s angry responses only provided fuel for further castigation because his enemies could portray him as a raging blind fool. Milton was not a raging blind fool, though he was certainly angry and hurt. His enemies declared his blindness was a “direct punishment from God” (Lewalski Life 407): “Likewise how wonderfully was Mr. Iohn Milton, who writ the seditious Antimonarchical Book against the King, in answer to Learned Salmasius, strucken blind soon after, and could never since by any art, or skill, … recover his sight” (I. Traytors Perspective-Glass 21-2). Milton understood the negative connotations of blindness, but in his writing he only identified those related to sin (see his Mask). Milton also understood that blindness often resulted from punishment by one’s enemies, like Samson’s blindness; and for transgression, like Comus’s brutish crew, the numerous biblical examples, and English legends, like Frideswide’s. But Milton neither saw himself as a sinner nor at the mercy of his enemies, and this is why Milton used his blindness as a literary resource. Rather than seeking to defend himself, Milton developed blindness as a specific literary trope to show its necessity in the evolution of a poet, requisite to God’s providence. Like the blind seer “who is able to discern a truth denied to normal vision” (Jay 12), a blind poet could do the same by revealing invisible truths (see PL III.55). In a letter he wrote to Castiglione, Raphael suggests that “in order to paint a beautiful woman, I should have to see many beautiful women … but since there are so few beautiful women and so few sound judges [of such], I make use of a certain idea that comes into my head. … I try very hard just to have it [the idea]” (as quoted in Barasch 135). It is appropriate then, that Raphael’s representation of Homer’s blindness counters interpretations of blindness in the Middle Ages as well as those interpretations heaped upon Milton by his enemies. So Raphael’s representation strengthens Milton’s own model of blindness, which “is the sign both of the divinely inspired sage who contemplates the secrets of the gods and of the poet and the artist who are immersed in the process of creation” (136). Milton’s blind narrator in Paradise Lost calls upon the Heavenly Muse to illumine that which is dark in him (I.22-3) in order to speak in profound and inspired poetic images.

In some of the most significant religious movements of the time metaphors that suggest the prevention of seeing in order to receive inspiration are the core images of central treatises.101 In his Select Discourses (1660), John Smith argues that we can only attain true knowledge if we “shut the Eyes of Sense, and open that brighter Eye of our understanding.” Such contemplation was equally important “in understanding the poet’s … work. … Inspiration and inner vision played a part … comparable to … illumination in religion. Stressing the part played by the artist’s inner vision in the creative process … supplants the demand for a faithful rendering of the external world and a scientific knowledge of objects described or depicted” (Barasch 134-35). Based upon his representations of blindness, then, Milton wants to believe that poetic creation relies on his blindness. Raphael’s revamped classical model of Homer’s blindness, the original classical model of blindness, and the religious model of blindness came together in Milton’s poetic representations of blindness, and served as a response to his detractors, who tried so hard to belittle, discredit, and frustrate him.

101 Cloud of Unknowing (Anonymous late 14th century author) and Dark Night of the Soul (St. John of the Cross). In these and other texts, conditions obscuring vision—the night or the clouds—are perceived as a precondition for true contemplation. In Cloud, the author argues against seeking God through knowledge. One must approach God beyond his or her mental capacity without any contemplation of an image or form but only through “naked intent” and “blind love.”

CHAPTER THREE BLINDNESS OF VISION: DISABLING THE EYE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

The impact of applied optics to seventeenth century poetry has been explored by numerous critics,102 who have successfully demonstrated the influence of the telescope and microscope on the consciousness of the culture in which they were first put to “scientific” use. These critics have laid the foundation for alternative approaches to seventeenth century poetry with respect to applied optics. It is especially important to consider the impact of Robert Hooke’s claim that instruments of experimental philosophy can repair the senses where the blind Milton is concerned. Karen Edwards has demonstrated Milton’s awareness of contemporary natural philosophy, and Angelica Duran has identified Milton’s relationships with and knowledge of specific natural philosophers and members of the Royal Society.103 And both Edwards and Duran have successfully countered Kester Svendsen’s claims that Milton worked primarily with obsolete models of natural philosophy. These recent works have paved the way for more specific approaches to Milton’s poetry via specific early-modern “scientific” debates. In the tradition of Fallon’s Milton among the Philosophers, this chapter situates Milton among two of the natural philosophers Fallon does not treat in his study. Robert Hooke and Margaret Cavendish engage in a debate about the utility of and reliance on optics in empirical science and in acquiring general truths. Some studies, notably those of Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Kester Svendsen, and more recently Maura Brady and Angelica Duran, place the telescope and microscope in Milton’s purview. But Milton’s representations of the telescope and microscope become much more important when discussed in relation to his blindness. Milton’s employment of these optical instruments lead to Hooke’s suggestion that optical instruments act as prostheses

102 See especially Marjorie Hope Nicolson’s “The Telescope and Imagination” and Science and Imagination, Donald Friedman’s “Galileo and the Art of Seeing,” Maura Brady’s “Galileo in Action: The ‘Telescope’ in Paradise Lost,” and Elizabeth Spiller’s “Reading through Galileo’s Telescope: Margaret Cavendish and the Experience of Reading.” 103 See Edwards’s Milton and the Natural World and Duran’s The Age of Milton and the Scientific Revolution.

or “artificial organs” (Micrographia).104 For Margaret Cavendish, however, “Nature has made your sense and reason more regular then Art has your glasses, for they are mere deluders and will never lead you to the knowledge of truth” (Blazing World and Other Writings 142). 105 The doubts surrounding the reliability of sight in seventeenth-century Europe disabled the eye. The disabled eye redefined the idea of blindness as a disability in the seventeenth century because all sight became fallible. Natural philosophy’s attempts to cure the fallen body with prostheses fail for precisely the reason Cavendish implies: imperfect beings cannot create instruments perfect enough to better themselves. Even before he lost his sight, Milton accepted the fallibility of vision, which is evident in the way he represents blindness in his early poetry. Sight distracts because it is subject to various obstructions. Blindness on the other hand, the inability to “see,” leads to insight and an ability to approach God. Probably compelled by Hooke’s claims that optical instruments correct vision, the blind Milton indirectly participates in the debate between Hooke and Cavendish. Milton accepts cautious use of optical instruments in the pursuit of knowledge, but he refuses to see them as a way to repair vision. The pursuit of knowledge through natural philosophy leads to the cusp of Milton’s epistemological concerns, and it furthers Duran’s argument that “Milton’s literature … was as much a part of the project that Francis Bacon … called the ‘advancement of learning’ as were the optical lenses, air pumps, and intravenous syringes created by early modern scientists” (3). While this is certainly true, Duran does not recognize that blindness motivated Milton to situate his work within the intellectual realm of Bacon’s project. 3.1 Scepticism The discovery of worlds was not limited to physical exploration and experimental philosophy. Chapter Two closed with the idea that a blind poet, like a seer, can reveal invisible

104 All references to Micrographia come from the 1665 text available through EEBO (Wing / H2620). Unless otherwise noted by page number, all quotes come from the “The Preface,” in which page signatures are not visible. However, the text has been transcribed into an readable html page that is searchable. It can be found at: . 105 This citation comes from the Penguin edition of the text, The Blazing World and Other Writings, edited by Kate Lilley. The 1666 text I have consulted from EEBO (Wing / N857) is missing pages 26-27. Future citations to the Lilley text will be designated by “Other Writings” while references to the 1666 text will be designated as Blazing World.

75 or hidden things. In the proem to the second book of The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser shows he has done that with Faerie Land. After he cites recent discoveries,106 Spenser proclaims, Yet all these were when no man them did know Yet have from wisest ages hidden been And later times things more unknown shall show Why then should witless man so much misweene That nothing is but that which he hath seen? What if within the moon’s fair shining sphere What if in every other star unseen, Of other worlds he happily should hear? He wonder would much more, yet such to some appear. (Stanza 3) Spenser’s argument does two things. First, it anticipates the coming maelstrom of discovery based on visions of things that had always existed but that no one had seen,107 or more accurately, Spenser engages the growing revival of Pyrrhonian Scepticism. The first Latin edition of Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism was published in 1562; however, Sextus’ work had been known earlier in the Renaissance. Richard Popkin has argued that “one of the main avenues through which sceptical views of antiquity entered late Renaissance thought was a central quarrel of the Reformation, the dispute over the proper standard of religious knowledge, or what was called ‘the rule of faith.’ This argument raised one of the classical problems of the Greek Pyrrhonists, the problem of the criterion of truth” (3). The rediscovery of the writings of Sextus Empiricus in the fifteenth century allowed “the arguments and views of the Greek sceptics” to become “part of the philosophical core of the religious struggles then taking place” (3). The most basic tenet of Pyrrhonian scepticism is the suspension of judgment. Pyrrhonists refuse to make judgments of truth based upon any other philosophical model because one can never know all the facts. This is, in part, Spenser’s argument. Though one claims he has seen all the known lands, it does not mean he will not discover more. Though one claims to have counted every star, it does not mean he will not discover more. The reason people have not discovered “every other star unseen” rests with the human inability to see. This is the second thing Spenser does with his argument. He identifies human limitations, which for many men and

106 He specifically cites the Amazon and Peru, for examples. 107 One example will be Jupiter’s moons, discovered by Galileo.

women in the Renaissance were a product of the Fall. This led natural philosophers like Francis Bacon to seek ways to overcome that Fall through artifice. Spenser’s is an argument that everyone is blind with regard to things that exist but lie outside of human knowledge. 3.2 Body Image Any discussion of human limitations or the incomplete body provides an inroad to disability studies because it creates an opposition: where there is an incomplete body, there is a model of a complete or ideal body by which the incomplete body is judged. This was the division most men and women employed in their view of the human body, ideal (perfect) and fallen (imperfect) or immortal and mortal. The fallen human body was imperfect and overwhelmed with limitations. In Paradise Lost Milton identifies limitations in Adam shortly after the Fall. First, Michael must clear Adam’s eyes of a film-like covering that came from the partaking of the fruit. Once Raphael clears Adam’s eyes, Adam sees the visions Michael shows him. By showing that Adam’s eyes needed aid to see, Milton participates in the disabling of the fallen human body. However, the euphrasy, rue, and three drops from the well of life (See XI.411-16) were not enough. In its fallen state, Adam’s body still lacked the necessary functions to partake of “objects divine.” After the vision of the flood, Michael pauses and tells Adam, Much thou hast yet to see, but I perceive Thy mortal sight to fail; objects divine Must needs impair and weary human sense[.] (XII.6-10) Even with divine aid (Michael was acting under the authority of the Father), medical applications (euphrasy and rue), and preternatural means (drops from the well of life) Adam’s “human sense” falls short of a lost ideal. Therefore, the fallibility of eyes that still have sight might make blindness a welcome distraction From Michelangelo’s David and innumerable depictions of Adam and Eve to the ideal yet unattainable women of Petrarchan love poetry, the ideal human body abounded in European art. Lennard J. Davis identifies the earliest usage of the word “ideal” as being in the seventeenth century (“Constructing Normalcy” 3). The OED cites two meanings that are conceptually the same, but the following is the most significant definition as it relates to artistic representation: (1611) “Existing only in idea; confined to thought or imagination; imaginary: opp. to real or actual. Hence sometimes, Not real or practical; based on an idea or fancy; fancied, visionary” (A

4a). This definition is important in Milton’s case because he had to rely solely on imagination after he lost his sight. The Renaissance construction of the ideal body was subjective and based solely on preferences of the artist, who, in turn, contributed to the cultural constructions of the ideal, and, by association, the cultural constructions of disability. No one in any recorded age knew what the ideal body looked like as it pertained to the prelapsarian immortal Adam and Eve. This led to the subjective, revived classical views of the ideal body, which share a commonality: they are without blemishes. Pieter Brueghel at least seems “to defy classicism’s imperative to depict only unblemished bodies” (Mitchell and Snyder 5) in his work with disabled subjects. Yet “his attendant association of them [cripples] with a debased humanity did little to challenge public perceptions of their figures” (5). By introducing disability so prominently in his art, Brueghel forced his audience to see the body’s lack of completeness and consider it. For example, in the case of blindness, the audience of the painting or poem naturally wonders why the figures of the painting or why the subject or persona of the poem is blind or stricken blind. The question is unavoidable in an era where people still thought of blindness as a metonymy for sin and corruption. Perhaps more importantly, Brueghel’s work was a constant reminder of fallen humanity and its inability to overcome the resulting physical state, which continued “falling” until it perished. “Disability inaugurates the act of interpretation” (6).108 The extreme examples of unblemished bodies in art had no real life models. They were, at best, poetic representations like work of Sir Philip Sidney’s “right poet,” who “borrows nothing of what is, hath been, or shall be, but range[s] only reined with learned discretion into the divine consideration of what may be and should be” (68). As Milton had to imagine literary representations for angels, God, and even the paradisiacal Adam and Eve, so everyone had to imagine such representations. The Renaissance world was long removed from the paradise of Adam and Eve, and men and women had no objective models they could use to recognize the ideal image and function of the human body, and all was far removed from the presence of God because of the Fall and sin. To some degree, most people accepted the limitations of the fallen human body, but Francis Bacon sought means for humans to overcome their limitations through.

108 The microscope and telescope also inaugurate acts of interpretation. From Galileo to Hooke, interpretation was not far from the observations made through these optical devices. Likewise, the critics of these devices readily found their own interpretations, which followed indictments of the natural philosophers who used them.

3.3 Optics One of the first known uses of an optical instrument in aiding vision was Seneca’s use of a magnifying glass around 62 AD (Bardell 78). It took more than 1000 years for optics to advance far enough to produce a common aid to improve vision: “spectacles.” When Roger Bacon first experimented with lenses and determined that they would be useful for aiding vision (Bardell 79), he also indirectly determined their prosthetic nature: “If a man looks at letters or other small objects through the medium of a crystal or glass … whose convexity is toward the eye, and the eye is in the air, he will see the letters much better and they will appear larger to him. … Therefore this instrument is useful to the aged and those with weak eyes” (Opus majus, ca. 1267; quoted in Bardell 79). Bacon’s careful diction (assuming the text is correctly translated) is of note. He makes it clear that the letters “appear” larger to the man and that they are not “made” larger by the lens. Bacon limits the power of the lens to the eye of the beholder and suggests that appearances through lenses may vary. This limitation also disables the potential of lenses to “repair” vision or to restore vision’s previously conceived objectivity. While undercutting the prosthetic usefulness of lenses, Bacon also lays the foundation for how natural philosophers would come to understand the operation of optical instruments centuries later. First, the lens distorts the letters so that they appear larger. This leads directly to Cavendish’s general problem with the telescope and microscope as deluders, but it also influenced Hooke’s thinking: What and how is the eye meant to see? Regardless of its aid to the weakened eye, the lens distorts the individual’s process of vision, while at the same time mimicking it. Bacon points out a technical necessity in the use of the lens: “the eye is in the air.” Vision takes place at a distance. Early philosophers realized that placing an object directly on the eye made it impossible to see the object. This disembodiment of vision led to the visual force being viewed as a literal extension of the embodied soul (Biernoff 86). Extension of the soul evokes the extramission theory of vision, where the vital pneuma reaches from the eye to capture the image of an object. This extension also fashions sight into a way of moving around in the world (or universe). Consider the travel of Milton’s angels and Satan in Paradise Lost. Often their journeys were described in terms of vision, or vision was at least a precursor to their flights. For example, in Book I, Satan through “his baleful eyes … At once as far as angels’ ken he views / The dismal situation waste and wild” (56, 59-50). The reader takes the visual flight with Satan, whose “ken” matches the medieval-developed notion that to see is to be in at least

79 two places at once (Biernoff 92). After Roger Bacon, it took another 200 years before someone did more significant work in optics,109 and “it took … 300 years before the invention of other aids to vision, the telescope and the microscope” (Bardell 78). 3.3.1 Telescope and Microscope The above medieval model, the ability to be in two places at once, helps explain the immediate enthusiasm and anxiety that surrounded the advent of the telescope. Elizabeth Spiller provides a great example of this enthusiasm in an anecdote about reading through the telescope. Although Julius Caesar Lagalla, after he looked through Galileo’s telescope, “disputed the ability of the telescope accurately to show objects on the moon; he nonetheless enthused that the telescope made it possible to ‘read the letters on the gallery which Sixtus erected in the Lateran … clearly […] at a distance of at least two miles” (“Reading through Galileo’s Telescope” 192). Spiller explains that the resistance to accepting the objects on the moon resulted from the fact that “Galileo’s visual demonstration could not actually carry them there” (193). That is certainly the case, especially when we consider Lagalla’s enthusiasm when he identified the distance at which he saw something with which he was familiar (the letters on the gallery). The telescope had taken his vision so close to the letters, he felt like he was actually there reading them. His view through the telescope recreated a familiar personal experience. Lagalla’s experience serves as an illustration of where Renaissance men and women seem to have placed limits on the power of sight to transport individuals. In other words, the unfamiliar would always appear too distant to understand; as Raphael counseled Adam: heaven is for thee too high To know what passes there; be lowly wise: Think only what concerns thee and thy being; Dream not of other worlds[.] (PL VIII.172-75) Aside from philosophical limitations, the limitations of technology led to inconsistencies with the telescope. Vast imperfections in the glass used in older models distorted the images110

109 A. C. Crombie considers Leonardo da Vinci’s work on the camera obscura (a model da Vinci used to understand the operation of the eye) a significant precursor to the invention of the microscope (“The Mechanistic Hypothesis” 39). The creation of an artificial model based on the operation of the eye continued to drive optics forward in the sixteenth century. Those models became increasingly concerned with the lens of the eye because men like Francesco Maurolico, following “the ocular anatomy of Vesalius and the optics of Roger Bacon and Pecham. … accepted the lens as the seat of the ‘visual power’” (Crombie “The Mech. Hypo.” 43).

and led Galileo to learn how to grind his own lenses, and “sparing neither labor nor expense, I succeeded in constructing for myself so excellent an instrument that objects seen by means of it appeared nearly one thousand times larger and over thirty times closer than when regarded with our natural vision” (The Starry Messenger 29).111 Although Galileo assumes that his readers understand his terminology, “natural vision” was no longer easy to conceive. For Maura Brady, The Starry Messenger “gives us a partial picture of Galileo in action, showing readers the pains he took to achieve clear vision, laying the ground work for the rhetorical case he will make for the validity of the instruments and his observations with them” (136). The clarity of vision which Galileo achieves with the telescope is at the heart of Cavendish’s critique of optical instruments. Even Galileo warns that duplicating his observations requires “quite a perfect telescope” (Starry Messenger 30). With such an instrument “one may learn with all the certainty of sense evidence” the true nature of the moon (28). Galileo’s trust in the senses will resurface in the debate between Hooke and Cavendish. Galileo suggests that reliance upon the senses must be absolute in order to trust the images produced by optical instruments. The advent of the microscope created technical problems similar to those Galileo encountered with the telescope, and it also created the same phenomenological problem that Galileo encountered: how does the experimental natural philosopher describe what no one else has ever seen? There was no precedent for describing new planets and stars seen through the telescope; neither was there a precedent for describing the “new worlds” viewed through the microscope. Zwierlein observes that in the seventeenth century “the new microscopic perspectives are still being inflected by old analogies, by the habits of perception that Francis Bacon in the Advancement of Learning denounces as distorting ‘Prenotion’” (70-71). Such “prenotions” amounted to little more than Sophistry because they were unsupported theories of causation. For example, the Royal Society charged Hooke to use a microscope to look at sage and determine “whether there lurked any little spiders in the cavities of the leaves, that might make them noxious” (Gunther 131).112 Hooke reported that no such spiders existed. His result supported the intellectual utility of the microscope to disprove theorized causation; however, it revealed no other truth. Therefore, Baconian natural philosophers were unable “to establish a

110 Rooseboom offers a fairly comprehensive explanation of the telescope’s initial defects in “The History of the Microscope,” Proceedings of the Royal Microscopical Society 2.2 (1967), pp. 270-72. 111 Text from Stillman Drake’s Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo. 112 Also quoted and commented upon in Nicolson, “Microscope” 12.

stable connection between supraliminal observations and subliminal causes,” which represented an epistemological gap “between the magnified vistas and ‘our’ world of normal visibility” (Zwierlein 71). However, the mediation of the microscopic world relied heavily on the composite representations, the textual preferences, and the drawing styles of individual observers. Microscopists, just as Galileo, had no base of reference to help others understand the phenomena they observed. Technical views gave way to the imagination, which remained necessary in the explanation of new discoveries. The imagination caused additional problems for the microscope. Catherine Wilson has noted that “the leading expert on its [the microscope’s] history has stated flatly that the microscope ceased to be a plaything only in the second half of the nineteenth century” (86). G. L’E. Turner further notes that “it was largely the amateur interest that forced the pace of development” (5). Samuel Pepys offers a great example of Turner’s claim. The tone of his diary entry on the day he purchased a microscope speaks to the excitement surrounding its imaginative reputation.113 In the evening, Pepys began reading Henry Power’s “book of discovery by the Microscope, to enable me a little how to use and what to expect from my glasse” (13 August 1664). Pepys’s comment reads like the typical modern consumer browsing through an instruction manual. The next day after dinner Pepys went “up to my chamber and made an end of Dr. Powre’s book of the Microscope … and then my wife and I with great pleasure, but with great difficulty before we could come to find the manner of seeing anything by my Microscope – at last did, with good content, though not so much as I expect when I come to understand it better.” The hype that produced Pepys’s excitement seems to have overstated the microscope’s usefulness, but as a diligent consumer, Pepys expects greater returns for continued efforts, and a few months later (20 January 1665) he speaks proudly about his purchase of “Hooke’s book of Microscopy, a most excellent piece.” Pepys’s diary entries offer one example of the general public’s reactions to advances in natural philosophy. Pepys is not so much concerned about the utility of the microscope and whether it distorts objects or whether it aids vision as he is concerned about his imaginary participation in the experimental process. 3.4 Robert Hooke

113 “There … comes Mr. Reeve with a Microscope and Scotoscope; for the first I did give him 5l. 10s, a great price; but a most curious bauble it is, and he says as good, nay, the best he knows in England, and he makes the best in the world” (13 August 1664). If you have to buy a new technological device, it might as well be the best.

The entire preface to Micrographia, Catherine Wilson has said, “is a study in contrasts: one finds in it an emotional call for sober investigation, a visionary appeal to methodical analysis, a rhetorical plea to abandon words for things, and the claim that instrument-mediated perception, which reveals a ‘new world’ to the eyes, will in time enable us to see our world as it really is” (The Invisible World ix). Hooke’s rhetorical plea contrasts the Hobbesian method for recovering sight through language by an artificial consensus.114 For Hobbes, one cannot escape language, and I will show that Hooke’s attempts to do so fail when he must inflect “old analogies” (see Zwierlein 70-71) into the descriptions of his observations. Even more profound is Hooke’s suggestion that the microscope could provide an unprecedented look at the essence of things; for example, what makes a fly a fly? Such a vision reaches beyond the ken of angels. Hooke’s microscopic project requires “[only] a sincere Hand, and faithful Eye to examine, and to record the things themselves as they appear.” The problem is how does one determine the faithfulness of the eye? “Faithful” is a qualifier in an otherwise straightforward argument. Despite Hooke’s claim that the senses need correction, he places an initial trust in the eye to observe things through the microscope correctly. Perhaps, then, it is the invention of the microscope that has created a more faithful eye in order to collect correct data. Perhaps Hooke argues that with the aid of optics he does not need the naked eye to provide objective certainty. While one cannot say for sure whether Hooke knew the theories of Hobbes and Descartes that based vision solely on the way an object appeared to the beholder, those theories were widespread by the time Hooke published Micrographia. Therefore, Hooke’s faithful eye invites controversy in a world where universal truths could not be identified by sight alone, but with the assistance of language developed by an artificial consensus.115 Hobbes’s “artificial consensus,” which sought to stabilize vision, allowed some of the harshest criticism of the microscope. Problems with the microscope did not derive from the observations made through it or from the microscope’s imperfections, but from the language used to describe observations. “When lice look like lobsters, it is only the commentary that identifies them” (Zwierlein 76). This is where Hooke’s “rhetorical plea” breaks down. His descriptions of minutiae, often composites themselves, recall Galileo’s own attempts to develop a frame of reference for describing astronomical phenomena never before seen. Language, not

114 See Chapter One of this study, pp. 39-40. 115 Again, see the discussion of this in Chapter One, pp. 39-40.

Hooke’s “things,” still controls vision, and this is Milton’s crutch. Like Galileo and like Hooke, who use language to close the gap between themselves (those who have seen) and those who have not seen their observations, Milton uses language to close the gap between himself and the sighted, who cannot see what Milton “sees.” However, names of things in the microscopic world still do not reveal anything about their nature. We can read Hooke’s labels, but there is no language to identify subjects outside of what we already know. Often times, Hooke’s descriptions do not reveal anything that the naked eye could not already perceive. For example, when viewing petrified wood under the microscope, Hooke reports, “This Petrify’d substance resembled Wood, in that … all the parts of it seem’d not at all dislocated, or alter’d from their natural Position, whil’st they were Wood” (Micrographia 108). Perhaps unknowingly, Hooke invokes the Hobbesian theory of sensation: “whatsoever accidents or qualities our senses make us think there be in the world, they are not there, but are seemings and apparitions only” (The Elements of Law and Natural Politic 3-4). Despite Hooke’s attempt “to abandon words for things,” those things can never be the clear-cut identifiers he wants them to be. Under the microscope “things” will always “seem,” “resemble,” or “appear” to be something else. In this sense, the language of experimental philosophy is vision. Hooke complicates his problems with language by the admission that his images are composites based upon multiple observations. Hooke’s representational technique, then, is a poetic technique. Like Milton’s poetic images that are products of images dwelling in his mind, Hooke’s experimental philosophy is nothing more than the product of an image, constructed after various observations, dwelling in his mind. So “fictional writing,” like Hooke’s Micrographia, can vividly display a world not accessible to the senses. Hooke’s “new world” is no different than the worlds Milton constructed with his late poetry and no different than Spenser’s Faerie Land. When Hooke proclaims that “by the means of Telescopes, there is nothing so far distant but may be represented to our view,” he suggests a preternatural vision. Milton calls this the ken of angels, and the reader of Paradise Lost encounters it through the eyes of Satan, Raphael, and even Uriel, when he finally realizes, from a distance, that Satan duped him. While the telescope provided humans the ability to see farther, for Hooke, the microscope offered something more. If a strong enough microscope revealed the essence of an object (what made it

a fly, mosquito, plant, etc.), then it would complete the Baconian project.116 Therefore, the microscope presented the possibility of possessing the ken of God, “for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). For the seventeenth century philosopher or poet, if anyone knew the essence of humans, what makes them work, what makes them who or what they are, it was their creator. 3.5 Margaret Cavendish Cavendish wrote Observations on Experimental Philosophy (1666) in response to Hooke’s Micrographia and, by extension, the entire Baconian project; and in The Description of a New Blazing World she “boldly interrogates the epistemological assumptions … that underlie the mechanical philosophy and the experimental method” (Keller 448). Keller’s diction is appropriate. Considering Cavendish’s criticism of optical instruments, these “mere deluders” (Other Writings 142) allow for little more than assumptions. “Cavendish’s critique of the microscope blurred the epistemological boundaries claiming to distinguish fact from fiction, discovery from creation, and truth from fancy” (Keller 455). Cavendish makes no direct response to Hooke’s disabling of the senses, but her Empress argues that “nature has made your sense and reason more regular then art has your glasses” (Other Writings 141-42). Blazing World is Cavendish’s fictional realization of her criticisms of Hooke’s proposed recovery of the senses “to … some degree of those former perfections” (“Preface” Micrographia). However, as an outsider to the Royal Society and its experimental philosophy, Cavendish was forced to employ sense and reason as the only instruments available to her (Keller 449). Cavendish sets the foundation for her argument against the use of instruments to improve the senses in the first section of her Observations: “Human Sense and Perception.” She argues that reason alone is sufficient to improve the senses, “for the rational Matter is the most prudent and wisest part of Nature … having the perfectest notions of God … so that whatsoever the sensitive Perception is either defective in, or ignorant of, the rational Perception supplies” (3); therefore, only reason can “recover some degree of those former perfections” (Hooke Micrographia).117 But reason is not without its own limits. In Blazing World when the Empress

116 Bacon believed that if we could discover what made objects in nature work and learn how they were put together, we could recreate them. 117 In his Great Instauration Francis Bacon argued that nature could not be explained by “excellence of wit” and “repetition of chance experiments”; the experimental philosopher “must be guided by a clue, and see what way from the first perception of the sense must be laid out upon a sure plan” (Bacon Works 18). This was part of

asks the Spirits the source of the miserable state of men: “The Spirits answered, [they fell] by disobedience,” which sin “went beyond their knowledg.” The Empress then “begg’d the Spirits to pardon her presumption[.] … It is the nature of Mankind to be inquisitive. Natural desire of knowledg, answered the Spirits, is not blameable, so you do not go beyond what your natural reason can comprehend” (85-86). This is more than the unfamiliar appearing too far to understand, as in the case of Lagalla looking through Galileo’s telescope. This reads like a direct antecedent for Raphael’s counsel to Adam to “Think only what concerns thee and thy being; / Dream not of other worlds” (PL VIII.172-75). Of course, the irony is that Cavendish does dream of another world when she creates Blazing World. But she has done so as a “fancy,” which is different than the “natural reason” identified by the Spirits. Cavendish’s natural reason is “Regular Reason, not Irregular; where I do also exclude Art, which is apt to delude sense, and cannot inform so well as Reason doth; for Reason reforms and instructs sense in all its actions” (Observations 3). Reason keeps the senses in compliance. Also, Cavendish claims “Art,” which term encompassed all artifice from poetic fictions to the instruments of experimental philosophy, only deludes the senses or blinds them to the truth. Like the poets Plato wished to ban or at least heavily censor in his Republic, experimental philosophers are liars. The Empress stops short of calling the Bear-men liars in Blazing World, though they fail to explain adequately the reason for differences in observation through the telescope. The Empress also disagrees with their conclusions about a fly’s eye when they view it through a microscope (Other Writings 142). She suggests “that perhaps their microscopes did not truly inform them” (Blazing World 29). That Cavendish has modeled the Empress after herself is clear, here. The Empress’s reason “reforms and instructs” her sensory observation. The Bear- men reply with a condescending smile and tell the Empress “that she did not know the vertue of those Microscopes; for they did never delude, but rectifie and inform their senses; nay, the World, said they, would be but blind without them, as it has been in former ages before those Microscopes were invented” (29-30). Cavendish has chosen to take Hooke’s claims about the

Bacon’s guarantee that experiments were reliable because they limited the role of the senses: “The office of the sense shall be only to judge of the experiment, and the experiment itself shall judge of the things” (Francis Bacon 299). Bacon fails to recognize, I think, that because the results of the experiment still must be processed by the senses, one must still trust the senses. And this is where Cavendish shows that her reason and sense are far more reliable than the results of experiments that manipulate the senses and, therefore, manipulate reason.

weakness of the eyes to the extreme. Without the microscope, the world is blind.118 For the experimental philosopher, it is the microscope, solely, that reveals truth. Cavendish is not entirely opposed to the idea: “I do not say … Optick Glasses could not present the true figure of an Original; for if they do not exceed the compass of natural dimensions, they may; but when they endeavour to go beyond them, and do more then Nature has done, they rather present monstrous, then truly natural figures” (Observations 13). However, while “Optick Glasses” might present a “true figure,” Cavendish will not concede that they are capable of any more: “If Microscopes do truly represent the exterior parts and superficies of some minute Creatures, what advantages it our knowledg? For unless they could discover their interior, corporeal, figurative motions, and the obscure actions of Nature, or the causes which make such or such Creatures, I see no great benefit or advantage they yield to man” (Observations “Preface”). Hooke believed a microscope could eventually make these interior observations, and Cavendish does not leave this idea without a critique in Blazing World. While under the earth, the Empress wishes to “observe the interior corporeal, figurative motions both of vegetables and minerals” (Blazing World 41). She seeks to see the origins of phenomena that are observable by the senses just like Hooke was asked to do with the leaves of sage. The Empress asks the Bear-men for their best microscopes. The Bear-men smile again and say “that their Glasses would do them but little service in the bowels of the Earth, because there was no light; for, said they, our Glasses do onely represent exterior objects, according to the various reflections and positions of light; and wheresoever light is wanting, the glasses wil do no good” (41). Hooke, himself, identified the necessity of proper light when viewing objects through the microscope. Cavendish, then, focuses on a contradiction, here. The microscope cannot see the essence or interior of an object, where light is not sufficient to behold. The microscope shows only the exterior of objects. So Cavendish asks, “How shall a feather inform us of the interior nature of a Bird?” (Observations 42). In the end, “Hooke’s microscopic ‘new worlds’ are still, even if focused on the flea [or any object], worlds away from formulating what is practical and applicable knowledge” (Wallwork 197). Knowledge, whether mediated solely by the senses or by the addition of mechanical prostheses, relies on seeing “more” and also relies on more than just seeing.

118 But for Milton that is okay, since, as I argue in Chapter Two, “Milton’s own model of blindness … ‘is the sign both of the divinely inspired sage who contemplates the secrets of the gods and of the poet and the artist who are immersed in the process of creation’ (Barasch 136).”

3.6 Milton and Experimental Philosophy Hooke’s use of the microscope and claims of its power did not have the same cultural impact as the observations Galileo made through the telescope, but many natural philosophers and poets were watching. Also, unlike Galileo’s impact with the telescope, Hooke’s microscopic claims may have meant less to Milton, who was blind long before Hooke made his observations. Although there is some debate about the validity of Milton’s claim to have met Galileo, Milton still claims in Areopagitica to have met the Italian natural philosopher. There is no such suggestion about any contact Milton may have had with Robert Hooke, but Angelica Duran has spoken to Milton’s knowledge of the “invisible college,” a precursor to the Royal Society (12). Also, “Milton directly knew leading members of the Royal Society or knew early on of their work” (15).119 Milton would have known Hooke’s work through a member or future member of the Royal Society as well as from Micrographia. Milton’s discussion of Galileo’s controversy in Areopagitica is the only direct reference he makes of him outside of the lone mention of Galileo’s name in Paradise Lost. Milton rarely makes direct reference to contemporaries in his poetry, so it is not surprising that Milton makes no direct reference to Hooke or other microscopists, even when he directly names the microscope in Paradise Regained. When Milton refers to his meeting with Galileo, it is an example of what can happen in a nation subject to strict censorship. Milton makes no comments about Galileo’s discoveries as if in a conspicuous attempt to suspend judgment, which is one purpose of Areopagitica in regard to a basic epistemological process: the reading of books. Milton proclaims that “killing” a book is worse than killing a man: “Who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye” and even “strikes at that ethereall essence, the breath of reason it selfe” (4). The image of God is how one “sees” him, eternal. So it is with reason and the knowledge that books possess—they are eternal. Also, the knowledge acquired through reading enters the intellect through the eye. Finally, that “fift” or “quint”-essence is that which angels were thought to be made of, so “an ‘ethereall’ nature would represent pure and immortal intellect” (Flannagan 999 n43). Now the “Image of God, as it were in the eye” becomes the image of God one has in the mind because one cannot see God with mortal eyes. The advantage goes to the blind poet.

119 Duran discusses specific relationships in Chapter 1 of The Scientific Revolution and the Age of Milton.

The most important aspect of Areopagitica is the freedom of minds to determine truth or, more specifically, right from wrong based upon their ability to reason. Cavendish speaks strongly about the importance of reason in determining truth, which places her in Milton’s epistemological camp. Cavendish’s hierarchy of perception does not begin with sight, as it did with most natural philosophers from ancient Greece to the Renaissance. She begins with “rational perception, which is much purer and subtiler then the sensitive; nay, so pure and subtil a knowledg, that many believe it to be immaterial, as if it were some God” (“Preface” Observations 2-3). Milton identifies that Godlike ability to reason in Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost, where man is “just and right, / Sufficient to have stood” (III.98-99). Throughout Areopagitica Milton asserts that men who read must use reason to determine the extent of a book’s truthfulness whatever the text: “A wise man will make better use of an idle pamphlet, then a fool will do of sacred Scripture” (15). There is no reason to suspect Milton did not feel the same about experimental philosophy. Milton was not opposed to experimental medical procedures, if those procedures meant he could recover his eyesight. So he sought for aid wherever he could find it. When Milton asks Philaras to consult “the Paris physician Thévenot (especially outstanding as an occulist)” (CPW 4:2.868), he demonstrates a trust in experimental methods and in the advice of a learned friend regarding them, as he says in the same letter, “I shall do what you urge, that I may not seem to refuse aid whencesoever offered, perhaps divinely.” In this attempt to recover his eyesight, Milton’s tone nears desperation, even if he speaks cautiously (“I shall do what you urge”). However, Milton’s exploration of avenues to restore his eyes parallels the approach an experimental philosopher might take to any problem. Milton wants to see again, and he seeks out all methods to make it possible. The main difference is that Milton seeks restitution, while the experimental philosopher seeks knowledge, or the ever elusive “truth.” In Prolusion VII, Milton directly addresses the pursuit of knowledge, which “Makes Men Happier” and “brings more Blessings to Men than Ignorance” (CPW 1:288). Milton, here, “refers specifically to the study of natural philosophy, the precursor to [modern] science: from ‘the nature of the whole firmament and of its stars’ to ‘the delicate structure of the human body and the art of keeping it in health’ (CPW 1:295)” (Duran 34). But Milton goes even further. Through “universal learning,” man “will indeed seem to be one whose rule and dominion the stars obey, to whose command earth and sea hearken, and who winds and tempests serve; to

whom, lastly, Mother Nature herself has surrendered, as if indeed some god had abdicated the throne of the world and entrusted its rights, laws, and administration to him as governor” (CPW 1:296).120 Milton’s words echo Bacon’s (and later Hooke’s) agenda, where increased knowledge of the natural world leads to man’s control over nature or the reassertion of his dominion over nature. Because God gave man dominion over nature before the Fall, as a result of the Fall man lost that dominion. Before the Fall, Adam could name each creature because he knew their natures (see PL VII.492-98 & VIII.349-56). Hooke sought, through his microscopic project, to regain Adam’s knowledge of the nature of things. While contemplating views of nature through the microscope, from the lowest seed to the most complex animals, Hooke asks, Who knows but Adam might from some such contemplation, give names to all creatures? If at least his names had any significancy in them of the creature's nature on which he impos’d it; as many (upon what grounds I know not) have suppos’d: And who knows, but the Creator may, in those characters, have written and engraven many of his most mysterious designs and counsels, and given man a capacity, which, assisted with diligence and industry, may be able to read and understand them. (154) The capacity to which Hooke refers is the invention of instruments, in this case a microscope capable of “reading” and, thereby, understanding the very nature of a plant or animal the way man once did in Adam. This is precisely why Hooke argued to reclaim the senses from their fallen, imperfect state. He sought to reestablish mechanistically what he considered the ideal function of the human body, beginning with the microscope and the telescope that allow the weakened eyes of humans to see better. This is a reassertion of the power granted to sight epistemologically.121 Hooke’s view coincides with the idea that fallen men and women have lost an ideal version of sight, and, therefore, the ideal way to acquire knowledge. However, when Hooke claims that artificial instruments may repair “the mischiefs, and imperfection, mankind has drawn upon it self,” he identifies the root of imperfection as “negligence, and intemperance, and a wilful and

120 One cannot help but think about Prospero’s own dominion over nature by his “art” in The Tempest. 121 “All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things” (Aristotle Metaphysics I.1).

superstitious deserting the Prescripts and Rules of Nature, whereby every man, both from a deriv’d corruption, innate and born with him, and from his breeding and converse with men, is very subject to slip into all sorts of errors” (“Preface” Micrographia). This preceding list reads like Bacon’s Idols of learning from the second book of his Advancement of Learning.122 Bacon’s discussion of the Idols coincides with the problem of sensory information. The senses are unreliable enough to require correction by experimentation (see Bacon Works 27). Hooke identifies himself with Baconian natural philosophy in two ways. First, he denounces the Idols of learning, and second, he proclaims that a means has been devised to correct the senses in their capacity to gather knowledge. And since Bacon’s natural philosophy sought for ways to help humans overcome deficiencies that resulted from the Fall, it is safe to identify the Fall, for Hooke, as the origin of the eyes’ deficiency. Hooke strengthens this connection when he speaks to the need for knowledge to overcome the Fall: “And as at first, mankind fell by tasting of the forbidden Tree of Knowledge, so we, their Posterity, may be in part restor’d by the same way” (“Preface” Micrographia). Developments in natural philosophy, then, especially the inventions of instruments that obtained knowledge through an invasive study of nature, could restore the human body to its perfect, immortal, and prelapsarian state. As Eve Keller has observed, Hooke offers the unique promise of “paradise regained” (455).123 Though Prolusion VII clearly praises knowledge for its usefulness in man’s reclamation of his dominion over nature, Milton will later argue that humans can only regain paradise through the Son.

122 Idols of the Tribe: development of false ideas caused by human nature; Idols of the Cave: concepts that have no evidentiary truth yet treasured by a particular individual; Idols of the Market Place: false notions derived from public discourse/communication; and Idols of the Theatre: ideas that originate with received or traditional philosophies (scholasticism). 123 Hooke praises the work of the telescope and microscope in providing the eye with the means to transcend its infirmities: By the means of Telescopes, there is nothing so far distant but may be represented to our view; and by the help of Microscopes, there is nothing so small, as to escape our inquiry; hence there is a new visible World discovered to the understanding. By this means the Heavens are open’d, and a vast number of new Stars, and new Motions, and new Productions appear in them, to which all the antient Astronomers were utterly Strangers. By this the Earth it self, which lyes so neer us, under our feet, shews quite a new thing to us, and in every little particle of its matter, we now behold almost as great a variety of Creatures, as we were able before to reckon up in the whole Universe it self. One can almost hear Spenser’s words tucked between the lines: “Yet all these were when no man them did know” (Faerie Queene, Proem, Book II; emphasis added). That ability humans lacked to see these things because of their visual impairment had a “cure.” Hooke was not the only natural philosopher excited by these new discoveries, but he was the most outspoken in what it meant: men and women could now see better than they had thought possible.

When the “universal learning” Milton speaks of in Prolusion VII “has once completed its cycle, the spirit of man, no longer confined within this dark prison-house, will reach out far and wide, till it fills the whole world and the space far beyond with expansion of its divine greatness” (CPW 1:296). The cycle of learning is life. But Milton speaks of the spirit of man reaching out into the world and beyond similar to the way vision extends the locale of angels in Paradise Lost. In other words, Milton has reconstituted the medieval notion that the visual force was a literal extension of the embodied soul and that to see was to be in two places at once. In Prolusion VII, vision, by extension of the embodied soul, can place one everywhere at once. Duran cleverly connects the persona of Prolusion VII with the one in Il Penseroso, which she argues is Milton’s “pass” to the natural philosopher, who gazes on the stars without “any threat of punishment” (49). The opening lines of the poem introduce the pensive scholar who has isolated himself by casting away “Folly” and “deluding Joys.” He further commands “Folly” and “deluding Joys” to “Dwell in some idle brain” (l. 5), the kind of brain he argues in Prolusion VII does not belong to the learned man as some suggest. As Milton continues, in Il Penseroso, he addresses the limits of vision when he says that the “saintly visage” of “divinest Melancholy … is too bright / To hit the sense of human sight” (11-14). Therefore, in order to see her, Melancholy must be “o’erlaid with black” (16). The idea that vision happens because of darkness recalls Plotinus’ theory of vision,124 and Milton returns to it later in the hell of Paradise Lost, where there is “no light, but rather darkness visible” (I.63). Fittingly, some critics, like Masson and Tillyard, place the composition of Prolusion VII in the same time frame as the composition of Il Penseroso. Regardless of the exact date, the acquisition of knowledge, its place in the minds of men, and its utility occupied Milton’s thoughts during the period in which he wrote the Prolusions and L’Allegro and Il Penseroso. And Milton did not limit the acquisition of knowledge to textual or classroom studies: let my lamp at midnight hour, Be seen in some high lonely tower, Where I may oft outwatch the Bear, With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere The spirit of Plato to unfold What worlds, or what vast regions hold

124 See Chapter One, p. 22.

The immortal mind that hath forsook Her mansion in this fleshly nook. (85-92) Again, vision extends the soul beyond the flesh toward other worlds. In Milton’s tower we must take into account the astronomical references and the recently developed epistemological model based upon Galileo’s pursuits in his own tower. When combined with the extension of the philosopher’s vision, these lines reveal an indirect reference to the telescope (a mechanical extension) though there is no proof Milton had come in contact with one. Duran avoids invoking the telescope and suggests that “unlike the rebellious, social Galileo, Milton’s philosopher willingly removes himself from society and the material world through his intellect, to the ‘vast Regions’ beyond the visible heavens” (50). This intellectual removal is later forced upon Milton because of his blindness, but his extension of the embodied soul remains possible. He may choose to praise isolated contemplation by invoking the telescope, as Hooke later counsels: “by the means of Telescopes, there is nothing so far distant but may be represented to our view” (“Preface” Micrographia). Or he can choose to see the worlds beyond the natural eye with his mind, as Cavendish later counsels when she chooses to create a world based on “pure wit” because “Regular Reason is the best guide to all Arts” (“Preface” Observations). Milton revisits astronomy in the closing of Il Penseroso, again, without direct reference to the use of any instrument. Here, the philosopher in retirement sits in the church, where “the full-voiced choir” (l. 162) may “bring all heaven before mine eyes” (166). This is a spiritual imitation of the telescope. In quiet, isolated retirement, the philosopher will rightly spell Of every star that heaven doth shew ……………………………………. Till old experience do attain To something like prophetic strain. (170-74) Duran convincingly aligns Milton’s philosopher with Tycho Brahe (1540-1601), “whose Uraniburg castle, observatory, and laboratory on a secluded island” demonstrate the isolated contemplation of Il Pensoroso (52). And “even the ‘Hairy Gown’ [169] of Milton’s pensive figure resembles illustrations of Brahe” (52). Whether Milton thought at all about Galileo or the telescope when he had a figure like Brahe as a model matters little when we consider what is ultimately at work in the poem. Knowledge, gained through experience acquired through the

senses, especially the eyes viewing the stars by extension (working like a telescope) can lead to a prophetic strain. Experience, Eve’s “best guide” (PL IX.808), grants knowledge, which as the serpent promised Eve can clear her eyes and make her as the gods. In the case of Milton’s philosopher in Il Penseroso, however, “knowledge” is to know the mind of God, for that is the role of a prophet, whose rational perception, for Cavendish, is immaterial and Godlike. And “a man who is almost entirely absorbed and immersed in study finds it much easier to converse with gods than with men … because the mind, expand[s] through constant meditation on things divine” (Prolusion VII, CPW 1:295). Similarly, we find an “idle” Galileo in Paradise Lost, where Milton’s first allusion to the astronomer comes in a simile describing Satan’s shield: the broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views At evening from the top of Fesole Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe. (I.286-91) Several critics have identified these lines for multiple purposes. For some it is an indictment of Galileo, though J. M. Walker has rejected the association of Galileo with Satan. For Duran, “gone is the calm that the pleasant environs and the octosyllabic verse of Il Penseroso seemed to provide” (64). Her cross reference with the direct reference to Galileo in Book V: “the Glass / Of Galileo, less assured” (V.262), leads her to argue that Galileo’s continued idleness at the telescope is meant to contrast Raphael’s speeding “with ‘steddie wing’ to act for the benefit of the human world and the mortal mind (5.268)” (65-66). I agree, but with an addendum. A careful consideration of this “idleness” with Milton’s idle philosopher in Il Penseroso and the persona of Sonnet XIX, suggest that nothing has changed in Milton’s view of the natural philosopher’s place. In other words, Galileo may serve God no less than Raphael, who may “speed / And post o’er lands and ocean without rest” while Galileo and others who “stand and wait” also serve God (Sonnet XIX.12-14) and “the mortal mind.” The philosopher, then, can actively pursue knowledge or idly receive it via the telescope. Additionally, it is important to consider Milton’s syntax. Satan’s shield “hung … like the moon.” The following description of the moon is a nonrestrictive relative clause, which usually

only adds something without defining. In other words, the passage may serve as a reminder to readers of the recent controversy surrounding the moon and what it looks like. It must, therefore, also remind readers that the moon they see is not the same moon that Galileo saw through his “optic glass.” Just like the image is one thing and the object is another in Hobbes’s theory of vision, the image in the mind of one man does not resemble the image in the mind of another. The following description of Satan’s spear provides a nice syntactical comparison: His spear, to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast Of some great admiral, were but a wand, He walked with to support uneasy steps Over the burning marl[.] (I.292-96) This is another nonrestrictive clause, but it serves a different purpose. First, as Stanley Fish has noted, the passage catches the reader off guard when the comparison to the “tallest pines” is twisted around. Additionally, all that Milton really says about the spear is that Satan uses it as a walking stick: “His spear … he walked with.” However, the nonrestrictive clause takes the place of a simile, which is incomplete (which is why it deceives the reader). We know only that the spear is extremely large. So it is with the moon. Readers understand the size of the moon to a point, but they cannot understand its size the way Galileo does. In this case, the description of the spear serves as the clarifying marker for the reference to Galileo. Satan’s shield is at least as big as the moon Galileo sees magnified through his “optic glass.” Maura Brady’s reading adds additional insight. For her, “it may be, similarly, that the ‘optic glass’ cannot reveal objects as they are in themselves, but only produce appearances, none of which is to be trusted” (142). Cavendish uses a similar explanation when she describes the image observed through the microscope as a picture “because it is not the real body of the object which the Glass presents, but the Glass onely figures or patterns out the picture presented in and by the Glass” (Observations 9). Hobbes and Descartes made the same argument about the way the eye sees. They based vision on light, which was matter in motion.125 The motion created images in a person’s mind, but Hobbes and Descartes both argued that the image was not the object itself. Therefore, each image was a unique representation of the object. Cavendish clarifies this idea when she argues that “the organ of the sentient … makes colour, sound, and the

125 See my explanation in Chapter One, pp. 32-34.

like, and that they are not really inherent in the object it self” (Observations 173). Therefore, what the eye sees is merely a copy created by the mind, and this is one of the main issues Cavendish has with viewing objects through optic glasses: “there may easily mistakes be committed in taking Copies from Copies” (9). In other words, what the eye “sees” in the optic glass is not the copy the glass has made, but the eye’s own copy of that copy (a copy of a copy): “Artists do confess themselves, that Flies, and the like, will appear of several figures or shapes, according to the several reflections, refractions, mediums and positions of several lights; which if so, how can they tell or judg which is the truest light, position, or medium, that doth present the object naturally as it is?” (9). “Natural” vision presented the same problem for the Sceptics. Because of the fallibility of the eye, the different angles of perception, and the different degrees of light, one could not rely on eyesight alone to determine truth. For Cavendish, Hooke’s attempt to improve eyesight fails for the same reason. First, Hooke’s own admission that his images were composites met strict criticism. For Cavendish, “the mind, trying to reconcile the different pictures into one, in observing alters the facts so that ‘the truth of an Object will hardly be known’” (Zwierlein 80). And by the time the composite image is viewed by an outside observer, it has passed through three different levels of mediation. If the senses are already deficient, “how can knowledge be based upon representations produced by a naturally deficient sense of vision and the deceitful optical instrument?” (Wallwork 194). Cavendish illustrates that the deficiencies in vision cannot be improved by optical instruments in the Blazing World when the Bear-men allow the Empress to look through the telescope. The Empress immediately cites differences in observation. The Bear-men suggest that the differences result from the “sensitive motions in the [observers’] optic organs” (Other Writings 141) rather than differences or imperfections in the telescopes. The Bear-men are mocking Hooke’s “faithful eye” as well as his suggestion that the disabled senses can be improved by mechanical prostheses. The Empress commands the Bear-men to break the telescopes: “for you may observe the progressive motions of celestial bodies with your natural eyes better than through artificial glasses” (142). The eye, then, for Cavendish, is not as weak as Hooke portrays it, especially with the aid of reason. The Empress allows the Bear-men to keep their telescopes after they inform her that telescopes are their “only delight” because they make subjects for argument (142). Their delight

recalls Pepys’s delight in acquiring a microscope for entertainment, and the idea that these instruments create subjects for arguments recalls early criticism of the telescope. For Cavendish, as in the Empress’s encounter with the Bear-men, optics “result only in proliferating opinion and theory” (Linden 619). These opinions and theories are evident in Galileo’s Letters on Sunspots, where Galileo often asserts that his own conclusions about observations made of sunspots through the telescope are only theories: “Let them be vapors or exhalations then, or clouds, or fumes sent out from the sun’s globe or attracted there from other places; I do not decide on this—and they may be any of a thousand other things not perceived by us” (100). Additionally, optical instruments create contention, which is dangerous in a world where “scientific” truths were often determined by a social hierarchy.126 “The Empress ridicules the empiricism of her scientists, who wildly disagree about their telescopic and microscopic observations, and lectures them on the superior value of reason” (Zwierlein 86). Again, we need only review the debate Galileo engages in regarding sunspots, where the same phenomenon observed by two different men, with two different telescopes, resulted in opposing conclusions.127 Milton, then, shows that the telescope (and in Cavendish’s case, also the microscope) functions no differently than the eye, as Hobbes explained and as Galileo suggested. The moon seen through the telescope is a copy and not the moon itself. Also some of Galileo’s own observations resulted from composites, which he based upon different views of the moon on different nights. So in the same way that Cavendish refuses to trust Hooke’s “appearances,” one cannot trust Galileo’s appearances any more than one can trust the natural eye. Regina Schwartz completes the connection to the Hobbesian and Cartesian theories of vision when she suggests that the voyeur peering through the telescope (PL I.288) “cannot successfully possess the object of his sight because what he sees is at best a fabrication, an idealized image composed at an ideal point in a telescope, another fabrication” (150). For Descartes and Hobbes all vision was an illusion or a fabrication. Hobbes also viewed the eye as mechanical, similar to the telescope,

126 Eve Keller discusses this in more detail in her “Producing Petty Gods: Margaret Cavendish’s Critique of Experimental Science,” from which I have already quoted. 127 For Cavendish, “Regular Reason is the best guide to all Arts” (“Preface” Observations), and this philosophy fuels the mind of the Empress in Blazing World. This places Milton’s Eve in an interesting position when she calls “Experience” her “best guide; not following thee, I had remained / In ignorance” (PL IX.807-09). “Experience” comes from the Latin noun experientia, a participle of experiri: “to try, to put to the test”; not to mention that its early-modern definition is almost identical to the one for “experiment.” So we have two women, both fictional representations, arguing opposite epistemologies. However, in the case of Eve, she has just fallen, which is an important indicator for where Milton places vision epistemologically, as I show in the next chapter.

97 except the eye was made by God and the telescope was made by man (see Leviathan “Introduction”). Milton’s familiarity with Cartesian and Hobbesian theories of vision becomes more apparent, here, because he addresses concerns about the accuracy of visions acquired through the telescope as a way of showing their similarity to concerns about the accuracy of sight when done through fallen eyes. So when Brady suggests that Milton takes “it [the telescope] apart again” in order to “remind readers of Paradise Lost of the difficulties of producing an instrument that accurately mediates the world” (130) and thereby reintroduces the epistemological concerns initially faced by the telescope, it is safe to say that Milton also addresses the epistemological concerns that were currently faced by vision in general. Returning to Book V of Paradise Lost Milton introduces what sounds like doubts in Galileo’s observations. As Raphael flies from God’s presence toward earth to speak with Adam, from the gate of heaven No cloud, or, to obstruct his sight, Star interposed, however small he sees, Not unconform to other shining globes, Earth and the garden of God, with cedars crowned Above all hills. As when by night the glass Of Galileo, less assured, observes Imagined lands and regions in the moon[.] (V.257-63) First, “From Raphael’s starling viewpoint, earth is almost too small to be like other shining globes” (Fowler 296 n257-61). Also, the precursor to Raphael’s flight is an extension of sight. The narration moves into an epic simile that begins with a “less assured” Galileo. “Less assured” is a comparative construction. Galileo’s vision through his glass is “less assured” than Raphael’s because Galileo does not have the ken of angels. It is not enough for Milton simply to call him “less assured”—he sets the phrase off with commas, forcing the reader to pause, so that there is no mistake that Galileo’s vision is deficient even with aid of optic glass. Galileo, here, has no improved sense. His eyes are still subject to the same restrictions as everyone else’s eyes despite his use of a telescope—clouds and stars can still interpose and obstruct Galileo’s view. Additionally, “imagined” conjures thoughts of make-believe for the modern reader. Marjara suggests that Milton refers to “uncertainty expressed by … Galileo’s contemporaries” (63). The OED cites this usage from Paradise Lost as “Conceived (in the mind), supposed, fancied.” It

suggests more than simple make-believe, and it fits with Marjara’s analysis that Milton signifies Galileo “conjectured” what he saw (63)—“lands and regions in the moon.” Milton does not question whether Galileo saw these things or whether he saw anything else he claimed to see. Galileo’s conclusions are just what he presented the images to be. Again, Hobbes’s theory of vision adds insight. He argues in Leviathan, “though at some certain distance, the reall, and very object seem invested with the fancy it begets in us; Yet still the object is one thing, the image or fancy is another. So that Sense in all cases, is nothing els but originall fancy, caused (as I have said) by the pressure, that is by the motion, of externall things upon our Eyes” (14). For Hobbes, recognizing an object has the very substance of the image one has created in the mind means nothing because the image in the mind is only a fancy, or something the mind imagined up as a representation of the object. The result is from matter in motion, but matter is not self-propelled. Hobbes makes matter inert and capable of movement only when acted upon by other moving matter in a chain reaction of collisions. This is why sensory impressions are “seemings” (Hobbes The Elements of Law and Natural Politic 3-4): everyone sees a different image based on the random movement of matter. As the size of the moon in Milton’s first allusion to Galileo is no different than observations one makes with the naked eye, all of the Italian natural philosopher’s observations through his telescope are no different than the observations one makes with the naked eye. Milton shows that Galileo’s “imagined lands” are no less imaginary than anything one sees with the Hobbesian eye. It is important that we make this distinction because Hobbes would argue that the eye and the telescope are the same: both are machines that work the same. Therefore, Milton would present visions through the telescope the same way Hobbes presents visions through the eyes, but in subsequent chapters we will see that regular or “natural vision” for Milton did not work the same way. Ultimately, while the telescope may allow us to see more or even to see things bigger than they appear to the naked eye, it does not allow us to see better. While Hooke claims that “use of Microscopes, and some other Glasses” work as mechanical prosthetics to improve vision, Milton’s second allusion to Galileo in Paradise Lost renders the telescope a useless prosthetic incapable of making the eyes more assured. From his poetic allusions to the telescope to his direct reference to the microscope, Milton’s general point of view regarding the aid of optic glasses does not change. Milton’s only direct reference to the microscope comes in Paradise Regained after his final allusion to the

telescope and in the middle of Satan’s final temptation of the Son. Satan has “brought our Saviour to the western side / Of that high mountain, whence he might behold, / Another plain, long but in breadth not wide” (IV.25-27). There Satan shows an “imperial city” (33), By what strange parallax or optic skill Of vision multiplied through air, or glass Of telescope, were curious to inquire[.] (IV.40-42) Notice how Milton compares the telescopic function to the Aristotelian theory of species (intromission), where the image is multiplied “through air” like Aristotle’s transparent medium. Also, Carey points out a popular theory that holds the kingdoms of the earth in this case “were mere mirages or visions” (484 n42). But many natural philosophers by the time of this poem’s composition accepted that vision was merely fancy or a type of mirage. The Saviour’s overlooking the kingdoms of the earth continues with Satan taking a turn toward a more selective instrument. Satan shows Many a fair edifice besides, more like Houses of gods (so well I have disposed My airy microscope) thou mayst behold Outside and inside both, pillars and roofs Carved work, the hand of famed artificers In cedar, marble, ivory or gold. (IV.55-60) The logistics of the scene are hard to follow, so some critics suggest that Milton misunderstood the proper function and application of the microscope. Marjorie Nicolson is inclined to believe “either he was using the word [microscope] loosely, which would be remarkable … or ... he misunderstood its function. In the passage in question, he seems to be suggesting a combination of a telescope and some supposed instrument which would show interiors as well as exteriors, since Satan says that by this means Christ may behold ‘Outside and inside both’” (11). This is where an understanding of Hooke’s agenda clarifies Milton’s text. When Milton gives the microscope the ability to see outside and inside, he echoes Hooke’s intention for the microscope’s evolution. Like the microscope may one day reveal the nature of a thing, the very nature man (in Adam) once knew, so Satan’s “airy microscope” reveals the essence or inner- workings of a building or household. This is not to suggest that the microscope is Satanic. This is part of Satan’s continued agenda to fashion himself a god by imitating God’s works and

100 abilities. Satan shows that he can see as well as God can see, outward and inward appearances, and Satan can reveal such appearances to the sight of others. However, it is a perversion of God’s vision, which does not need the aid of optic glass. In his temptation of the Son, Satan describes the “fair edifice[s]” to be “like / Houses of gods.” This explains the power to see their insides as well as the power and station promised to the Son: to rule over gods. The idea intensifies the temptation and reveals graver consequences. Just as Adam and Eve found themselves separated from God by the fruit that made them as gods, the Son faces a temptation to make him a god at the sake of separating himself from God. Ironically, the Son is a god, so exalted by the Father, whom the Son owes obeisance. Therefore, the Son’s giving into such a temptation would not only negate his role as a savior who provides Adam, Eve, and all mankind with reconciliation to God; it would also be a denial of his nature and its origin. The Son would place himself in the same lexical paradox as Satan’s “self-begot, self-raised” (PL V.860). Like his initial temptation of Eve, Satan’s temptation of the Son is visual in nature, but while Satan has “so well … disposed” his “airy microscope” to allow himself to see the inside and outside of things, the Son needs no such instrument. Because of his nature, he can see Satan’s nature. The rhetoric of Milton’s construction of the function of the microscope in Paradise Regained has literary antecedents. Lara Dodds has recently argued that “when the difficulty of narrating the war in heaven leads Raphael to wonder whether there is anything ‘on earth conspicuous’ that can ‘lift / Human imagination to such height / Of godlike power,’ his recourse is ‘to set forth / Great things by small.’ Raphael compares the single combat between Michael and Satan (the great) to discord among the constellations (the small)” (96). Dodds identifies these and other instances of the great and the small as a “rhetorical microscopy.” This “rhetorical microscopy” is apparent in the microscopic language Diane Kelsey McColley points out in Book VII. Micrographers claimed that God was made manifest in their microscopic images, where “in the tiny lineaments of insects” they discovered “the most absolute perfection” (164). Hooke often remarked at the amazing detail of the smallest insect compared to a larger counterpart: “we see that the Wisdom and Providence of the All-wise Creator, is not less shewn in these small despicable creatures, Flies and Moths, which we have branded with a name of ignominy, calling them Vermine, then in those greater and more remakable animate bodies, Birds” (198). Milton’s indirect references to the microscope in Paradise Lost demonstrate his

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awareness of what the microscope had made apparent. In his relation of the creation to Adam, Raphael focuses in on features of the smallest creatures: At once came forth whatever creeps the ground, Insect or worm; those waved their limber fans For wings, and smallest lineaments exact[.] (VII.475-77) The lineaments, or distinctive characteristics, of each insect are exact: perfect in form and function. Nothing escapes the Creator’s eyes, though it may escape the limited eyes of humans. This rhetoric borders on endowing the microscope with the ability to improve vision. Milton’s poetic uses of the telescope and microscope—literally, figuratively, and rhetorically—do not allow for a conclusion that he views these instruments any differently than Margaret Cavendish, when she concedes that “Optick Glasses could … present the true figure of an Original … if they do not exceed the compass of natural dimensions” (Observations 13; emphasis added). This is precisely how Satan tries to use the microscope in his temptation of the Son. Milton constructs one other case of an attempt to use an invention to “exceed the compass of natural dimensions” in Book VI of Paradise Lost. Satan and his followers hold a council of war to discuss strategy for their next attack. Satan begins: “O now in danger tried, now known in arms / Not to be overpowered” (VI.418-19). Satan realizes what he and his followers face in the heavenly army, so he realizes that they cannot overcome that army, except by “perhaps more valid arms, / Weapons more violent” which May serve to better us … Or equal what between us made the odds, In nature none: if other hidden cause Left them superior … (VI.438-43; my emphasis) Satan is surprised that he and his followers did not overpower the heavenly army, but he is more surprised that they are not equals to the heavenly hosts, from whom Satan and his followers are separated because of their fall. Therefore, “in nature” no material exists that will allow them to recover their former perfections. It recalls Hobbes’s mechanistic monism: because everything is made of the same matter, everything and everyone is the same; everyone is equal. The Father speaking to the Son in Book VI says the same thing with one amendment: to themselves I left them, and thou knowst, Equal in their creation they were formed,

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Save what sin hath impaired, which yet hath wrought Insensibly … (689-92) Satan unknowingly (“insensibly”) shares the fate of fallen humanity.128 The fall of Satan and his followers has impaired them. This last passage also speaks to Milton’s monism. While everyone and everything are indeed composed of the same matter, the matter of the unfallen angels is more refined and pure. Like Hooke’s claim that optics can “serve to better” the eyes or “repair” them, so Satan believes that he can invent something that will better him and his followers and make them once again equal to the heavenly hosts. However, they fail to realize the basic fundamental principle that Cavendish argued, which is probably the result of their imperceptible change: fallen beings cannot better themselves through artifice. In other words, an imperfect being must invent imperfect instruments. Satan and his followers surprise Michael and his angels with their artillery, but their invention, fails to make them equal.129 If these fallen angels cannot invent “instruments” to better themselves, fallen humans certainly cannot because “most of these Arts are Fallacies, rather than discoveries of truth; for Sense deludes more then it gives a true Information” (Cavendish Observations “Preface”). Not only do the senses delude, or not only are they subject to deceit, but the imperfect nature of the instruments (distorted glass, for example) can only serve to magnify the imperfections of fallen humans. It is the deception of the senses Cavendish addresses that we see so often in Paradise Lost. Even Uriel, “The sharpest sighted spirit of all in heaven” (III.691) cannot perceive Satan, who having disguised himself as “a stripling cherub” (III.636) has courage enough to stop and ask Uriel for directions where to find man. After which the narrator tells us that neither man nor angel can discern Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone. (III.682-4) Jumping forward to Book IX, we find “the fiend / Mere serpent in appearance” (412-13). “Mere” suggests the serpent is harmless—made by God, the serpent was inherently good. “In appearance,” reminds us that we can only see the outward appearance, or, in the case of Hobbes, the image the mind creates of the object. Eve cannot possibly recognize the essence of the serpent, now possessed by Satan. She does not have the ken of God. After all, when she

128 Satan, here, is no different that Comus’s brutish crew that fails to see the changes that sin have wrought upon them. 129 See VI.446-866

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confesses her fault she declares “the serpent beguiled me” (Genesis 3:13; emphasis added). In Uriel’s case we are talking about an angel, but the point is that only God can look upon the heart. And Milton places man and angel, in this regard, on the same plane when he says “neither man nor angel can discern / Hypocrisy” (my emphasis). It is the sight of God—the ability to discern hypocrisy and to see the nature of a thing—that humans cannot build instruments sufficient enough to equal. This was the sight to which Hooke purported the evolution of the microscope could lead, the ability to see beyond the surface. However, without light (physical or the light of God) to see beyond the surface, and without the ability to create a perfect instrument, we can only rely on sense and reason, which are also the foundation for Milton’s epistemology. And Milton’s reason parallels Cavendish’s own reliance on rational perception, which “is the best informer and reformer of all sensitive Perception” (Observations 3). While I have not shown direct connections between Milton, Hooke, and Cavendish, Milton understood the debates in experimental philosophy and participated in them through his writing.130 He may not have fully understood the extent to which experimental philosophers used optical instruments or may not have understood how the microscope worked, he was not afraid to employ optical instruments in his poetry. In his employment of these instruments, Milton thematically echoes Cavendish’s warning that optical instruments should not “endeavour to go beyond” their limits “and do more then Nature has done” (Observations 13). For Milton, the telescope and microscope aid in the observation of phenomena and specific objects, but they are just as fallible as the eyes and do not make those eyes more assured. Only the inner eye, the rational perception, can ultimately approach the truth and “see and tell / of things invisible to [unaided] mortal sight” (PL III.55). Perhaps because of his blindness, Milton accepted the fallible nature of the eyes, but as chapter two shows, blindness, or in the case of this chapter, the deficiencies of the eye are requisite with God’s plan. When humans recognize the fallible nature of vision, they seek wisdom through venues approved by God and “dream not of other worlds.”

130 Shannon Miller makes a similar compelling argument in her book Engendering the Fall: John Milton and Seventeenth-Century Women Writers, Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2008. In Chapter 5, “The Two Faces of Eve: Gendering Knowledge and the ‘New’ Science in Paradise Lost and Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World,” Miller argues that in their Edenic narratives, both Milton and Cavendish respond to the Edenic narratives offered by Hooke and other members of the Royal Society, whose narratives assured that men could recover Paradise by pursuit of the same thing that lost it: knowledge. For Miller, Cavendish and Milton makes similar cases for the role of a woman in knowledge acquisition. For example, Cavendish’s Empress saves her world from a Fall when she refuses to engage in experimental philosophy, but Milton’s Eve Falls because she does engage in experimental philosophy, which Cavendish (as Miller argues and also believes) believed represented the male dominated Royal Society.

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CHAPTER FOUR MILTON’S EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE SENSES AND EVE’S FORTUNATE FALL

Near the end of the invocation in Book III of Paradise Lost, Milton’s persona struggles with blindness: Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank Of nature's works to me expung'd and razed, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. (III.40-50) Milton’s blind narrator has been to hell and back. He has overcome limitations set by blindness to sing epic poetry, and he has seen himself as a contemporary representation of great poets and seers from ancient Greece. Yet despite his triumphs, he mourns the loss of his sight in terms that only a blind person could understand. The enjambment of lines 41-42 is especially revealing. The word “day” sits isolated, cut off from the previous line by a line break and cut off from the rest of the line that follows by a caesura, just as blindness cuts the persona off from day. Milton uses a similar effect in line 47, where the words “cut off” are cut off from “the book of knowledge” by a comma and cut off from “the cheerful ways of men” by another line break. In both cases, the punctuation serves to extend the persona’s privation. Perhaps the sighted take too much for granted such things as simple as changing seasons or the approach of evening and morning. But perhaps even more devastating is the overall visual loss of nature, something the blind persona can no longer read, “for the book of knowledge fair,” or the book of nature, is “a universal blank.” Because the persona no longer sees “nature’s works,” the wisdom that enters

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through the eyes, like the book-knowledge Milton refers to in Areopagitica, is “shut out.” Milton’s blind narrator cannot see any wonders, old and new, of the natural world. Blindness has cut him off from a specific kind of wisdom, one that is unmediated and acquired through direct sensory observation. These lines offer a small but significant bit of hope. Milton does not say wisdom is completely shut out, but shut out at one entrance because the other senses, especially the rational sense can compensate. The final lines of Book III’s invocation to the holy light introduce the reader to a unique epistemology. If the blind wish to acquire wisdom, they need access to divine illumination: So much the rather thou, celestial Light, Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate; there plant eyes, all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight. (III.51-55) In an effort to compensate for his lost eyesight, Milton’s persona seeks divine aid. The persona does not seek that aid to see again, for the blind poet who wrote these lines already knows that is not possible. The persona seeks divine aid to reveal hidden things—wisdom one cannot acquire with physical sight, even with the aid of artificial instruments. Suzannah Biernoff’s summation of the medieval embodiment of sight helps clarify what Milton’s narrator seeks. The “active intellect is a definitively spiritual substance: incorruptible, immaterial[,] and separable; and it functions both as a repository of universal truths and as a source of divine illumination. Just as natural vision requires the presence of natural, (corporeal) light, so the intellect requires spiritual illumination in order to ‘see’—and therefore know—its objects” (83-84). Although Milton’s blind persona achieves transcendent sight from the “celestial light” that shines inward, in his poetry Milton strives to establishe that even the sighted can obtain that transcendent sight via all the senses with reason as their guide. One acquires this transcendent sight by knowledge gathered through the senses, and reason processes that knowledge into choices that can grant wisdom. In other words, the data collected by the other senses can come together to create sight by the inner senses. Milton, from his Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle to Paradise Regained, participates with other early modern poets in classifying the senses from greatest to least in dignity, usually based on their ability to facilitate knowledge. But the senses, just as the mind they provide with data, cannot work without proper nourishment. Divine guidance, reason, and

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the proper nourishment of the senses come together in Satan’s temptation of Eve in Paradise Lost, Book IX, where Milton reveals the proper way for these three aspects to nourish the body and enlighten the mind. Eve’s disobedience has more to do with how her senses perceive the serpent and the natural world. Through empirical study, Eve learns long before she partakes of the fruit, perhaps even before the serpent tempts her, of the knowledge attainable by sensory perception. Eve’s ability to see, hear, touch, smell, and taste allows her to gain enough experience that the reader sees her eyes opened before she takes her first bite. The result is a new way to consider Milton’s felix culpa, where Eve’s experience is requisite to the Fall. Eve’s experience also shows the importance Milton places on the role of the senses in support of vision and sometimes as compensation for the lack thereof in order to acquire knowledge. The senses do not work alone, however; like Cavendish, Milton uses “reason as chief” to the “many lesser faculties that serve” it (PL V.101-02). Thus reason governs how one gains wisdom. Satan’s “proem” to his temptation of Eve in Paradise Lost forces her to reanalyze a cornucopia of already gathered empirical data from her readings of nature in an attempt to make an informed decision about the phenomenon that stands before her in the form of a speaking serpent. In Chapter Six of his Surprised by Sin, Stanley Fish analyzes what is at play between Eve and the serpent and how the serpent sways Eve’s reasoning until she ingests the forbidden fruit. Satan’s visual deception does skew Eve’s reason; however, Fish focuses almost exclusively on Eve’s reason, the exercising of which “is its own temptation” (241). Fish provides a way to focus on the role the other senses play in informing Eve’s reason. It is important to understand that the serpent tempts her through a full sensory experience. Fish homes in on the serpent’s “look on me” (IX.687) as the impetus to Satan’s ultimate thesis: “do not believe” (IX.684). The reader already knows Satan’s ultimate goal: if he convinces Eve to disbelieve God, he can persuade her to anything. Fish clarifies this point: “Satan now urges her openly to infer the truth about God and his conditional decree from what she sees, and not to believe anything which does not tally with that evidence” (249). But Satan did not need to do anything. In fact, Eve does all the work and shows how nature itself can deceive its reader (even an un-fallen woman with un-fallen eyes) and force her into contradictory interpretations. But Eve uses more than her eyes. Eve uses all her senses to reconstruct her conscious experiences and to rethink her entire reading of nature. Satan’s deceit, then, does not

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focus solely on Eve’s eyes. Satan attacks all of Eve’s senses in order to challenge her reason. Eve’s innocence (ignorance) complicates matters. In her attempts to make a decision, she has only her observation of the serpent and her observations of nature on which to rely. Satan’s deception causes Eve to question her observations of nature. Her questioning of nature is not without evidence (some presented by the serpent), as Fish explains, but Eve’s ingestion of that evidence and the way her mind digests it leads to Eve’s “rash hand … reaching to the fruit” (IX.780-81). Eve’s innocence cannot compete with Satan’s deception or the deception the natural world passively offers. Finally, Eve’s experience reflects the contemporary mechanical and philosophical debates about the senses. 4.1 The “Pemptarchie” of the Senses Milton does not explicitly participate in classifying the senses. However, he often gives clear preference to a particular order based upon the preference of specific characters and personas in his poetry. For example, Milton gives his persona in the invocation to Book III of Paradise Lost an obsession with sight. Perhaps only the blind can feel such an obsession, but the persona’s insistence on sight remains even after he gives up hope of seeing again. This blind persona does not ask the celestial light to plant ears in his mind, but eyes; neither does he seek to hear “and tell of things invisible” (III.55). This clear preference for sight, even in blindness, perpetuates a hierarchy of the senses established by Aristotle, when he identified sight as the chief sense because it “most of all … makes us know” (Metaphysics I.1). This hierarchy of the senses was similar to the Chain of Being. Sight stood at the top, and the remaining senses fell below, fixed in various orders, usually with hearing second. Oftentimes, reference to all the senses in early modern literature was written as a catacosmesis. This specific rhetorical figure orders words from greatest to least in dignity (Burton). Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis provides one popular Renaissance example. Venus gives priority to sight when she describes her love for Adonis in terms of the senses. Without eyes, Venus could still love Adonis with her ears; without ears, she could still love him with a touch; without touch, she could still love him with her nose; and without a nose, she could still love him with her ability to taste, which is “nurse and feeder of the other four” senses (see lines 433-46). Venus’ words contain an underlying suggestion that the ears can be her eyes (what Hobbes describes as the “Audible being seen” [Leviathan 14] in his description of Aristotelian species), and that, successively, each sense could also be her eyes. This idea

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receives more treatment near the end of the seventeenth century in William Molyneux’s question to John Locke.131 This hierarchy of the senses, known as the “Pemptarchie” of the senses, most often placed sight and hearing at the top, while the remaining senses followed in various ranks. Shortly after Shakespeare, for example, in Canto V of his Purple Island,132 Phineas Fletcher describes each of the senses as brothers. Fletcher begins his description with the eye, what “that Thracian shepherd called … Natures glasse” (V.24). The eyes sit on a loftie hill; (For they the Princes best intelligence, And quickly warn of future good, or ill) Here stands the palace of the noblest sense; Here Visus keeps, whose Court then crystal smoother, And clearer seems; he, though a younger brother, Yet farre more noble is, farre fairer then the other. (V.25) Visus or vision is the noblest sense and the best for gathering intelligence, while Auditus, second of the Pemptarchie, Is next, not all so noble as his brother; Yet of more need, and more commoditie: His seat is plac’d somewhat below the other[.] (V.38) Fletcher’s description of hearing begins with its demotion physically and in terms of its utility. It is a sense “of more need” perhaps because interpreting sounds proves more difficult than interpreting sights. The other senses are Olfactus (smell), Gustus (taste), and Tactus (touch), in that order. Together, “Those five fair brethren … / For their just number call’d the Pemptarchie” bring “poasts” to the office of “The judge and Arbiter of every thing” (VI.42) which arbiter is the

131 Irish philosopher William Molyneux wrote to John Locke and asked whether he thought one who was blind who had learned to distinguish by touch the difference between a cube and a globe could tell the same difference merely by sight should his or her sight return. For a closer look at Molyneux’s question and how it might relate to Milton, see Sara Van Den Berg, “Full Sight, Fancied Sight, and Touch: Milton's Sonnet 23 and Molyneux's Question,” Ben Jonson Journal 16.1-2 (May 2009) 16-32. See also Moshe Barasch, “The Disenchantment of Blindness: Diderot’s Lettre sur la aveugles,” in his Blindness: The History of a Mental Image in Western Thought for additional insight. 132 Purple Island is a poem in twelve cantos in which Fletcher allegorically describes the physiological landscape of the human body and mind and does so in a very Spenserian style, losing himself in digressions similar to those in Spenser’s epic allegory The Faerie Queene. William B. Hunter calls Purple Island “the most elaborate literary expansion of the equation of the little world of man with the big world of nature” (Spenserians 311), and because of its “incoherence,” Frank S. Kastor calls the poem “an unmistakable disaster” (148), which was “almost universally condemned” (140).

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sensus communis or Common Sense. Those “poasts” are sense perceptions, which the common sense judges as good or ill, right or wrong, true or false by reason. In an era that still saw religious unrest, sole reliance on reason offered a counter to the Puritan reliance on divine illumination, similar to what Biernoff describes as the medieval embodiment of sight (83-84; see also above). While most Puritans might suggest that one can only understand the scriptures by the spirit, Robert Hooker attacked such Puritan notions of following the spirit. He preferred reason to govern the mind’s analysis of perceived words and objects. Debora Kuller Shuger has pointed out that in Robert Hooker’s Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity one can detect, in regards to questions of biblical interpretation, “the emergence of a modern hermeneutic with its appeal to reason, evidence, historical context, and linguistic change”; however, “in Hooker this modern hermeneutic and its premises explicitly function to defend catholic [universal] tradition and orthodoxy” (26). For Hooker, “the reforming preachers … persuade their auditors ‘that it is the special illumination of the Holy Ghost, whereby they discern those things in the word, which others reading yet discern them not’” (27). Those who believe are then past hearing, according to Hooker, who “erects reason [and evidence] as the interpretive standard” to combat “emotional delusion” (27). The fact that Milton’s Eve relies solely on reason, sorting through the evidence provided by her senses, suggests that reason alone cannot resist Satan’s deception through his disguise, “glozing lies,” and a deliberate misinterpretation of the word of God (e.g. “ye shall not surely die” [Genesis 3:4]). Milton’s deliberate choice of a rational female sinner is unusual, but it fits with man (male and female) being made “just and right / Sufficient to have stood” (III.98-99). All humans must take responsibility. Eve is not just a sensitive unreasoning female in Milton’s theodicy. Therefore, what Milton’s persona proposes in his invocation to the holy light is a synthesis of these seemingly irreconcilable stances (following reason and the spirit). When Milton’s persona asks the “celestial light” to shine inward, he does not abandon reason. The persona seeks divine aid that will allow reason to see invisible things and to interpret them correctly. The celestial light can “irradiate” the mind, where the blind persona enjoys a transcendent sight. But not everyone can enjoy the insight of the blind. When Milton reconstructs the serpent’s temptation of Eve, he also constructs his formula for using the senses to achieve the same level of contemplation as the blind, who are not distracted by the eyes. Milton’s formula establishes a hierarchy of the senses and reverses the concern that blindness negates wisdom,

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turning that concern into an opportunity to teach the sighted how to acquire a wisdom that can only come from contemplative isolation from the visual world. But because physical sight is defective, humans need something to compensate. Milton’s blind persona does not ask for instruments of natural philosophy, but for divine illumination that can aid “the rational Matter [which] is the most prudent and wisest part of Nature … having the perfectest notions of God … so that whatsoever the sensitive Perception is either defective in, or ignorant of, the rational Perception supplies” (Cavendish Observations 3). From Comus’s temptation of the Lady in Milton’s Mask to the serpent’s temptation of Eve with the forbidden fruit, most objects of consumption in Milton’s poetry are described in terms of their sensorial allure (as Venus describes Adonis in Shakespeare’s poem) and what they have to offer the body and mind. Comus’s potion comes to represent the unrestrained consumption of all of nature (including sexual nature), as Comus asks, Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth, With such a full and unwithdrawing hand, Covering the earth with odors, fruits, and flocks, Thronging the Seas with spawn innumerable, But all to please and sate the curious taste? (710-14) Comus speaks of Nature’s abundance as it is laid out before the Lady’s eyes (what she can see). He speaks more specifically of the “odours” and “curious taste” to supplant the Lady’s vision. Comus has identified three senses, through which the Lady can learn to satisfy her appetites. He has softened his argument to a general discussion of nature only because his specific reference to the Lady’s “dainty limbs which Nature lent / For gentle usage” (680-81) met with hostility. I cite these lines because of their obvious parallel to Satan’s temptation of Eve but also because they offer insight into the young Milton’s hierarchical preference for the senses. Donald Friedman has suggested that “Milton’s use of neologisms133 in Comus may be connected with his desire to challenge the audience to listen to his masque attentively and correctly, and thus hear it out right” (121). Friedman bases his argument on the fact that the Mask has the highest percentage of neologisms of “any of Milton’s poems of whatever genre, length, or period” (119). For Friedman, “it is plausible that Milton shared Jonson’s conviction of the supreme importance

133 Friedman points out that “the Elder Brother and the Attendant Spirit are responsible for the largest number of them” (120), including two with very suggestive meanings: “embodies” and “imbrutes.”

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of the masque text over the ‘shows, mighty shows’ the earlier poet inveighs against in his expostulation with Inigo Jones” (120). Friedman’s argument makes more sense in light of the mask’s extended moments of exposition in the dialogue between the characters, and especially in lengthy moments of stichomythia involving Comus and the Lady, as Jennifer Sherman Roberts points out (92). Also, Milton’s Puritan leanings (similar to those attacked by Hooker) may suggest he placed greater trust in the word (or at least in the spiritual enlightenment of the word) than in visual representations. For Friedman, “Milton is not merely demonstrating the superiority of ear over eye in the perception of truth, but showing us vulnerabilities of each and guiding his audience toward the right employment of reason in recognizing the truth” (130). This is no different from what Milton does with Eve in Paradise Lost, Book IX, where the vulnerabilities of Eve’s senses, combined with her innocence, appear to be too much for human reason to compensate. The young Milton’s preference for hearing fits the shifting hierarchy of the time. Jennifer Sherman Roberts has shown that sight and hearing each enjoyed time at the top of the hierarchy of the senses, and each enjoyed epistemological prominence throughout the medieval and Renaissance periods. Robert Mandrou has said of these periods that “the eye that organizes, classifies, and orders was not the favored organ of a time that preferred hearing” (quoted in Jay 34). And “Lucian Febvre pinpoints the rise of modern ocularism to the advent of a ‘modern’ science” (Roberts 11). Suggested in Febvre’s modern ocularism is the way humans now trust the eye over all the other senses. Such arguments contrast with a clear preference for the visual faculty on multiple levels from Aristotle through the seventeenth century. Even Roberts is quick to point out that “this insistence on the antiocular middle ages [sic] obscures the complicated place of vision in the late medieval and early modern periods, especially within the Church. … In medical treatises of the medieval and early modern periods, vision nearly always takes first place … and its dominance is vigorously asserted” (11-12). See the works of Galen, Paracelsus, Bayley, and others. More important in the Mask is the way Milton’s hierarchical order of the senses suggests a moral descent from the more rational senses of sight and hearing to the more sensual, instinctual, or animalistic senses of smell and taste (more closely aligned with Aristotle’s sensitive soul). Comus focuses on the senses of smell (“odors”) and taste, the last two senses that Venus invokes in her sensorial catacosmesis. Because smell and taste are the most brutish

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of the senses, they require far less reason to process and often produce only a somatic response. Comus’s focus on these senses fits his modus operandi. He appeals to bodily pleasures in his enticement of weary travelers, all of whom forget themselves in the consumption of Comus’s “orient liquor” (l. 65) and turn into “some brutish form” (70). It is a suggestion that beasts rely more on smell and taste, or the pleasures and benefits that derive from them, as a way of moving through the world. The reader again finds this hierarchy of the senses in Satan’s temptation of Eve in Paradise Lost. When Satan speaks to Eve through the serpent in Book IX, he first mentions his sight of the fruit, but his focus falls to the “lower” senses. Upon seeing the fruit he says, I nearer drew to gaze; When from the boughs a savory odour blown, Grateful to appetite, more pleased my sense Than smell of sweetest fennel, or the teats Of ewe or goat dropping with milk at even, Unsucked of lamb or kid, that tend to their play. To satisfy the sharp desire I had Of tasting those fair apples, I resolved Not to defer … (IX.578-86; emphasis added) Satan’s clear understanding of seeking wants based upon “sharp desire” allows him to construct this fictional account for Eve. The serpent’s sensorial description of the fruit determines how Eve views the fruit right up to her ingestion of it. In the serpent’s description there is no hearing, but there is sight. He identifies the fruit with a “gaze.” The gaze is more than a look; it is a stare, which suggests longing, which is a passion suggestive of appetite. Because the serpent did not glance or simply look at the fruit, his “gaze” invites Eve to look longingly at the fruit just as the long “a” in gaze invites readers to hold the vowel sound for longer than a glance. The long look, then, allows the serpent to entice Eve with descriptions of the fruit’s smell and taste, both meant to appeal to her appetite. 4.2 The Physiology of Sense and Knowledge The appeal to appetite fits with Venus’s description of taste as “nurse and feeder of the other four” senses (Venus and Adonis 446). However, this only describes taste’s indirect role in the consumption of food, the digestion of which is the real nurse and feeder of the senses.

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Therefore, by extension, Shakespeare’s sensorial hierarchy in Venus and Adonis alludes to two probable sources. One likely source is Paracelsus, who believed the body’s balance was achieved through tastes.134 The other likely source is the Galenic body that provides power to the senses through the ingestion of a proper diet but also through aspiration. For example, as noted in Chapter One, digestion plays a part in creating the vital pneuma or “spiritual virtue” that powers the organs of sense.135 Galen believed that a more refined pneuma then reached out of the eye during the visual process.136 So the consumption of food proves vital for proper function of the mind and of the senses. Ironically, the story of man begins, for Milton, by the consumption of food: the forbidden fruit. The serpent’s temptation of Eve is just as much about taste (and by extension bodily nourishment and pleasure) as it is about knowledge and its utility. The serpent suggests that knowledge can make humans as gods. Donald Friedman suggests that Galileo had a similar belief. He finds in Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (as translated by Stillman Drake) “an assertion that the created intellect can at times grasp reality with the fullness and depth of the intellection of God” (“Galileo” 167). This is no different than Francis Bacon’s belief that one could find truth only through a careful dissection of nature, for therein lies the power of creation. The quest for knowledge in the Renaissance was always the quest for truth, which the Sceptics said one could not obtain. The consumption of food in Renaissance literature, as in the case of Milton’s Adam and Eve, is sometimes akin to the consumption of knowledge (and vice versa), and the use of the senses in determining whether that food (knowledge) is edible is sometimes akin to the empirical search for truth.137 Renaissance physician’s believed diet had a direct impact on one’s thought: “Renaissance physicians

134 See the discussion of Paracelsian physiology in Chapter One, section 1.5, pp. 27-30. 135 This was also called the “psychic pneuma” or more specifically the “sensory pneuma” (an off shoot of the psychic pneuma). For more on the role of pneuma in the Galenic brain see Julius Rocca’s Galen on the Brain (Boston: Brill, 2003). Rocca refers to the pneuma and its role throughout his text, but Chapter 6 completely lays out the pneumatic physiology. Rocca focuses almost exclusively on the role of aspirated air. 136 See Chapter One, section 1.1. 137 The fact that Adam and Eve fell because they sought knowledge offered by the consumption of a specific food certainly provided some influence here. Also, in his book The Fury of Men’s Gullets: Ben Jonson and the Digestive Canal, Bruce Thomas Boehrer offers multiple examples that show “again and again [how] Jonson conceives of books as having … alimentary character, subject to processes of selection, preparation, ingestion, digestion, and excretion that mimic … the literal functions of the digestive tract” (1). The process that Boehrer describes here is not all that different from the process of ingesting books that Milton discusses in Areopagitica, though Milton does not make an explicit gastrointestinal connection. Boehrer more specifically demonstrates Jonson’s “metaphorical process of literary digestion” (120), as it related to actual digestion, in Chapter 3. See especially pp. 118-124.

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[regarding diet] spoke of clear and rational thought, avoiding putrefaction and fevers, and maintaining a balance of humors” (Albala 4; emphasis added).138 Diet also had a direct impact on the function of the senses. The consumption of food is extremely important in much of Milton’s work,139 as Michael Schoenfeldt demonstrates in his Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England. However, while Schoenfeldt focuses on Milton’s view “of ingestion [as] among the first physiological manifestations of the Fall” (124), I am more concerned with Eve’s journey to the point of ingestion. The process that leads Eve to partake of the fruit reveals a process to gain knowledge that the reader can see either as a warning or as a preference (as long as one follows the process correctly). It begins with understanding the power of food to entice, which is especially important in Milton’s works because of the significance he bestows on the act of eating; in his life, as it related to diet and temperance140; and in literature, as it relates to digestion and often to transgression. The ingestion and digestion of knowledge were no different than the ingestion and digestion of food for many Renaissance natural philosophers and physicians, like Paracelsus. As noted in Chapter One, many natural philosophers in the Renaissance believed that thinking depended “upon … the unification of images provided by the various senses by the sensus communis” (Pagel “Contributions” 100). The Common Sense receives all sense perceptions, which are then digested, “and this process of digestion is reason or cogitation” (100). The entire process begins with the ingestion of sensory experience just as literal digestion begins with the ingestion of food. For Paracelsus the brain enacts its own alchemical process141 when it digests sensory perceptions into thought by reason to create knowledge, just as the stomach digests food into energy and nutrients for the body.142

138 The “animal spirits” (like Galen’s vital pneuma) ultimately derived, in part, from digestion. Therefore, because these spirits “are the messengers of all voluntary acts prompted by the brain … a fault in any stage of the digestive process will ultimately affect the quality of these spirits, it is easy to understand why Renaissance dieticians drew such a direct connection between diet and thoughts” (Albala 63). 139 I will soon show that this is evident from his early poetry, where in his Mask Milton has Comus use food, or drink more specifically, to entice weary travellers and to tempt the Lady. Milton continued to consider the symbolic importance of food and ingestion in his latest poetry, including the moment where Satan tempts the Son to turn a stone into bread in Paradise Regained. 140 For a discussion of Milton’s views on temperance, see Schoenfeldt’s Bodies and Selves. 141 The brain produces heat that concocts sensory perceptions into thoughts. 142 Erica Nicole Daigle points out that Galen’s own cognitive physiology was the result of the heat produced digestion: “heat is the cause of the refinement of the pneuma, the substance that triggers thought inside the brain ventricles” (166). Here is a direct connection of digestion with cognition.

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During Comus’s temptation of the Lady in Milton’s Mask, when Comus focuses on “odours” and “curious taste” (712, 714), the Lady comes to realize that whatever “repast” Comus offers “will not restore the truth and honesty / That [he] hast banished from [his] tongue with lies” (691-92). The Lady’s argument ties the ingestion of food to the ingestion of knowledge. Whatever food Comus has to offer, whether for the belly or for the mind, cannot satisfy the truth the Lady knows by her reason. Milton’s later works offer parallels to Comus’s temptation with food (or drink). Just as sensory deception permeates the serpent’s temptations of Eve in Paradise Lost, Satan uses the same approach on the Son in Paradise Regained, especially the deception of sight (for example, when Satan shows the Son “The kingdoms of the world and all their glory” [IV.89]).143 The first of Satan’s temptations of the Son, however, involves appetite: if thou be the Son of God, Command That out of these hard stones be made thee bread; So shalt thou save thyself and us relieve With Food, whereof we wretched seldom taste. (I.342-5) Satan’s temptation of the Son stands apart from the three major temptations involving the ingestion of food in Milton’s poetry.144 While neither the Lady nor Eve needs the object of their respective temptations, the Son has fasted Full forty days … whether on hill … in shady vale … Under the covert of some ancient oak, Or cedar … ……………………………………… Nor tasted human food, nor hunger felt Till those days ended, hungered then at last[.] (I.303-9) The Son needs food to recover the energy and strength such an exercise of the body expends. Satan neither tempts the Son with sexual sin (as Comus tempts the Lady) nor with a model of Satan’s own “worse ambition” and willful disobedience, which he tries to bequeath to Eve. Satan only wishes the Son to question his identity and divine character—“if thou be the Son of God” (I.342: emphasis added)—and act selfishly—“save thyself” (I.344). The tempter does not

143 See the discussion of this in terms of its visual presentation in Chapter Three, pp. 99-101. 144 The other two are Comus’s temptation of the Lady in the Mask and the serpent’s temptation of Eve in Paradise Lost. .

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realize that in Milton’s world, the stones are bread, or at least bread and stones both derive from that first matter that comes from God, a matter whose formal cause is everything in the universe. So Satan’s sense, his inability to see the true nature of the stones, dooms his attempt to tempt the Son. The knowledge in the stone/bread that Satan cannot comprehend, a knowledge of creation, leads to the knowledge of God, and that makes this temptation fruitless. Satan fails to see what the Lady sees before her in the “draft” (701) and what Eve sees in the fruit: representations of something bigger, something suggestive. I do not mean to imply the Platonic sense, although it fits, because Plato based his whole philosophy on the assumption that the world around us only represents the truth. For Plato, the material world blinds human senses to the truth. I mean to suggest that these objects of temptation and what they embody have no real consequences until Lady, Eve, and the Son take specific action. Whereas the Lady and the Son do not take the actions their tempters seek, Eve does, and her consequences represent consequences the former two also would have faced. Sinning, as acquisition of knowledge, is all about acting (by making the right choice) and not being acted upon. Milton tests the hierarchical place of hearing again in Paradise Lost when he has Satan “squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve,” but he is more interested in forecasting the problem Eve later encounters in Satan’s temptation. While “squat like a toad” at Eve’s ear, Satan assays by his devilish art to reach The organs of her fancy, and with them forge Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams, Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint The animal spirits that from pure blood arise Like gentle breaths from rivers pure, thence raise At least distempered, discontented thoughts, Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires Blown up with high conceits engendering pride. (IV.800-09) Fowler notes that “the toad symbolized death and the devil” (Milton 269 n800), so the toad provides a fitting disguise for Satan, who also plays a role in bringing death into the world. The animal spirits, the early modern equivalent to the vital pneuma, provide the body and all its parts (especially the sense organs) with what it needs to function properly. Edward Topsell, the divine, describes the toad as “the most noble kinde of Frog, most venomous and remarkable for

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courage and strength” (726). The toad shares these characteristics with Satan, whose courage might better be described as brashness. The guise of the toad offers a symbolic representation for Satan’s own venom. And when that venom enters through the ear it acts as a horrific reminder to Milton’s readers of that orifice’s vulnerability. Shakespeare’s Hamlet shows the physiological interconnectedness of the sense organs and the rest of the body, from the ingestion of food to the movement of the animal spirits which give life to those “organs of fancy.” When the ghost of King Hamlet describes his murder, the poison Claudius pours into the king’s ear runs its course “swift as quicksilver … through / The natural gates and alleys of the body” until it finally curdles “the thin and wholesome blood” (I.5.66-70). Therefore, Milton’s contemporary readers could accept that Satan’s venom “reach[ed] / The organs of [Eve’s] fancy.”145 Satan’s ability to reach those organs means that he can further manipulate them. By allowing Satan to “forge illusions … phantasms and dreams,” Milton shows the tempter’s ability to manipulate, through the ear, Eve’s vision, or at least memories produced from the visual faculty. Roberts observes that much of the representative literature about hearing in the Renaissance understood that listening, hearing—any admission of sound into the interior body—presents an opportunity for corruption, vice, and impurity to enter the soul. To the extent that these anatomical works focus on the potential for defilement, pollution, and invasion of outward influences through the ear, and given the medieval and early modern reliance on the correspondence between the systems controlling bodily regulation and other systems, the idea of ‘pure air’ [found in the ear] and its pollution through the hearing process can help us to understand moments of anxiety surrounding the hearing process. (75) The idea, then, that Satan, through Eve’s ear, could literally pollute her visual faculty and, by extension, her mind forces Milton’s readers to question further Eve’s ability to reason out the correct course when she encounters the serpent. In Eve’s eyes the serpent does not approach as a tempter, but as one of God’s creatures granted knowledge and speech by the forbidden fruit.146

145 Diana Treviño Benet offers a similar discussion about Satan’s ability to poison Eve’s “animal spirits.” See her “Milton’s Toad, or Satan’s Dream.” Milton Studies 45 (2006): 38-52. 146 That Eve chooses essentially to judge a book by its cover in this case is not without precedent. In his Book of the Courtier, Baldassare Castiglione argues that humans need only their vision and hearing to know the world around them, especially the beauty of a woman: “And as a mann heareth not with his mouth, nor smelleth with hys eares: no more can he also in anye maner wise enioye beawtye, nor satisfye the desyre that shee stirrith vp

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Finally, in the manipulation of the organs of Eve’s fancy, many critics have chosen to focus on the origin and nature of the dream as well as what Milton knew and believed about dream lore.147 However, by focusing on Satan’s ability to “forge” Eve’s dream, we can better understand Satan’s endgame. After Satan “speaks” into her ear, Eve proceeds to have a dream that Adam will call “evil” in Book V. In the course of the narration of Satan “squat like a toad,” Milton first names illusions and then phantasms. A phantasm is also an illusion or an apparition (see OED). These same words come up in Thomas Hobbes’s mechanical theory of the senses: “whatsoever accidents or qualities our senses make us think there be in the world, they are not there, but are seemings and apparitions only” (The Elements of Law and Natural Politic 3-4). Hobbes elucidates further in Leviathan: “The cause of Sense, is the Externall Body, or Object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense, either immediatly, as in the Tast and Touch; or mediately, as in Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling.” That pressure, again, is caused by light, which is matter in motion. The pressure it places on the eye, for example, continues inwards to the Brain, and Heart, causeth there a resistance, or counter-pressure, or endeavour of the heart, to deliver it self: which endeavor because Outward, seemeth to be some matter without. And this seeming, or fancy, is that which men call Sense; and consisteth, as to the Eye, in a Light, or Colour figured; To the Eare, in a Sound [etc.] … But their apparence to us is Fancy, the same waking, that dreaming. And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the Eye, makes us fancy a

in oure myndes, with feelynge, but wyth the sense, vnto whom beawtye is the verye butt to leuell at: namelye, the vertue of seeinge. Let him laye aside therefore the blinde iudgemente of the sense, and inioye wyth his eyes the bryghtnesse, the comelynesse, the louynge sparkles, laughters, gestures and all the other pleasant fournitours of beawty: especially with hearinge the sweetenesse of her voice, the tunablenesse of her woordes, the melodie of her singinge and playinge on instrumentes (in case the woman beloued be a musitien) and so shall he with most dintie foode feede the soule through the meanes of these two senses, which haue litle bodelye substance in them, and be the ministers of reason, without entringe farther towarde the bodye with couetinge vnto anye longinge otherwise then honest” (IV.62). Castiglione also compares the ingestion of beauty (or the knowledge of it) by “these two senses” to the ingestion of food. 147 Jane M. Petty in “The Voice at Eve’s Ear in Paradise Lost,” Milton Quarterly 19.2 (May 1985): 42-47, focuses, as her title suggests, on the voice that sounds like Adam. For Petty, the voice triggers a dream that “grew from actual happenings, recorded by the sensory organs” (46). Millicent Bell in “The Fallacy of the Fall in Paradise Lost,” finds a paradox in the “perfect” Eve being capable of corruption; Tillyard in “The Crisis of Paradise Lost” sees Eve as already having passed into sin; Ogden in “The Crisis of Paradise Lost Reconsidered” addresses the latter two’s concerns by identifying Eve’s innocence. Ogden’s argument supports my own insofar as I argue that Eve’s innocence is extremely important to understanding how Satan can deceive her. For further discussion of Eve’s dream and Milton’s understanding and feelings about dream lore see John M. Steadman, “Eve’s Dream and the Conventions of Witchcraft”; William B. Hunter, Jr., “Eve’s Demonic Dream”; Manfred Weidhorn, Dreams in Seventeenth-Century English Literature; Northrop Frye, “The Revelation to Eve”; and Diana Treviño Benet, “Milton’s Toad, or Satan’s Dream,” which is probably the most insightful recent study of Eve’s dream.

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light; and pressing the Eare, produceth a dinne; so do the bodies also we see, or hear, produce the same by their strong, though unobserved action. For if those Colours, and Sounds, were in the Bodies, or Objects that cause them, they could not bee severed from them, as by glasses, and in Ecchoes by reflection, wee see they are; where we know the thing we see, is in one place; the apparence, in another. (3-4) All sensory perception is no different than the perceptions we have in dreams because the image of an object is always just that, an image, a fancy, an illusion, or a phantasm and not the object itself. The organs of Eve’s fancy, then, are her sensory organs. Satan squat like a toad at Eve’s ear is meant to give Eve her “evil” dream, perhaps, but it is more important that Satan’s venom poison Eve’s animal spirits, which give function to all her sense organs. This makes each of Eve’s senses prime for deception. 4.3 Eve’s Fortunate Fall Before Satan can appeal to Eve’s appetite and entice her senses with the allure of the forbidden fruit he must weaken her guard and challenge her ability to reason. He began by polluting the “organs of her fancy.” Then as the serpent, Satan challenges Eve’s perception of nature and the animals it sustains because when the serpent approaches her, it has the ability to speak and reason as a human. As a result, Eve reconsiders her reading of the book of nature: Into the heart of Eve his words made way, Though at the voice much marvelling; at length Not unamazed in answer she thus spake. What may this mean? Language of man pronounced By tongue of brute, and human sense expressed? The first at least of these I thought denied To beasts, whom God on their creation-day Created mute to all articulate sound; The latter I demur, for in their looks Much reason, and in their actions oft appears. (IX.550-9) Eve’s careful scrutiny of her previous observations forces her to see a world contrary to the one taught to her, and these final lines hint at Skepticism. Eve’s empirical revelation is similar to those of Galileo and Hooke. The reliance on the wisdom of others, Aristotle’s charge that the

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heavens were immutable, for example, now parallels the reliance on God’s word, which warned of the tree of knowledge of good and evil that “in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17). But God’s word also appears to have counseled Adam and Eve to know that “tongue of brute” can neither pronounce the language of man nor human sense express. Naturally, our expectations affect our senses. The persistence of the philosophies of Aristotle and Galen in Renaissance Europe shows that has probably always been true. Francis Bacon sought to counter this scholastic mode. Bacon realized that a careful empirical study of the world revealed knowledge that ancient philosophers like Aristotle never taught and possibly never knew: “our concern is to open up a completely different way to the intellect, unknown and untried by the ancients” (“Preface”). Galileo provided a way to look at the heavens that was “unknown and untried,” and Robert Hooke provided an “unknown and untried” way to look at smaller objects when he looked at sage through a microscope to discover the root of what made its leaves noxious.148 The similarities with Eve’s own realizations are hard to ignore. Like Eve’s unquestioned trust in the words of others—Adam, or God through Adam—learned men and women for centuries had put the same kind of faith and trust in the words of philosophers as they did the words of the Bible.149 Although the words of scripture, for most, held sway, it was often hard to distinguish between the two. Church fathers like St. Augustine made great strides to marry pagan ideas with Christian doctrine.150 And men of great faith up to Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and beyond made efforts to show the interconnectedness of all knowledge.151 Ultimately, these men, by the word of God and the word of ancient philosophers, “constructed” the world, and put within the eyes of humans their views of that world. In other words, they constructed everyone’s conscious experience of nature. Perhaps for this reason, more than any other, humans accepted the objective nature of the eye, and believed that everyone saw the world as it is and, therefore, saw the same thing. The beginning of Eve’s skepticism carries the weight of these implications. Milton further reveals his awareness of these teachings when he has Eve ask, “What may this mean? Language of man pronounced / By tongue of brute, and human sense expressed?” (IX.553-4).

148 See the discussion of this in Chapter Three, pp. 81-82. 149 Obviously I am simplifying a much more complicated tradition, but I am referring mainly to the general consensus of against scholasticism led by natural philosophers like Francis Bacon. 150 St. Augustine’s own pagan past played a role in this desire. Also, Galileo uses Augustine in defense of his telescopic findings in his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina. 151 Pico, for example, believed that magic was the key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe.

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Because God has constructed Eve’s perception of the serpent, her perception does not allow knowledge beyond that construction. Eve must construct a new conscious experience to answer these questions: The first at least of these I thought denied To beasts, whom God on their creation-day Created mute to all articulate sound. (IX.555-7) Eve knows that animals can speak. She clarifies that in her distinction “mute to all articulate sound” (emphasis mine). Presumably, that is the sound of human speech. Despite her recognizing that animals lack human speech, doubts have already begun to cloud her mind. First, she addresses the foremost issue that the Eve of the Bible avoids. She is staring in the face of a talking animal.152 Other Biblical accounts of talking animals also avoid this contemplation. When Balaam beats his ass for disobedience, it asks, “What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times?” Balaam hastened to answer: “Because thou hast mocked me: I would there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I kill thee” (Numbers 22:25-31). Balaam and the Eve of the Bible fail to ask the obvious question that Milton’s Eve asks. How does this animal speak? Eve ponders, “The first … I thought denied” (emphasis mine). Of course, the early modern connotation of the word “thought” may simply suggest knowing. However, doubt remains a possibility. Eve’s distinct separation of speech from reason perhaps reveals Milton’s graduated view of what makes humans distinct from animals. First, humans possess “articulate sound,” and second, humans have reason, identified specifically as “human sense” because animals cannot possess it. In other words, because animals can speak (although not as humans), reason holds more weight in separating man from beast unequivocally. After pondering the significance of the serpent’s speech, Eve states bluntly her doubts regarding beasts and reason: “The latter I demur, for in their looks / Much reason, and in their actions oft appears” (IX.558-9). “Demur” simply means “doubt.” The OED cites these lines from Paradise Lost, however, as an example for the more innocent “hesitate about,” which Fowler points out in his edition of the poem (see IX.558-9n). To hesitate is to have doubts, perhaps, but at the very least, “demur” serves to demonstrate Eve’s skepticism and her

152 Fish also notes this but only as an inroad to his discussion of visual deception, and he does not consider the idea of animal speech (248).

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“suspension of judgment.”153 So when Eve reevaluates her empirical observations of other beasts, she decides to suspend her judgment (“hesitate about”), which was at one time determined. She realizes that beasts often look as though they are reasoning, and they often show reason through their actions. Eve’s suspension of judgment and, therefore, her refusal to deny the serpent a tongue and reason, allows her to question the serpent freely as if questioning another human. However, Eve does not necessarily direct her questions to the serpent. The way Eve deliberates with herself in this moment, then, is an aporia, from the Greek aporos, “without passage.” This rhetorical figure means to deliberate “with oneself as though in doubt over some matter” (Burton). Eve’s aporia reveals her hesitation to believe the knowledge God (personally or through Adam) taught her. Her “demur” and skepticism suggest even more: she has thought about this before and previously suspended judgment. The idea that beasts have reason also comes up in Book VIII when Adam recounts his conversation with God, who in reply to Adam’s pleas for company says, What callst thou solitude, is not the earth With various living creatures, and the air Replenished, and all these at thy command To come and play before thee, knowst thou not Their language and their ways, they also know, And reason not contemptibly; with these Find pastime, and bear rule; thy realm is large. (VIII.369-75) That these “various living creatures” can “know” (understand) and “reason” with Adam suggests that perhaps, before the Fall, men could communicate with animals,154 though animals remained submissive to man and “mute to all articulate sound” (IX.557). Perhaps, Adam, by his “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28) possessed the ability to communicate with the animals on some level. After all, he asks, “Hast thou not made me here thy substitute / And these inferior

153 Outlines of Pyrrhonism, trans. R. G. Bury, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990. “Skepticism is an ability, or mental attitude, which opposes appearances to judgments in any way whatsoever” (17). 154 John Leonard, Naming in Paradise Lost: Milton and the Language of Adam and Eve, Oxford, 1990 and Alastair Fowler, Milton, Longman, 2008. Leonard argues that the animals’ language is their own respective sounds (cows’ moos, birds’ chirps, for example), while Fowler suggests more, but concludes that he and Leonard are “less distinct than he [Leonard] supposes: Philo admits human language is ‘more clear and distinct’” (Milton, 2008, VIII.373n).

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far beneath me set?” (VIII.381-2). As God’s substitute he can command the beasts and perhaps even know their thoughts. They are subject to Adam as Adam is subject to God. More particular is Milton’s initial description of the serpent, which mirrors the Biblical description: “Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made” (Genesis 1:3). Whereas the biblical description leaves open the interpretation that “serpent” is a direct symbolic representation of Satan, Milton’s first description of the serpent does not, for it comes in Book VII, long before Satan possesses it: The serpent subtlest beast of all the field Of huge extent sometimes, with brazen eyes And hairy mane terrific, though to thee Not noxious, but obedient at thy call. (VII.495-8) The serpent’s obedience to Adam’s call suggests a kind of reason and perhaps also an example of Adam’s dominion over nature that Hooke identifies in Micrographia,155 but the key word is “subtlest” just as in the Bible’s “more subtil.” It is not enough for the serpent to possess any subtly. He must, for Milton, have more than any other creature. The serpent’s nature makes it the perfect vehicle through which Satan can tempt Eve, since it is “not noxious,” which coincides with Edward Topsell’s argument that God created serpents “for good, reasonable, and necessary causes” (591). Considering the OED entry that cites this instance of subtle from Paradise Lost— “Of persons or animals: Crafty, cunning; treacherously or wickedly cunning, insidiously sly, wily”—subtle suggests more than instinct, more than “fixed in their mode of being.”156 Eve’s identification of man’s especial difference from beasts finds a counterpart in Thomas Hobbes, whose perspective adds light to Adam’s queries to God and Eve’s speculation about the serpent’s and other animals’ ability to reason. For Hobbes, there is little difference between man and beast. Both are bodies, which are nothing more than mechanical motions, which Hobbes calls life: “Life is but a motion of Limbs … why may we not say, that all Automata … have an artificiall life? For what is the Heart, but a Spring; and the Nerves, but so many Strings; and the Joynts, but so many Wheeles, giving motion to the whole Body, such as was intended by the Artificer?” (Leviathan 9). Stephen Fallon clarifies Hobbes’s point about the concomitant attributes of man and beast with a simple explanation: “living bodies [man and

155 See Chapter Three, pp. 98-100. 156 See Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s reference to the Great Chain of Being in Oration on the Dignity of Man Trans. A. Robert Caponigri (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1999), 8-9.

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beast] and machines differ only because nature makes one and man the other” (Milton among the Philosophers 33). Hobbes does not shy away from placing man and beasts in the same category that nature has placed them. Hobbes does not discriminate when it comes to “living” bodies, or bodies in motion. He says the same thing about beasts as he says about man with one exception: There is no other act of man's mind, that I can remember, naturally planted in him, so as to need no other thing to the exercise of it but to be born a man, and live with the use of his five senses. Those other faculties […] which seem proper to man only, are acquired and increased by study and industry, and of most men learned by instruction and discipline, and proceed all from the invention of words and speech. For besides sense, and thoughts, and the train of thoughts, the mind of man has no other motion; though by the help of speech, and method, the same faculties may be improved to such a height as to distinguish men from all other living creatures. (Leviathan 19; emphasis mine) The one distinction Hobbes allows man that separates him from an animal stands as a contradiction to the words Eve speaks in her aporia. Her predisposed perception of reality causes her to question the serpent vis-à-vis man because the serpent possesses the faculty of human speech (“articulate sound”) and reason (“human sense”). For Eve, that “language of man” is not enough of a distinction (without reason) to identify man as more than a beast, but for Hobbes it is the only distinction. Hobbes bluntly argues that “without the ‘invention of words and speech,’ men and women never would have learned ‘by study and industry […] by instruction and discipline’ how to live as humans rather than as animals” (Silverman 78). This passage is easy to misunderstand out of context; however, when we remember that “the entire Hobbesian project was built on the foundations of a theory of vision” (Clark 333), then we remember, also, that sight, for Hobbes, is reconciled through language by an artificial consensus. This appears to be Hobbes’s foundation for human knowledge and reason: “For there is no conception in a mans mind, which hath not at first … been begotten upon the organs of Sense” (Hobbes, Leviathan 13).157 That conception comes by language. Hobbes further gives to beasts a kind of reason: The Imagination that is raysed in man (or any other creature indued with the

157 See Chapter One, pp. 36-39.

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faculty of imagining) by words, or other voluntary signes, is that we generally call Understanding; and is common to Man and Beast. For a dogge by custom will understand the call or the rating of his Master; and so will many other Beasts. That Understanding which is peculiar to man is the Understanding not onely his will; but his conceptions and thoughts, by the sequell and contexture of the names of things into Affirmations, Negations, and other formes of Speech. (Hobbes 16) Fallon cites this same passage in his explanation of Hobbes’s mechanism as it relates to all of nature (including man and animals) and clarifies that for Hobbes “Imagination” is “another name for ‘idea’” (35). It sounds like a corrupted Platonism, where we have an idea of an image of the Idea. This copy of a copy as it relates to Hobbesian language by an artificial consensus leads us back to vision, where all perceived images are merely copies. Also, in the dog’s understanding its master’s call we find the serpent’s “obedience at thy call” (VII.498), from Paradise Lost’s initial description of the serpent. In stark opposition to Milton’s blind narrator lamenting about wisdom shut out at one entrance because of blindness, Hobbes limits the epistemological significance of all the senses to the language that describes their perceptions. In effect, the blind should still be able to see by means of language. For Hobbes, only speech (or language) can give humans their “human sense,” learning, and overall experience. Without language, the senses mean nothing, and humans cannot have an artificial consensus or linguistically objective sensory experiences. This is why Hobbes and Descartes “sought to give up resemblance as the basis of cognition and substitute a mechanical account of sensation and an interpretive account of perception, intending thereby to put sight and the other senses back on a stable foundation, fit for the new philosophy” (Clark 6). Eve clearly follows an “interpretive account” of her perception of the serpent. Her reliance upon a mechanical view of the senses that leads to the Fall contests the general mechanical view of both Hobbes and Descartes. By making the senses mechanical, Hobbes and Descartes made the eyes again capable of seeing objectively because of language. Milton’s emphasis on experience (whether good or bad)158 and Eve’s rational analysis of it via the senses demonstrate a clear preference for reason alone as separating humans from beasts. Milton also demonstrates his understanding of the importance of the senses in determining truth from

158 Milton addresses something similar in terms of texts in Areopagitica when he argues that a wise man can make use of even the worst books.

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deception or right from wrong. Satan’s ability to deceive Eve removes all questions of objectivity as does her innocence. In the world of Hobbes and Descartes, Eve falls because of her interpretive account of her perception of the serpent. Because of the serpent’s language (Satan’s “glozing lies”) Eve believes that what she sees is what she gets: a serpent who can talk and reason thanks to the forbidden fruit. However, in Milton’s world, Eve falls because of her lack of experience. Her senses are deceived because she is innocent to lies and deception and because, for Milton, reason is not enough. Though Eve uses what little knowledge she has gained through her sensory perception of other animals—“for in their looks / Much reason, and in their actions oft appears” (IX.558-9)—in an effort to make the right choice, the serpent’s logic proves too sound for her to resist an experiment. Milton’s approach is interpretive, too, but it suggests that Eve should rely on more than what is in front of her visually and in speech. Despite her prelapsarian physical condition and her prelapsarian senses, Eve meets the serpent with a disadvantage. For all intents and purposes Eve, because of her innocence, is blind when she encounters the serpent, or more precisely, she is blinded by Satan through the serpent. Though Eve (“man”) has been made “just and right, / Sufficient to have stood” (III.98-99) and also “free and able enough to have withstood his [her] tempter” (III “Argument”), and despite Raphael’s warning meant to render man “inexcusable” (V “Argument”), neither Adam nor Eve (neither Raphael for that matter) knows in what guise Satan may approach. The warning also blinds Eve. She is looking for a fallen angel not an articulate speaking animal. Satan’s disguise forces Eve to reinterpret the Book of Nature. Unlike Milton’s representation of blindness, where the “book of knowledge fair” has been “presented with a universal blank” (III.47-8), Eve can read the nature before her, but her reading is skewed by her innocence, and more importantly by Satan, who tempts her with “glozing lies” and deceives her just the same. Ironically, it is the fruit that she needs to “see” him or his lies (by gaining the knowledge of what is good and what is evil), but it is also the fruit that will bring death and sin into the world. This is where Eve must rely on reason to compensate for “whatsoever the sensitive Perception is either defective in, or ignorant of” (Cavendish Observations 3). However, Eve has no experimental “control” on which to rely. The reader must assume that Eve knows of no other animals partaking of the fruit and changing the way the serpent has changed. Though she has yet to fall, Eve’s senses, despite her skepticism, cannot compete with Satan’s deception of them because of her innocence and more precisely because inexperience.

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This disables her from interpreting this experience more accurately. Eve cannot experience this event any other way. Her aporia leads her to indulge the serpent and its reason. He leads her to the tree of knowledge of good and evil, where she “yet first / Pausing awhile” (IX.743) further processes her newly acquired knowledge in an apostrophe to the tree and its fruit: Great are thy virtues, doubtless, best of fruits, Though kept from man, and worthy to be admired, Whose taste, too long forborne, at first assay Gave elocution to the mute, and taught The tongue not made for speech to speak thy praise: Thy praise he also who forbids thy use, Conceals not from us, naming thee the tree Of knowledge, knowledge both of good and evil; Forbids us then to taste, but his forbidding Commends thee more, while it infers the good By thee communicated, and our want: For good unknown, sure is not had, or had And yet unknown, is as not had at all [.] (IX.745-57) Milton plays Eve’s hesitation perfectly, weighing down the first four lines with eight commas, four of which act as mid-line caesuras. This is Eve thinking, “pausing awhile” to contemplate each word carefully. Those four mid-line commas are important, too, for the word and phrase they frame: “doubtless” and “too long forborne.” It is ironic that Eve, clearly still weighing the words of the serpent and her own experiences, “pausing awhile,” would say doubtless. She knows the tree bearing the fruit (of knowledge of good and evil), but if her understanding of the tree causes her doubtlessness, then she has no need to hesitate. “Too long forborne” suggests an indictment, assuming that “forborne” literally means “put off for a time” or postponed.159 Milton seems to suggest, then, that the knowledge the fruit offers is forthcoming, but God’s command has postponed it. The serpent, however, makes Eve forget God’s command by enticing her with not only the fruit’s “virtue,” which is “doubtless,” but with the fruit’s taste. Eve is no longer concerned so much with what she can gain from the fruit. She does not say “whose virtue, too long forborne” but “whose taste.” Satan has twisted the epistemological role of the senses. Eve

159 It’s only appearance in the OED is under forbid (v.), “which expresses the sense” of this definition.

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believes that the fruit’s “taste” “Gave elocution to the mute, and taught / The tongue not made for speech to speak.” A reminder of that taste is “nurse and feeder of the other four” senses (Venus and Adonis 446), and that in this case, the ingestion of food is literally the ingestion of knowledge, as the serpent has argued. Also, in a mechanical sense, Denis Burden cites “Hobbes on the conversion of appetite to will” (Fowler 743-4n). That appetite is the “reason” one finds in animals, who act only on appetite, based on survival needs. The only two lines free from caesuras (749-50)160 address absolute certainties for Eve. She knew animals did not possess articulate speech, and knowing animals to be created by God, she had no reason to doubt the serpent’s explanation (749). She has absolutely determined that the fruit gave him speech (or something has). Also, she is absolutely certain about God, his existence and command (750). From there, Eve continues to contemplate the seemingly better state of the serpent: For beasts it seems: yet that one Beast which first Hath tasted, envies not, but brings with joy The good befallen him, author unsuspect, Friendly to man, far from deceit or guile. What fear I then, rather what know to fear Under this ignorance of good and evil, Of God or Death, of Law or Penaltie? (IX.769-75) Milton’s narrator reminds readers of Eve’s disadvantage: “ignorance of good and evil.” Without that knowledge, for Eve, the author of this fable is “unsuspect, / Friendly to man” and therefore must be “far from deceit or guile.” Then the reader discovers all of Eve’s senses deceived: Here grows the Cure of all, this Fruit Divine, Fair to the Eye, inviting to the Taste, Of vertue to make wise: what hinders then To reach, and feed at once both Bodie and Mind? (IX.776-9) Here, Milton brings together the ability of mind and body to ingest and digest food and knowledge in the Paracelsian and Galenic senses. Also, it is ironic that when Eve finally reaches for the fruit, Milton’s narrator describes her hand as “rash” (IX.780). It has taken over two hundred lines to get to Eve’s partaking of the fruit, and for many of those lines, Eve dissembled,

160 This is also the case in the 1674 edition printed by S. Simmons in London.

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“mused,” “reasoned,” “demurred,” and the like. Perhaps Fish would say the narrator means she too easily trusts in the conclusion brought about by her senses. It is Eve’s choice based upon those senses and the data they have processed that leads to the Fall. The fruit does open her eyes to new knowledge and such a flood of new knowledge, which includes a realization that death (“whate’er death is” [IV.425]) has not overtaken her, that she rejoices in that knowledge, but more, she rejoices in what she has gained from “Experience”: Till dieted by thee I grow mature In knowledge, as the gods who all things know; Though others envy what they cannot give; For had the gift been theirs, it had not here Thus grown. Experience, next to thee I owe, Best guide; not following thee, I had remained In ignorance[.] (IX.803-09) Eve venerates “Experience,” which she has now added to her intellectual diet. Experience gives knowledge, but it introduces a new concern. Eve’s praise of her new experience leaves Milton’s readers to consider whether they are better off learning through mistakes or, in this case, through sin. The answer to this question, for Milton, proves tricky.161 Milton no longer faces visual enticements, but he does not suggest humans cannot rely on their senses. Milton understands too well the importance of acquiring knowledge, much of which is necessary to life, by the senses, even with the loss of sight. The balance must come in the way one employs the senses or reacts to stimuli much the way one must exercise temperance in appetite. Satan’s animalistic sensory description of the fruit, as he recounts to Eve via the serpent his (or its) experience (IX.571-83), serves as a warning against placing too much trust in the senses. As does the temptations that lead to many sins, the fruit entices the senses. Not surprisingly Eve has a similar sensory experience when she contemplates partaking the fruit, perhaps influenced by Satan’s own description. For her the fruit waked An eager appetite, raised by the smell

161 It is especially tricky when the reader figures in “Knowledge of good bought dear by knowing ill” (IV.222). Milton claims as much in both Areopagitica and De Doctrina Christiana. In the latter he claims that “it was called the tree of knowledge of good and evil because of what happened afterwards.” See The Complete Prose Works. Ed. Don M. Wolfe. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1953-82. VI:352.

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So savoury of that fruit, which with desire, Inclinable now grown to touch or taste, Solicited her longing eye. (IX.739-43) Such sensory experiences that result in inferred pleasures awake the passions, which, not bridled, can lead to sin.162 In these lines, those passions arise from those baser senses for Eve, too: “smell so savoury” that makes her “inclinable … to touch or taste.” All these senses solicit “her longing eye.” The OED cites this specific line for “solicit” as an example of “To tempt, entice, allure; to attract or draw by enticement” (5b). Here, the lower senses have corrupted the eye and forced Eve to look longingly at the fruit or “gaze” as the serpent did. That longing created a desire for pleasure Eve had never encountered. This is where the eyes fail, for Milton: when they allow the lower senses to influence their ability to see. Had Eve been physically blind, Satan’s efforts through the serpent would have failed. She never would have believed it was the serpent talking, and she never would have allowed the lower senses to overwhelm her eyes. Or if she could “see … things invisible to mortal sight” (III.55) and discern the serpent’s possessor,163 her eyes would have refused to acknowledge the pleasure the other senses infer about the fruit. In his discussion of Milton’s Mask, John Rogers points out that “the natural pleasures to be found in the sensual world present a genuine temptation, and the practice of chastity is figured, therefore, as vigilant and active self-restraint, a judicious exercise of the will that excludes, rejects, and denies the welling up of natural passions” (92). Adam and Eve, made “just and right,” are expected to exercise a similar restraint, which Michael counsels them to do later when he warns of the pleasures one can infer from the senses: Judge not what is best, By pleasure, though to nature seeming meet, Created, as thou art, to nobler end, Holy and pure, conformity divine. (XI.603-6)

162 What I seem to imply welcomes controversy. I say “lead” because I do not wish to suggest that Eve Falls before she partakes of the fruit as a result of her skepticism, empiricism, reconstruction of her conscious experiences with animals, or simply because she considers partaking the fruit. Adam’s attempt to comfort Eve after her dream in Book IV (from which she wakes in Book V) is important to understanding this: “Evil into the mind of god or man / May come and go, so unapproved, and leave / No spot or blame behind” (V.117-19). So Eve may question the way things are without choosing to act upon those questions. She may also allow the fruit to entice her senses and consider eating without partaking. 163 This is something that Diane McColley suggests Eve could have done if she had been more vigilant in her interrogation of the serpent (Milton’s Eve 196).

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From his early to his late poetry, Milton remained aware of the importance of the senses in acquiring knowledge and the importance of reason to govern those senses and sort through the data they acquired. Sight and hearing ruled over Milton’s own hierarchy of the senses so much, that when Eve allows the serpent’s focus on touch and taste to influence her, we see that the fall is imminent. But, as noted in the beginning of this chapter, the senses, just as the mind they provide with data, cannot work without proper nourishment. That makes the temptation of the fruit so much stronger: it provides nourishment for both. By emphasizing the fruit’s ability to nourish both mind and body, Milton demonstrates an awareness of the physiological interconnectedness of the belly, the mind, and the senses. With Eve, the reader comes to understand that pleasures come by and play upon the senses and entice the passions. Milton asks in Areopagitica, “Wherefore did [God] creat passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that these rightly temper'd are the very ingredients of vertu?” (17). It is the reason, “chief” over the senses, that makes temperance possible. Despite what Eve saw, heard, touched, smelled, and finally tasted, her innate virtue was sufficient for her to stand against the pleasure she perceived through the serpent’s “glozing lies,” which allowed Satan to deceive Eve’s higher senses through her lower senses. Eve’s digestion of the serpent’s “glozing lies” shows that the consumption of a proper diet for the mind via the senses is no different than consuming the proper diet for the body. In his own analysis of Milton’s question from Areopagitica, Schoenfeldt argues, “For Milton, in many ways, the moral effort required to temper strong passions is superior to the state of having tempered them perfectly” (Bodies and Selves 164). Ironically, though Adam proclaims near the end of the poem he has learned that “to obey is best” (XII.561), he never would have learned without Eve’s experience, empirical study, and the epistemological role of the senses. Milton’s felix culpa, then, is impossible without the experimental method, employed by Eve’s engagement of the senses to bring to pass that which Adam calls “more wonderful / Than that which by creation first brought forth / Light out of darkness!” (XII.471-3). That darkness, blindness; that light, sight and more precisely Adam’s vision of the world to come, a world of redemption and a road back to God in Christ. Adam’s proclamation implies so much more. For Milton, or any other blind human, the other senses, more particularly the rational sense, compensate for the loss of sight and, used judiciously, can bring forth light (knowledge and truth) out of darkness (blindness).

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CHAPTER FIVE MILTON’S CHAOS, ORGANIZED: EMBODIMENT IN THE POETICS OF A BLIND MAN

Milton’s poetics in Paradise Lost prove that Milton founded his late poetry on early modern visual theories and that his blindness created a dichotomy between his interest in natural philosophy and his Christianity.164 In Paradise Lost the blind Milton preoccupies himself with describing the indescribable as well as things neither he nor his audience had likely ever seen. In order to describe his world, Milton relies on his remaining senses as well as what he still “sees” in his mind. Milton brings these images together through a unique poetics that relies both on the physical and metaphysical. In the opening of Paradise Lost, readers find a poet who seems preoccupied with a strictly spiritual solution to blindness. Milton’s persona invokes the aid (I.13) of the heavenly muse and describes what aid he seeks a few lines later: “And chiefly thou O Spirit … Instruct me … what in me is dark / Illumine, what is low raise and support” (I.17-23). In a later invocation, Milton’s persona continues to seek aid from the holy or celestial light after lamenting his physical blindness: So much the rather thou celestial light Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight. (III.51-55). I will soon show that Milton infuses these lines with key words that help readers understand his creative process, but at the very least, Milton leaves little doubt that a blind poet needs spiritual inspiration in order to pursue the lofty topics in Paradise Lost. However, a careful consideration of these passages and Milton’s references to Chaos throughout the poem reveal an organic, physiological process at work, too. Milton the Christian and Milton the poet come together in Paradise Lost to reveal that poetic creation is as much a physiological process as it is a metaphysical. In other words, when Milton’s persona calls upon the holy light in Book III, he seeks an inner vision, one that is not physical.

164 Optics and visual theories matter to Milton as a poet but not as a Christian.

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Understanding Thomas Hobbes’s theory of vision proves important for Milton’s poetics, as Milton frequently uses the verb “to seem” to describe important characters and events from simple comparisons to complex epic similes. More important to the reader’s involvement in Paradise Lost, however, is when Milton invokes bodily experiences through the language of his poetry. This embodiment is the effect of the physiological side of Milton’s poetic creation. In this chapter, I argue that Milton retreats within to “middle darkness,” his own private chaos, from which he organizes embodied experiences that bring the epic to life and create affect165 within his readers. I also show the dual nature Milton gives Chaos, without and within, which allows him to present the bodily experiences he collects from his other senses as unorganized matter. This is possible because Milton (the poet) saw the world the way the empirical natural philosopher saw the world, in parts (as unformed as chaos), which he constructed into images and experiences for the reader. 5.1 Embodiment The new body scholarship in early modern literary studies, what critics like Bruce R. Smith have come to call historical phenomenology, has helped scholars develop a unique approach to early-modern theatre, especially the works of William Shakespeare. However, as I began to demonstrate in the previous chapter (and as many other critics have demonstrated),166 we can apply this unique approach to other great works of literature and make fresh discoveries about it and how people experienced life in the early modern period. For Smith, historical phenomenology takes literature to a place where words act as “indexes, signs with a natural or metonymic connection with somatic experience” (326). In other words, language can produce physical affect. For Thomas Hobbes, we can only understand man’s reason and everything about him or her, especially bodily experience, through language. Milton’s language in Paradise Lost embodies Hobbes’s artificial consensus, where words come to represent specific objects only because people have come to a general agreement about what those words mean and represent.

165 I am working from two definitions here. The first corresponds to the psychological affect: “A feeling or subjective experience accompanying a thought or action or occurring in response to a stimulus; an emotion, a mood. In later use also (usu. as a mass noun): the outward display of emotion or mood, as manifested by facial expression, posture, gestures, tone of voice, etc.” (OED 5b). The second definition corresponds to a seventeenth-century meaning that relates directly to bodily senses: “The manner in which something is physically affected or disposed … the actual state or disposition of the body” (OED 7). Milton’s poetry works as the psychological stimulus that causes a physical reaction. 166 The recent work of Gail Kern Paster, Mary Floyd-Wilson, Katherine Rowe, and Michael Schoenfeldt are especially of note.

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In his Humane Nature, Thomas Hobbes shares a story that helps readers to understand the important role he gives language in knowledge and perception. He tells of a man who claimed to have been blind from birth and to have regained his sight miraculously at the shrine of St. Albans. The Duke of Gloucester sought to test the truthfulness of the man’s claim and asked him to identify “What colour is this? who, by answering, It was Green, discovered himself, and was punished for a counterfeit” (sig. D6). In his The Key of Green: Passion and Perception in Renaissance Culture, Bruce Smith suggests that Hobbes uses the story, “in the immediate context, to distinguish two kinds of knowledge, sense and science” (32). Both kinds of knowledge are experience. Sense works “upon us from without,” while science comes from the “proper use of names in language” (sig. D6). Therefore, “the counterfeit blind man could claim to have the experience of green, but not ‘knowledge of the truth of Propositions, and how things are called’ (sig. D6; original emphasis)” (Smith 32). As a blind poet, language is the only experience Milton can have with visual elements. In Paradise Lost, Milton’s words, and often the objects they signify, provide bodily experiences. For example, by the end of Book IX, Milton has solidified the apple’s place as a metonymy for sin, but Milton has also made the apple a metonymy for seeing because it does open the eyes in one sense, as he has Eve confess to Adam: I Have also tasted, and have also found The effects to correspond, opener mine eyes Dim erst, dilated spirits, ampler heart, And growing up to godhead[.] (IX.873-77) Not only are Eve’s eyes “opener,” but they were “dim erst.” Not only can Eve see and, therefore, know more, she proclaims that before she partook of the fruit her eyes were dim. The fruit brought light, the key ingredient of every major theory of vision through Milton’s day. The fruit’s ability to make Eve’s eyes “opener” corresponds to Milton’s argument in Areopagitica for “forbidden” books. One can find good by evil. Milton elaborates when he discusses the Fall in De Doctrina Christiana, where he makes a similar argument: “It was called the tree of knowledge of good and evil because of what happened afterwards: for since it was tasted, not only do we know evil, but also we do not even know good except through evil. For where does virtue shine, where it is usually exercised, if not in evil?”(Book I, Chapter 10). Milton does not

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hesitate to engage the senses. He refers to the Fall in terms of the role of the body. Adam and Eve did not “sin” or even “partake” of the fruit, but the fruit “was tasted,” which taste brought knowledge. Milton understands the physiological and psychological importance of the senses and their connection to cognition. We can even read Eve’s description of the fruit’s effects on her body as a strictly physiological reaction. The fruit made her eyes more open because it dilated her (animal or vital) spirits, the source of sustenance for all the senses, the outward physical senses and the inner rational sense.167 Milton’s diction strengthens this reading. Many physicians, at least as far back as Galen, believed that the flow of spirits (pneuma) into (and often out of) the eye caused the pupils to dilate, whereby the eye could see. So the dilated spirits literally made Eve’s eyes more open. Eve’s “ampler heart” takes the physiological effects from reason to the passions. The taste of the fruit has magnified or heightened all aspects of her body and its balance, perhaps an allusion to Paracelsus’ argument that man’s balance is found in tastes (19). Finally, “growing up to godhead” (IX.877) signifies both the magnification of Eve’s intellect and her physical growth, as a child might grow into an adult. Milton does not limit the physiological effects to Eve’s eyes. Exactly 100 lines later, the reader discovers that the fruit not only has not led to death, it also has awakened all of Eve’s senses, and it has produced an overall improvement of the body. It is not enough to say that Eve simply believes that her senses have been awakened. The fact that she can describe new feelings with such accuracy suggests that the fortunate Fall was also physical insomuch as it prepares the body to engage the fallen world. Of course, Eve’s awakened senses also give her false security that she need not concern herself with death, as she tells Adam, Were it I thought death menaced would ensue This my attempt, I would sustain alone The worst, and not persuade thee, rather die Deserted, then oblige thee with a fact Pernicious to thy peace, chiefly assured Remarkably so late of thy so true, So faithful Love unequaled; but I feel

167 Helkiah Crooke distinguishes between the two types of spirits. He gives animal spirits the responsibility of conveying sense experience to the mind (1616: 514-516). In Eve’s case, both her animal and vital spirits dilated. She can physically see better, and she can “see” good and evil, as the vital spirits provide for the higher order functions such as reason (the vital sense).

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Far otherwise the event, not death, but life Augmented, opened eyes, new hopes, new joys, Taste so divine, that what of sweet before Hath touched my sense, flat seems to this, and harsh. On my experience, Adam, freely taste, And fear of death deliver to the winds. (IX.977-89; emphasis added) Because of the fruit and the knowledge it brings, Eve now understands death or how one dies. This is evident in the way she confidently discounts the threat of death for those who partake of the fruit. Milton focuses on a specific bodily experience when he has Eve “feel / Far otherwise the event, not death, but life / Augmented.” The expansion of her senses suggests a greater awareness of her body and how it functions. She feels life, “new hopes, [and] new joys” because of the taste that opened her eyes. The enjambment strengthens the emphasis. Line 984 ends with “life” as the previous line ends with “feel.” Eve feels life, and the reader is forced to pause, even if slightly, and hold that thought. Eve feels alive. Then after the line break the reader completes Eve’s exclamation with “augmented.” Not only does Eve feel alive, she feels more alive because of the fruit. With a greater awareness of the body’s functions, Eve literally feels the physical effects of life, perhaps heartbeats, breaths, and also the blood coursing through her veins. Eve also demonstrates an awareness of how these functions work together with the senses. The taste of the fruit far exceeds the sweetness of anything that has touched her sense. Milton constructs another moment, though brief, where we see the interconnectedness of all the senses. Eve does not say that the fruit tasted sweeter than anything she has ever tasted. She says that it tasted sweeter than any pleasure she has derived from any of the senses. Such awareness can only derive from each sense’s attentiveness to what the other senses experience. Without death, then, and with the seemingly positive physiological effects, Eve sees no reason why Adam cannot enjoy the same life magnified through the senses. Ironically, Eve’s new awareness or this stronger interconnectedness of the senses, which may not have previously existed, makes Eve more vulnerable. In her new state, an injection of venom into her animal spirits through the ear is likely to have an effect similar to the one king Hamlet faced when Claudius poured poison into his ear, but the opposite is also true. An injection of virtue into the ear can counter such venom. Understanding the physiological process Eve goes through helps us to understand what Milton believed about the function of the human body. Eve’s experiences relate directly to how

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Milton would have believed his own body functioned in producing experiences he could recreate through Eve and other characters in Paradise Lost. In that respect, Milton’s poetry itself can be understood, experienced, as the fruit of knowledge that allows us to see, hear, feel, smell, and taste the world the way Milton saw, heard, felt, smelled, and tasted the world. 5.2 Chaos Without Milton, even while blind, can construct full sensory experiences for Eve and other characters and by extension his readers because he understands the way the bodies of his readers (or the way they believe their bodies) produce these experiences. Because Milton can no longer rely on vision, he must work out of darkness or Chaos, which plays a much larger role in Paradise Lost than most readers realize. The general aspect of Chaos exists throughout the poem, and Milton’s descriptions of it lay the foundation for Milton’s chaos within. In the beginning, for Milton, God created the heavens and the earth from the unorganized matter of Chaos, suggesting that even the all-powerful God cannot create something out of nothing. Some of Milton’s influence derives from Ovid’s description of Chaos at the beginning of Metamorphoses: Before the seas and lands had been created, Before the sky that covers everything, Nature displayed a single aspect only Throughout the cosmos; Chaos was its name, A shapeless, unwrought mass of inert bulk And nothing more, with the discordant seeds Of disconnected elements all heaped Together in anarchic disarray. (I.6-13)168 When Ovid declares, “Nature displayed a single aspect only” and that it held the “seed / Of … [all] elements,” we see a literary antecedent for Milton’s monism, which held that everything is matter, made up of the same original substance. Therefore, one can argue that since Chaos gave birth to all matter and everything is matter, Chaos gave birth to everything. For Milton, even spirit is matter, as are the angels in heaven and hell. The heavenly angels and spirit matter are simply more refined. For Milton, even thoughts are matter; therefore, Milton’s poetry becomes a

168 Citations from Ovid’s Metamorphoses come from Charles Martin, trans., Ovid: Metamorphoses, New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. All future citations will be identified parenthetically by book and line numbers.

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creation of more than words on a page but an actual creation, or re-creation, of the world the way he experiences it. Ovid’s Chaos is “a shapeless, unwrought mass of inert bulk.” Martin’s translation is good, but it is important to note that he translates “unwrought mass” from the Latin “indigestus,” which is the root of the Latin word from which English gets “indigestible.” Also, the mass of Chaos is “inert” or “inanimate.” It has no life or motion. The idea that Chaos, a representation of darkness, had no life coincides with the ancient Greek belief that light equated to life. Chaos has a prominent role in Book II, where Satan traverses what Milton later calls “the void and formless infinite” (III.12). Aside from Satan’s flight through it, Chaos appears in numerous references throughout Paradise Lost. These references to Chaos continually remind readers of the literal origins of the world, but they also suggest that the world teeters on the edge of a metaphorical chaos because of the Fall. Milton first mentions Chaos in the beginning of the poem when he speaks of “That Shepherd who first taught the chosen seed / In the beginning how the heavens and earth / Rose out of Chaos” (I.8-10). The way Milton chooses to describe the creation of heaven and earth bypasses the role of God. Milton writes that the heavens and earth rose out of Chaos, as if of their own volition and not because God raised them. Uriel clarifies God’s role in Book III, when describing the creation through his eyes to Satan, who has disguised himself as a “stripling cherub” (III.636): I saw when at his word the formless mass, This world’s material mould, came to a heap: Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined; Till at his second bidding darkness fled, Light shone, and order from disorder sprung[.] (III.708-13) Uriel identifies God’s command as the force that caused the heavens and the earth to rise out of Chaos. John Rogers argues that “the vitalist process of material self-organization is the direct result neither of God’s nor of his vigilant and ongoing manipulation of an inert substance. The process by which ‘order from disorder sprung’ (3.713) was set in motion by an urepeatable originary act that empowered the world’s material to order itself” (114). For Milton matter is vital or self-moving, but notice that nothing happened, nothing was created (organized) until “his [God’s] second bidding.” By light, God began to create (organize) the formless mass of Chaos.

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By light, the heavens and the earth rose out of Chaos, moving as if of their own volition, because God’s light gave them life. So light must represent that “originary act” for which Rogers argues. Augustine, Robert Grosseteste, Paracelsus, and Milton all recognize light as the key to creation. As A.C. Crombie explains, for Grosseteste, “One of the most important functions of lux was to be the intermediary between spirit and matter. It was the instrument by which God produced the macrocosm of the universe, and the instrument by which the soul made contact with the physical body and the things of sense in the microcosm of man” (109 n3). Paracelsus’ had a similar epistemology of light, where light from without gives us knowledge of nature, while light from within gives us knowledge of God. For Paracelsus, human thought functions as the uncreated light, which comes from God, the source of all light, by which God created all things out of Chaos. Galen’s own cognitive physiology was the result of the heat produced during digestion. Galen understood that the body produced the vital pneuma through the heat of digestion, so he and Paracelsus are not too far apart on the end results even if they take different routes to get there. Uriel identifies that “this world’s material mould” (III.709) came out of Chaos. This phrase is a direct interjection of Milton’s monism. Not only is everything matter, but God created it from the same matter, what alchemists called the prima materia. Milton seems to subscribe to ancient philosophies, here: Anaxagoras argued that in everything lies the form (or substance) of everything, and Ovid wrote that Chaos held the seeds of everything. Milton also reveals the influence of the Roman Epicurean poet Lucretius. Lucretius avoids the Greek-loan word “atom” when describing the particles that make up the objects (bodies) of the universe. He prefers premordium rerum (“first or beginnings of things”) or “seeds.” Perhaps most interesting is his use of “matter,” from the Latin materies, derived from mater (“mother”). The combinations of these seeds beget the complex structures that make up all phenomenal beings (see especially De Rerun Natura I.483-684). And light acts as the catalyst. This is why alchemists played with fire, and this is the result of Paracelsus’ chemistry by fire. Light creates. It stands to reason, then, that light, even the heat it produces, can also re-create. Therefore, without light, the world and even life do not exist. A few lines later in the opening invocation of Paradise Lost, Milton gives Chaos a more in-depth treatment when he identifies the spirit’s involvement in organizing Chaos: thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread,

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Dovelike satst brooding on the vast abyss And mad’st it pregnant[.] (I.19-22) Calling chaos a “vast abyss” offers no concrete image for the reader. An abyss denotes an incomprehensible void, dark and formless. Also, when Milton suggests the spirit, like a dove, sat brooding on Chaos, he gives it a shape, since “to brood” means “to sit on (eggs) so as to hatch them” (OED I. 1). Many ancient poets and philosophers viewed Chaos as an egg. Milton juxtaposes contradictory ideas: a formless Chaos that also has the shape of an egg on which the Spirit of God sat, brooding. Milton’s Chaos without, which God impregnated with wisdom and power, hatches into the universe. Chaos has no form, and Milton also calls it “the void and formless infinite” (III.12; emphasis added). If the universe is infinite, then the material from which God created it is infinite. As for void, the OED cites one of Milton’s uses (see PL, II.829) of it (as Chaos) as “The empty expanse of space” (B. 4a). Calling Chaos void, then, creates another contradiction. What hatches out of Chaos if it is empty space? Also, during Satan’s flight through Chaos in Book II, he clearly works his way through substance, what Milton believed was simply unorganized matter. Chaos cannot be empty, yet Milton calls it void. Uriel’s description of how God organized Chaos clarifies this seemingly contradictory statement: “Till at his second bidding darkness fled, / Light shone, and order from disorder sprung” (III.708-13). Chaos remained unorganized until “darkness fled / [and] Light shone.” Milton makes Chaos formless and void of light. Later, in Book III, Milton identifies the specifics of that light when his persona recalls to the holy light his own flight (by verse) through Chaos after relating the tale of Satan and his fallen followers. It is that light that was before the heavens and at the voice Of God, as with a mantle didst invest The rising world of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless infinite. Thee I revisit now with bolder wing, Escaped the Stygian pool, though long detained In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight Through utter and through middle darkness borne,

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With other notes than to the Orphean lyre I sung of Chaos and eternal Night[.] (III.9-18) Before Uriel’s view of the creation, Milton shows the power of light in that creation, as light invested “the rising world with waters.” Milton contrasts that light with the darkness the persona himself has fled both in hell and in Chaos. In the ancient Greek world, Chaos became synonymous with Erebus, darkness, an offspring of Chaos personified as an ancient deity— something Milton would have known. He refers to Chaos simply as darkness in several places, but here Milton’s persona refers to Chaos as “middle darkness” in order to separate it from the “utter … darkness” that is hell. Milton not only calls hell utter darkness, but in a well-placed chiasmus he renames “utter and middle darkness” as “Chaos and eternal Night.”169 The capitalization of Night personifies it—perhaps evidence that Milton associated it with Erebus.170 While Chaos and Night share similarities (the latter the offspring of the former), in hell, the reader finds “no light, but rather darkness visible” (I.63). Nothing exists but darkness. Not even the holy or celestial light shines there. It is void of physical light, where flames only give off darkness, and it is void of the spirit of God and, therefore, void of God’s light. Milton creates a hell where light cannot exist without or within. On his flight from utter darkness, Milton’s Satan traverses middle darkness, a place perhaps void of physical light, but it is a place God’s light can penetrate. Hence, Milton refers to it as “middle darkness,” out of which God created the universe with his light. Void of physical light, the unorganized matter of Milton’s Chaos produces unorganized sensory experiences. Milton identifies the senses with matter; in other words, the senses produce a real, tangible bodily experience. Therefore, Milton’s commentary on atomic effluence171 also reads as unorganized bodily experience from which God created the proper form and function of the senses. When Satan traverses chaos, what he senses does not produce a coherent affect: so eagerly the fiend

169 John Leonard also argues that, for Milton, Chaos and Night are two separate entities and not the same thing. See his “Milton, Lucretius, and ‘the Void Profound of Unessential Night,’” in Living Texts: Interpreting Milton, ed. Kristin A. Pruitt and Charles W. Durham, Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2000, pp. 198- 217. 170 “Erebus was known as the embodiment of primordial darkness, the son of Chaos (who was the void from which all things developed, known also as Darkness).” See “Erebus,” Encyclopedia Mythica, 2011, Encyclopedia Mythica Online, 17 Jan. 2011 . It is important to note, too, that Milton refers to hell as Erebus in the opening Latin poem of Paradise Lost. 171 See Chapter One, pp. 48-49.

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O’er bog or steep, through straight, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way, And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies: At length a universal hubbub wild Of stunning sounds and voices all confused Borne through the hollow dark assaults his ear With loudest vehemence. (II.947-54) John Rogers finds the “violent, atomistic account of chaos” here “at odds” with “Uriel’s account of creation in Book Three” and “the hierarchical vision, relayed by Raphael in Books Five and Seven of the poem, of a scale of nature that situates rarified over gross matter” (129). Marjara, on the other hand, reminds readers that “Milton does not rule out the possibility that God, ‘th’ Almighty Maker,’ might ‘ordain’ the chaotic matter as ‘His dark materials to create more worlds’ (II.915-16)” (97). Incoherent material remains, and Milton uses this brief description of gross matter to show the lack of a coherent hierarchical progression of the senses and in order “to make the confusion of Chaos concrete to the imagination” (97). The “concrete” and tangible gross matter of Chaos cannot produce uniquely identifiable or viable sensory experiences until someone organizes it into matter that can produce those effects. 5.3 Chaos Within 5.3.1 Physiological Just as Chaos, by God’s light, can organize material and give life, the body, when it digests food, purges and reorganizes matter into useable substances for the body and gives it life. In her “‘Knowledge is as food’: Food, Digestion, and Illness in Milton’s Paradise Lost,” Darlene Farabee notes that “Raphael offers a view of cosmic digestion and production when he uses digestive terms to describe God producing the world” (156). In fact, Raphael’s description of God creating the world from Chaos mimics the body’s own digestive process as far as Milton would have understood it. Although, Paracelsus would say that the body mimics the creative process: Thus God the heaven created, thus the earth, Matter unformed and void: darkness profound Covered the abyss: but on the watery calm His brooding wings the spirit of God outspread,

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And vital virtue infused, and vital warmth Throughout the fluid mass, but downward purged The black tartareous cold infernal dregs Adverse to life: then founded, then conglobed Like things to like, the rest to several place Disparted, and between spun out the air, And earth self-balanced on her center hung. (VII.232-42) In Raphael’s description Milton revisits previous descriptions of Chaos as “unformed and void” and as “darkness.” The frequency of these descriptors speaks to their importance, as I discuss their parallels to the chaos within. After the repeated general description of Chaos, Raphael revisits the image of God’s spirit as a dove impregnating and hatching Chaos into a creation but with a new element, fluid, which is the first step to Raphael’s description of the creation as a distinct physiological process. The spirit of God “infused” the “fluid mass” with “vital virtue” and “vital warmth.” The vital virtue represents the vital spirits that give life and function to the mind and body. Remember, for many physicians in Milton’s day, the body created the spirits through digesting food and through aspiration. When the body digested food, it purged it and refined it into the spirit-like substance that provided life to the senses, the brain, and the body as a whole. Also, the addition of the fluid mass mimics the fluid of the stomach, which together with God’s “vital virtue … and vital warmth” purged the darkness. Considering that Milton likens Chaos to an egg, which God impregnates with the power of life, we cannot ignore the sexual implications. The process of sexual reproduction, which creates life out of heat and fluid, also mimics the creation out of Chaos. In the end of Raphael’s description, earth is balanced. Raphael’s description connects man with the universe. As Paracelsus explained, “what is outside is also inside (the outer and inner are one thing)” (21). Therefore, bodily digestion and sexual reproduction, which both create life, are similar microcosms of God’s creation of the universe out of Chaos. And in the case of digestion, creation becomes a never-ending cycle of reorganizing matter, which the body can also convert to thoughts. Milton sets up Raphael’s explanation of the physiological process of creation earlier in Raphael’s visit when Adam asks the Angel to join him and Eve for repast. Adam fears that Raphael may find the food “unsavoury” because of his “spiritual nature” though one celestial Father gives to all.

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To whom the Angel. Therefore what he gives (Whose praise be ever sung) to man in part Spiritual, may of purest Spirits be found No ingrateful food: and food alike those pure Intelligential substances require As doth your rational[.] (V.401-09) Because even spirit is matter, angels can and need to eat in order to function, as Raphael explains a few lines later: “For know, whatever was created, needs / To be sustained and fed” (V.414-15). Raphael further explains the process whereby food sustains bodily functions, while he also explains more specifically who or what needs nourishment: and both [men and angels] contain Within them every lower faculty Of sense, whereby they hear, see, smell, touch, taste, Tasting concoct, digest, assimilate, And corporeal to incorporeal turn. (V.409-13) Raphael identifies the physical senses as lower faculties in contrast with the angel as a “pure intelligential” being and man as a “rational” being. However, the senses provide for or nourish the greater faculties, while taste, by nature of its role in digestion, is “nurse and feeder of the other four” senses as well as the body and mind in general (Shakespeare Venus and Adonis 446).172 Interestingly, Milton cites hearing before sight, a departure from the more common hierarchy of the senses that placed sight first. This is not a mistake. First, the blind Milton may not wish to believe that he cannot now rely on hearing as a more perfect receptacle for knowledge and guidance, and this is exactly how Raphael imparts counsel to Adam now and how Michael delivers the final portions of his counsel and visions in Book XII. Also, the reader will not have forgotten the controversy of the event immediately preceding Raphael’s visit, no more than a few hundred lines earlier: Satan squat like a toad, perhaps poisoning the objects of Eve’s fancy. Book V opens with Eve revealing the resulting dream to Adam. Milton’s readers remember that one can still reach all the other senses through the ear. “Concoct” is an important word because of its use in alchemy. Literally meaning “to cook,” to concoct was “to bring (metals, minerals, etc.) to their perfect or mature state by heat”

172 See the discussions of this in Chapter Four, pp. 108, 113-114, and 123.

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(OED 2a). The heat purified the food in the course of digestion and aided in its transformation from corporeal to incorporeal, the vital virtue, which fed the senses whereby the process started over again. Paracelsus’ chemistry by fire within the body represents the chemistry by fire through which God created the universe. That man is a microcosm of the universe continues through Raphael’s description of the interconnected elements: of elements The grosser feeds the purer, earth the sea, Earth and the sea feed air, the air those fires Ethereal, and as lowest first the moon; Whence in her visage round those spots, unpurged Vapours not yet into her substance turned. Nor doth the moon no nourishment exhale From her moist continent to higher orbs. (V.415-22) The interconnected elements equate directly to the interconnected senses of the human body. In fact, the ancient Greeks viewed the senses in terms of the elements. Their belief that the eye held fire is one example of that. The ear, even as late as the seventeenth century remained synonymous with air in that it housed pure air. By touch (earth) humans feed themselves and by taste and inspiration (water) nourish the higher two senses. As Raphael continues his description, the interconnectedness of the elements leads into a continuous cycle of creation that begins and ends with the sun: The sun that light imparts to all, receives From all his alimental recompense In humid exhalations, and at even Sups with the ocean: though in heaven the trees Of life ambrosial frutage bear, and vines Yield nectar, though from off the boughs each morn We brush mellifluous dews, and find the ground Covered with pearly grain: yet God hath here Varied his bounty so with new delights, As may compare with heaven; and to taste

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Think not I shall be nice. (V.423-33) Because the sun gives light to all, it represents the physical manifestation of God’s own life- giving light, and when combined with the other elements, namely the ocean, it participates in continual creation. So the sun gives light and, therefore, life to all, which give life to the sun in return. For Harinder Singh Marjara, the sun supping with the ocean “is a metaphor that fits admirably into Milton’s universe. It indicates clearly that in Paradise Lost, Milton has adopted a model of the universe in which the sun is not isolated from the lower elements, but is engaged in a continuous process of give and take.” Monism, then, allows “natural processes in Milton’s universe [to] possess the characteristic of continuity, and … the higher levels of the universe are subject to the same processes of change as the lower, assumptions that strike at the root of Aristotelian dualism” (74). So the continual cycle of give-and-take provides for an earth that produces food as good or possibly better (at least in variety) than heavenly food. The bodies of man and angel then participate in this give-and-take process of creation: So down they sat, And to their viands fell, nor seemingly The angel, nor in mist, the common gloss Of theologians, but with keen dispatch Of real hunger, and concoctive heat To transubstantiate; what redounds, transpires Through spirits with ease; nor wonder; if by fire Of sooty coal the empiric alchemist Can turn, or holds it possible to turn Metals of drossiest ore to perfect gold As from the mine. (V.433-43) Raphael sat down to eat possessed of “real hunger.” Real hunger is a physiological reaction to the body’s need. It is not the desire one can associate with simple appetite. The body’s physiological reaction then produces heat whereby the food that the body ingests “is transformed to spirit by ordinary digestive processes” (Fowler 309 n434-8). Upon consumption, the food comes together in the stomach in an indigestible or “unwrought mass of inert bulk” (Ovid I.10) out of which the body creates the substance that gives it life and cognition. Milton again compares the digestive process to alchemical processes that turn metals into gold. All forms of

147 creation, by conversion of matter, involve chemistry by fire. In the body, that conversion of matter produces a refined substance that awakens all the faculties, from the senses to reason, as evidenced by the food’s effect on Adam. Shortly after eating, “sudden mind arose / In Adam” (see 451-60). This is the physiological foundation for Milton’s chaos within, a collection of sensations he experienced within the body without visual references. 5.3.2 Spiritual (Metaphysical) In the opening of Paradise Lost, Milton’s persona asks the heavenly muse to sing of “man’s first disobedience” (I.1). He then asks of the spirit, “what in me is dark / Illumine” (I.22- 23). Milton establishes in his persona a new trend. While the blind persona will later lament physical blindness, especially in the invocation to Book III, Milton launches his epic concerned with blindness within rather than blindness without. While inward blindness can also be physiological, Milton has clearly abandoned his physiological concerns for spiritual concerns, here. Milton’s persona wishes to sing of things one cannot see or generally experience without (outside of the body). Because the absence of light is darkness (or blindness) while the absence of darkness is light (or sight), if the spirit illumines what is dark, the persona can see, and thereby create. “What is dark in me” is a poetic representation of Milton’s metaphysical chaos within. Milton’s chaos within has the same characteristics as his Chaos without. Milton presents the Chaos without as a “void and formless infinite” (PL III.12). As darkness (void of light), Chaos also symbolizes physical blindness. But because God’s light can shine into Chaos, give it life, and create from it, Milton calls it “middle darkness” as opposed to “utter … darkness” or “eternal night,” where neither physical light nor God’s light shines. Milton also represents the chaos within as void and formless. First, by nature of blindness, Milton’s world is darkness, void of physical light. So it is for Milton’s blind persona. Second, lacking physical sight, the blind Milton lacks the ability to engage in a full sensory experience. For example, a table has form for someone who sees it and feels it, but the blind Milton can only feel it. At Milton’s initial touch, the table feels like any wooden object. Not until Milton can feel every aspect of the table can he begin to construct an image, which he still cannot physically see. The image of the table within shares a commonality with the image of the table without, or the image created by sight. Both images are, as Thomas Hobbes would say, “accidents or qualities our senses make us think there be in the world … but are seemings and apparitions only” (The Elements of Law and Natural Politic 3-4). Hobbes does not differentiate between the senses. All of them produce “seemings

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… only.” So Milton’s touch, anything he thinks he feels, like the table, is also a seeming only, and so it is with all of Milton’s sensory experiences: they produce only unorganized images (matter). Without a complete repertoire of all the senses, Milton’s world is formless. Only the light of creation (the light of God) can illumine the Chaos without and bring about the creation of the universe. Likewise, only the light of creation can illumine the chaos within and allow the persona, and by proxy the poet, to create his own poetic world by organizing his incomplete sensory experiences. Therefore, when the persona pleads with the celestial light: “the mind through all her powers / Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence / Purge and disperse” (III.52-54), he wills it to shine in all aspects of his mind and burn off the mists of darkness that he may see, and by that seeing, or more specifically by the light that illuminates his middle darkness the blind poet creates. This celestial light combines with the physiological process whereby digested food (by the inner heat [light]) and inspired air quicken the senses and infuse the mind with vital spirits. Therefore, a “sudden mind” can arise in the poet. 5.4 As Milton’s World Seems The chaos within that Milton organizes into Paradise Lost creates affect in readers by playing with the physiological process of the body, including the interconnectedness of the senses. The text shows that this is possible by the spirit’s illumination of the mind and the body’s chemistry by fire, which produces the material that physically sustains the mind. Seeing and telling “of things invisible to mortal sight” (III.55) includes seeing within the body and connecting one’s sensory experiences with those of others. Milton makes this possible by following a theory of sensation that resembles Thomas Hobbes’s; however, because Milton’s monism is fundamentally different from Hobbes’s, Milton believes that through his poetry he can give readers the same sensory experiences. In other words, everyone experiences the same “seeming.” Milton believes this is possible because all matter is vital: it has independent life and moves of its own volition. Hobbes’s matter is inert and can only move when acted upon. This is the foundation for Hobbes’s theory of sensation, and he demonstrates this when he further explains the way sensations produce “seemings … only”: “The cause of Sense, is the Externall Body, or Object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense, either immediatly, as in the Tast and Touch; or mediately, as in Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling” (Leviathan 3). That pressure is

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caused by light, which, for Hobbes, is matter in motion, which collides with other matter to set it in motion, and so on. The pressure it places on the eye, for example, continues inwards to the Brain, and Heart, causeth there a resistance, or counter-pressure, or endeavour of the heart, to deliver it self: which endeavor because Outward, seemeth to be some matter without. And this seeming, or fancy, is that which men call Sense; and consisteth, as to the Eye, in a Light, or Colour figured; To the Eare, in a Sound [etc.] … But their apparence to us is Fancy, the same waking, that dreaming. And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the Eye, makes us fancy a light; and pressing the Eare, produceth a dinne; so do the bodies also we see, or hear, produce the same by their strong, though unobserved action. For if those Colours, and Sounds, were in the Bodies, or Objects that cause them, they could not bee severed from them, as by glasses, and in Ecchoes by reflection, wee see they are; where we know the thing we see, is in one place; the apparence, in another. (3-4) Hobbes’s violent, random collision of matter is the reason he believes everyone experiences the world differently and can only make sense out of those different sensory experiences through language, an artificial consensus of words. But words, for Milton, can produce concrete images with the proper affect. For Hobbes, the language by artificial consensus that humans use to describe an object is not the object, but for Milton, by nature of the senses, that language can produce the same “pressing, rubbing, or striking the Eye … and pressing the Eare.” And this is how Milton creates affect in his readers. His poetics, the structure of Paradise Lost and the organization of the words he uses, reproduce sensory experiences for the reader. Milton shows throughout the poem that seeing and hearing remain the most important senses for acquiring knowledge and also for corruption. Milton makes this evident in Eve’s encounter with the serpent, where sounds and sights deceive Eve. Milton also makes this evident in the end of Paradise Lost when Adam first sees visions of the great world to come and then hears Michael relate the rest of the tale.173 Even Satan relies on sounds and sights as he sizes up “his prey, and unespied / To mark what of their state he more might learn / By word or action marked,” and

173 We can consider this a thematic chiasmus, where Satan first attacks Eve through the ear, and then through her eyes. Then Michael sets Adam back on the right path through visions and then through words (sounds).

150 then when Adam spoke, Satan “turned him all ear to hear new utterance flow” (IV.399-401, 410). 5.4.1 Seemings of Sight Sight plays an important role in Milton’s poetry, but after he goes blind, the creation of the same visual detail must have proven difficult. We see evidence of this in Milton’s extensive use of epic similes (though a typical convention of epics), especially similes Milton introduces with a form of the verb “to seem.” By my own count, Paradise Lost has no fewer than 94 uses of the verb “to seem” directly related to seeing. Interestingly, Book XII has no instances of the verb. This suggests that Milton meant to make Book XII as strictly accessible to his readers as he makes Michael’s discourse to Adam. There are no more visual elements for Adam, whose mortal sight Michael “perceives … to fail” (XII.8-9), so Milton limits the visual element for his reader. If all visions are “seemings … only” then Milton should face less difficulty employing visual details. However, as a blind poet, Milton’s points of reference are limited, even when creating from the chaos within. We find an example of this in Book III, where Milton makes another allusion to Galileo. During the last leg of Satan’s flight to earth he lands on the sun: There lands the fiend, a spot like which perhaps Astronomer in the sun’s lucent orb Through his glazed optic tube yet never saw. (III.588-90; emphasis added) Galileo observed sunspots on the sun when he looked at it through his telescope in 1613. Notice especially the phrase “like which perhaps.” Before this description goes anywhere, Milton has cut its legs off, given it no concrete foundation, no concrete image. It is easy to argue that Milton discredits scientific discoveries and the instruments by which they are made. Marjorie Nicolson seems to misread the passage when she says that “the Garden of Eden” was the spot (“Milton and the Telescope” 11). Milton’s syntax is often tricky, but “the fiend” reads as the clear antecedent of the epithet “spot.” Amy Boesky considers some of the common readings for Milton’s use of Galileo in Paradise Lost: “As a symbol … of augmented vision in the poem, Galileo can be read as a human counterpart to the archangel Raphael, a seer whose vision points beyond the bars of mortal knowledge to things divine. Conversely, Galileo may be seen as subtly satanic in the epic, connected to ‘the conflict of vision, sight, appearance, illusion and

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belief [that] is the key to the fall of man’” (23).174 The latter argument also points out that two of the three allusions to Galileo involve a description of Satan (see I.288-91). While one can wrest Milton’s words and argue that these astronomers never saw anything on the sun, Milton’s awkward syntax provides at least two other scenarios. First, the said astronomers never saw the spot Satan created when he landed on the sun. In other words, as Fowler suggests, the phrase simply means that “no astronomer has seen comparable signs of corruption” (204 n588-90). Second, Milton probably “never saw,” which is why he chooses his words so carefully: “like which perhaps.” For Boesky, Milton means this phrase to challenge “the reader [who] is asked to call up this image” (24). Stanley Fish argues that “The implication is personal; the similes and many other effects say to the reader: ‘I know you rely on your senses for your apprehension of reality, but they are unreliable and hopelessly limited” (28). Likewise, Milton’s sight is limited. He has likely only heard of this phenomenon, perhaps even read about it in Galileo’s works, “yet never saw” and can never hope to see.175 This allows the blind Milton to build a bridge between himself as a blind poet and his visually capable readers, most of whom likely “never saw” either. Despite his lack of sight, Milton maintains a level of credibility with his readers, most of whom can only say “like which perhaps,” because they too must rely wholly on another man’s account of this phenomenon. Also, neither Milton nor his readers saw Satan land on the sun. Milton describes an indescribable phenomenon with an indescribable phenomenon. Galileo demonstrates the indescribability of sun spots in his Letters on Sunspots: “Let them be vapors or exhalations then, or clouds, or fumes sent out from the sun’s globe or attracted there from other places; I do not decide on this—and they may be any of a thousand other things not perceived by us” (100). Perhaps that is what it looked like, but since “we” have not seen either instance (Milton or his general readership), or at best, since no one can describe the instance to which Milton has compared it, we cannot say with certainty that Satan landing on the sun looked like a sunspot. Most of Milton’s visual detail possesses qualifications like the ones above. Milton also describes how some scenes would have played out had someone not stepped in to stop them. For

174 Boesky’s quote comes from Judith Scherer Herz, “‘For whom this glorious sight?’: Dante, Milton, and the Galileo Question,” in Milton in Italy: Contexts, Images, and Contradictions, ed. Mario A. Di Cesare (Binghamton, 1991), 147-57. 175 It is not known whether Milton ever viewed the heavens through a telescope even though in Areopagitica he talks about making a visit to Galileo.

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example, Milton describes in limited detail what would have ensued in the battle between Satan and Death and then between Satan and Gabriel. What is most interesting about these examples is that Milton chooses to describe them in terms of sound. If Sin had not stopped Satan and Death from battle, “great deeds / Had been achieved, whereof all hell had rung” (II.722-23). The OED provides extensive definitions of the transitive and intransitive verb “to ring.” All of the instances relate to the senses, and many denote variations of ringing in the ear. The OED cites two specific instances in Milton’s later works (one from Paradise Lost [II.495], and one from Samson Agonistes [1449]) for the following definition “of a place,” which also fits the context of “all hell had rung”: “to be filled with a loud or resonant sound or noise; to resound, re-echo” (3. a. intr.). However, since the verb evokes the sense of hearing, the reader cannot ignore bodily effect: “Chiefly of the ears or the head: to be affected with a humming or buzzing noise, often as an after-effect of a blow or loud noise; to be filled with a noise” (12. intr.). The “great deeds” performed by bodies wielding weapons will produce affect in hell and all its inhabitants. The use of “rung” creates an especially unique bodily experience, one that literally resonates, “resounds,” echoes, or lingers. Such a sensory experience is necessary for the inhabitants of hell, who, living in “darkness visible,” cannot experience “great deeds” another way. Milton expands the sound detail later when between Satan and Gabriel dreadful deeds Might have ensued, nor only Paradise In this commotion, but the starry cope Of heaven perhaps, or all the elements At least had gone to wreck, disturbed and torn With violence of this conflict[.] (IV.990-995) Not contained by the darkness of hell, the sound from this conflict has the potential to affect all the elements, and, therefore, all the bodies in the universe. In the above passages, Milton demonstrates a preference for hearing when it comes to producing affect, and as a more reliable stick to measure events in Paradise Lost. Often the reader sees the world through the eyes of Milton’s blind persona or through a fallen angel. Neither character can provide a credible account of the events in Paradise Lost because each one has either a physical or a spiritual visual limitation. 5.4.2 Seemings of Sound

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Michael’s discourse to Adam in Book XII reminds readers that Milton understands the importance of hearing, especially in his blindness, and that he also understands the role the ear plays in the connection of all the senses. Just as Satan, “squat like a toad” could inspire “venom, [that] he might taint / The animal spirits that from pure blood arise” (IV.804-05) and affect the organs of Eve’s fancy through the ear, Milton could inspire an antidote through discourse that enters through the ear and purifies the animal spirits and provides the organs of fancy with incorruptible sensory images. Therefore, when Michael tells Adam, “I perceive / Thy mortal sight to fail” because “objects divine … impair and weary human sense” (XII.8-10) Milton takes a turn inward, from physical vision to the hearing of the word. Milton places great importance in the power of hearing the word of poetry and reminds readers early on that he means for them to read Paradise Lost out loud. After Milton’s persona identifies himself with great blind poets and seers of the past (“Blind Thamyris and blind Maeonides / And Tiresias and Phineus prophets old” [III.35-6]), he discusses the importance of the sound of their words as they relate to his own: Then feed on thoughts, that voluntary move Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid Tunes her nocturnal note[.] (III.37-40) In his Republic Plato tells readers that Thamyris’ soul passed into a nightingale, which is the wakeful bird Milton sings of, a bird that Milton now models his blind persona after because it sings darkling (“in the dark”). In darkness the persona and Milton also sing. Milton’s “harmonious numbers” indicate a preference for sounds over visions, hearing over seeing in poetry. It references, in conjunction with the song of the wakeful bird (the poet), rhythm and meter. Interestingly, William Kerrigan points out the passing reference to digestive physiology (235). If we “feed on thoughts,” then we must also digest them. Jesus suggests that we can digest the thoughts (or words) of God when he tells Satan that “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4), so, too, readers can literally digest Milton’s words or the sounds of his poetry into coherent bodily experiences. The sounds of Milton’s poetry, then, start to take over the meaning. It is the hearing of the word, his word, inspired by the heavenly muse that takes precedent by the end of the poem when Adam’s “mortal sight … fail[s]” (XII.8-9).

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Though he doesn’t devote any of his study to Milton’s work, Bruce R. Smith’s The Acoustic World of Early Modern England lends insight to the importance of the sounds found in the work of some of Milton’s predecessor’s as well as the sounds Renaissance men and women heard in their daily lives. Smith goes even further when he addresses the physiological process that Renaissance men and women believed produced sounds and the ability to hear them. In Chapter Four, “Re: Membering,” Smith locates seeing and voicing, the sound with which poetry is most concerned: Torso, neck, head: speaking engages three of the body’s major members. … Seeing, by contrast, engages only the neck and the head. In that respect, seeing is more readily locatable in the body than voicing is, just as the objects it attends to are more locatable in space than sounds are. Vision involves the projection of an inverted image on the retina inside my eye, but I experience that image as ‘out there’—and right side up. Voicing, on the other hand, is both ‘out there’ and ‘in here’: when I speak the sound waves reverberate through my body as well as in the air around me. (98) For sight, the neck holds the head, which holds the eyes, which receive the image that the retina captures. Milton likely would have known something about Kepler’s theory of the retinal image through the course of his own study of how to recover his sight. From the retina, the animal spirits carry the image to the brain for processing. Seeing, despite its complex history that includes numerous theories about how people actually see an object, became one of the easiest physiological processes to understand. But because it is “out there” or a representation of what is “out there,” Milton cannot hope to reach reader’s other organs of fancy with strict visual imagery. However, voice is both “out there” and “in here,” so it engages the body in a fuller physiological process. When we read Milton’s poetry out loud, the sounds we feel make us more aware of some of the most powerfully poetic lines in Milton’s Paradise Lost. When Milton describes the stirring satanic horde in Book I, he gives the words life through sound: Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air, Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees In spring time when the sun with Taurus rides[.] (I.767-9)

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The sounds of hissing and rustling wings permeate this passage when read aloud. “Not all sounds are located in the body in the same place” (Smith 98). For example, the breath-heavy “h” and “s” sounds in the lines above are made from the throat to the front of the mouth, but they come from deeper inside the body with the hard hitting “b” and “d” and the resonating “w,” “th,” and “r” sounds. This undulation of sound that begins deep inside the chest (lungs) and passes through the mouth, where the tongue meets the teeth to make the “s” sound, combines with the meter to mimic the undulating wings of the thick swarm. “What early modern writers have to say about voice confirms … bodily experiences of sound, but when writers attempt to explain the phenomena they do so in physical, physiological, and psychological terms quite specific to their own time and place” (Smith 98). Smith cites various sources on the physiological production of voice, but we are only interested in the organization of Milton’s chaos within into affect without (the poet but within his readers). First, “voice is caused by the soul” (100). Therefore, the air that strikes the windpipe “must have soul in it” (98). In addition to expelling air, voice needs heat, which also determined the volume. Levinus Lemnius addresses this issue of voice in The Touchstone of Complexions and draws on medical opinion that Smith says “goes back to Galen” (100): “The thing that maketh the voyce bigge, is partlye the wydenes of the breast and vocall Artery, and partly the inwarde or internall heate, from whence proceedeth the earnest affections, vehemente motions, and feruent desyers of the mynde” (Lemnius 45). Lemnius confirms that internal heat produces the physical and psychological functions of the body. Hence, sound beginning deep in the body, like that of the thick swarm, results from the same heat that causes all the functions of the body beginning with digestion. This is the physiological creation of Milton’s poetry. The above lines produce a bodily experience that begins with the heat of creation in the unorganized darkness of the body and are manifested through feeling and voicing, which organizes sounds into coherent words. These sounds also aid in Milton’s visual description of bees in the lines that follow. Sound stimulates the visual faculty. The nature of Milton’s physiological poetic creation allows the visually impaired to experience the same affect. Francis Bacon claimed that “sounds have more direct access to the spirits within” (Smith 103). “The Cause is, for that the Sense of Hearing striketh the Spirits more immediatly, than the other Senses; And more incorporeally than the Smelling: For the Sight, Taste, and Feeling, haue their Organs, not of so present and immediate Accesse to the

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Spirits, as the Hearing hath” (Sylva Sylvarum 38; no. 114). Smith identifies several explanations about how waves of air striking air “communicated with the soul” (103). The most interesting theory takes us back to the “pure air” within the ear, which Aristotle and Galen both believed was trapped inside the body while still in the womb. “The powers Bacon attributes to sound have to do with solidly material causes. … [so] sounds are more physically assaultive than visually perceived objects” (Smith 105). Bacon concludes that “Obiects of the Eare, doe affect the Spirits (immediately) most with Pleasure and Offence” (Sylva 177; nos. 699-700). Therefore Satan, squat like a toad, can whisper venom into Eve’s ear, but Milton can sing (through poetry) the antidote. Bacon conducts experiments to reveal that “the Species of Audibles seeme to Participate more with Locall Motion, like Percussions or Impressions made vpon the Aire. So that whereas all Bodies doe seeme to worke in two manners; Either by the Communication of their Natures; Or by the Impressions and Signatures of their Motions” (70; no. 268). In the end of Milton’s inner physiological and spiritual creative process, what he experienced comes to life through his poetry. If voice contains soul, then soul is the material involved in the “Percussions or Impressions made vpon the Aire,” which eventually make their way into the “pure air” inside the ear and connect with the spirits or soul of the other body. In other words, Milton’s soul speaks directly to his reader’s souls via his poetry.176 Therefore, voicing and listening can produce the same effect with the same affect, and even the blind have the same bodily experience when reading (listening to) Milton’s poetry. Because all sounds are “seemings … only,” and because the soul in voice comes from the “one first matter” (V.472) from which God “created all” (V.471), every reader can have a literal bodily experience within. Although it seems that Milton gives up on seeing in poetic creation, that is not the case. The ability to see remains the final cause of Milton’s creative process. As Joseph Wittreich explains in his Visionary Poetics, prophecy “may be extended to the prophet in the form of a vision, but to be comprehensible, it must then be translated into pictures and words; it must make its entry through the eye and the ear before the mind can be set in motion—before understanding can commence” (189). This is certainly Milton’s pattern for Paradise Lost, as Wittreich suggests: “the point is handsomely reinforced as we turn from Book XI into Book XII and thus move, it is said, from vision to narration” (189). However, Wittreich does not identify Milton’s

176 We can see the reading of Milton’s poetry, then, as a way of illumination by proxy. We create the same bodily experiences within as we read Paradise Lost.

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blindness as the catalyst for this shift. Considering the auditory nature of Paradise Lost, how Milton’s organized sights within lead to sounds without that translate into sights within for the reader (as is the case with the sound of the satanic horde in Book I), we can only understand this shift in terms of Milton’s blindness. While Michael narrates the visions he sees, he yet “forces Adam to rely again on his eyes, to take in the vision for himself: ‘each place behold / In prospect, as I point them … See where is flows’ (XII.142-43, 158; my italics)” (Wittreich 189). However, Adam does not literally look and behold these visions. Wittreich comes close but ultimately misses what is at stake here. While Adam does not actually behold the visions Michael points out, Michael’s narration, nevertheless, allows Adam to see177: “I find / Mine eyes true opening … now I see” (XII.273-74, 276). This is similar to the effect Milton creates with the sounds of the “hiss of rustling wings” (I.768) of Satan and his followers. Adam learns to see by hearing. When he hears Michael’s narration, he sees what Michael saw. So it is that by hearing Milton’s poetry, readers can see what Milton saw.

177 Not in the Platonic sense, but in a bodily experience, that is, physically seeing through sounds.

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CONCLUSION ON TO SAMSON AGONISTES

Though we can never hope to experience the world the same way Milton experienced it, especially after he lost his sight, I have shown that through careful research and analysis, we can reconstruct that world. We experience the world today the same way Milton experienced his world, through the senses. We only need to understand Milton’s understanding of the body and how it functioned. Milton clearly familiarized himself with a long tradition of medical and philosophical theories of vision as well as the long history of the treatment of blindness as far as he knew it. As a blind poet, Milton could not separate himself from that knowledge. It became a part of him and his poetry. It influenced the way he approached natural and experimental philosophy, and it ultimately influenced the way he created poetry. Milton’s approach to blindness in his literature is, at best, ambivalent. As a literary trope, Milton almost simultaneously laments and praises blindness and the insight it makes possible. While blindness provides the opportunity to look within and for introspection and closer access to God, it also limits one physically, intellectually, and creatively. Without light, the blind man or woman cannot see. Without light, the blind poet cannot create. We cannot come to any definite conclusion about the way Milton viewed his blindness, but it is clear that he struggled to reconcile how he viewed it as a poet and how he viewed it as a Christian. While Milton clearly had aspirations to write about things that are invisible to mortal sight, he was every bit as concerned with still seeing the physical world, even if it meant creating his own. The theories of vision familiar to Milton, especially the theories of Rene Descartes and Thomas Hobbes, demonstrate that the world around us, what we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste is a product of our own creation. Milton’s poetic creations are the result of his experiences and how he shares those experiences with his readers through language. Milton’s creation of the world, like everyone else’s, depends solely on the senses and the language used to describe them. Milton’s representations of blindness show a poet who feared that the loss of one sense constitutes enough of a disability to render one useless and rob that man or woman of the ability to acquire knowledge. However, Milton shows through his poetry that the interconnectedness of

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the senses can compensate. As hearing can help us see, so the other senses in succession, as Venus tells Adonis in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, can help us see. I have demonstrated that Milton’s later poetry shows a shift in the way he views the senses. Milton’s relentless pursuit to preserve his eyesight shows the poet concerned with the physical and physiological aspect of his poetry, in which Milton employs medicine, natural philosophy, and their instruments as part of an epistemology that covers the physical and spiritual planes. Milton’s obsession to stave off blindness led to his ambivalent treatment of it. Optics and theories of vision mattered so much to Milton as a poet that he founded his later poetics on those theories and looked for ways to reconcile the use experimental instruments in reading the second book of scripture, as long as those instruments did not reach outside of their limitations. As a Christian, Milton understood the importance of boundaries or the limits of human understanding. In Milton’s final poems his scientific, philosophical, and spiritual representations of blindness merge. While the physical and spiritual perceptions remain at odds, Milton’s ability to bring them together in his poetic creation provides a way for us to read Milton’s final works of poetry anew. Chapter Five, the culmination of this work, is only the beginning. In Chapter Five I have identified the implications for how we can read the poetry Milton writes after he loses his sight. Understanding how Milton organized his poetry into bodily experiences provides a framework for where Milton studies can go from here. This is no more evident than what is traditionally identified as the final composition of Milton’s poetic career, Samson Agonistes. What is important about the poem is not just Milton’s treatment of blindness as Samson deals with it but where Milton continues to take his creative process. When Harapha comes to meet the man he has heard so much about, he is disappointed to find him disabled: I come not Samson, to condole thy chance, As these perhaps, yet wish it had not been, Though for no friendly intent. I am of Gath, Men call me Harapha, of stock renowned As Og or Anak and the Enims old That Kiriathaim held, thou knowst me now If thou at all art known. Much I have heard

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Of thy prodigious might and feats performed Incredible to me, in this displeased, That I was never present on the place Of those encounters, where we might have tried Each others force in camp or listed field: And now am come to see of whom such noise Hath walked about, and each limb to survey, If thy appearance answer loud report. Sam. The way to know were not to see but taste. (1076-90) Harapha has “seen” a different man based upon the “noise” he has heard regarding Samson and his deeds. Samson’s unusual answer shows that Milton had grown far more aware of the power of the other senses to replace sight. It is similar to Regan ordering Gloucester to “smell / His way to Dover” after she and Cornwall have blinded him (King Lear III.7.96-97). Also, Samson’s focus on taste, specifically, is another reminder that taste is “nurse and feeder of the other four [senses]” (Shakespeare Venus and Adonis 446). Samson Agonistes contains numerous bodily expressions that beg for deeper consideration. For example, when Manoa speaks of the hope he has “to work his [Samson’s] liberty,” the Chorus replies, “That hope would much rejoice us to partake / With thee; say reverend sire, we thirst to hear” (1454-56). Thirst signals the body’s need for nourishment, which provides the senses with the ability to function. Also, near the beginning of the poem, in the midst of the Chorus’ narration, Samson proclaims, “I hear the sound of words, their sense the air / Dissolves unjointed ere it reach my ear” (176-77). Here Samson describes the process of hearing much more vividly than anything we encounter in Paradise Lost. Additionally, when Dalila asks Samson to whether she can at least touch his hand, Milton identifies the connection touch has with cognition in Samson’s reply: “Not for thy life, lest fierce remembrance wake / My sudden rage to tear thee joint by joint” (951-53). While embodiment provides the richest opportunities for analysis in Samson Agonistes, all themes with which Milton made himself familiar in blindness come together in the poem: Sam. All otherwise to me my thoughts portend, That these dark orbs no more shall treat with light, Nor the other light of life continue long,

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But yield to double darkness nigh at hand: So much I feel my genial spirits droop, My hopes all flat, nature within me seems In all her functions weary of herself; My race of glory run, and race of shame, And I shall shortly be with them that rest. (590-98) Samson, in the ancient Greek tradition of equating darkness to death, speaks of his blindness in terms of death so that actual death brings “double darkness.” His eyes are darkened from physical light, and the light of life (also of creation) must soon diminish. John Carey notes that “genial” pertains to “genius or natural disposition” (378 n594). This brings us back to bodily experience. Those spirits are the vital spirits that provide for the higher functions of the body, especially cognition. Without physical and spiritual light, each necessary for some kind of vision, Samson’s mind cannot function, and all his bodily nature grows weary. A clearer understanding of Milton’s blindness and how he represents it in his poetry leads to a clearer understanding of Milton the poet and Milton the Christian, separate but so often one and the same person. More important, this study has shown that we can obtain a clearer understanding of Milton’s poetry via disability studies and the new body scholarship. We need to do more work in these critical areas. Samson Agonistes is a blank canvas, but so is Milton’s earlier poetry. We can learn a lot more by tracing in Milton’s poetry the evolution of Milton, from poet of nature and of spiritual things to poet of the body.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

William John Silverman, Jr. holds degrees from BYU-Idaho, BYU-Provo, Boise State University, and a PhD from Florida State University, where he focused his studies on early- modern English literature with a minor in science and technology discourses of the seventeenth century and history of “science.” He enjoys all forms of literature, but especially loves the works of Shakespeare, Milton, and other early modern poets. Aside from his areas of study, his research interests include disability and body image in literature, sensory criticism, and history of the book. He has presented or published papers on Milton, Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson. When he is not researching or teaching, he loves spending time with his wife Leah Marie and their two boys, John and Wesley. He also enjoys the outdoors, cooking up gourmet fare, and competing in the occasional triathlon.

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