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Milton and the Romantic Sonnet Revival

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Milton and the Romantic Sonnet Revival 중세르네상스영문학 제18권 2호 (2010): 399-423 Milton and the Romantic Sonnet Revival Chulmin Chung (Inha University) 1. The Characteristics of Milton’s Sonnets Milton wrote nineteen sonnets in English and five sonnets in Latin between 1620 and 1660. Although their number is small, Milton’s lyric power is refined in his sonnets and the republican austerity of Paradise Lost is anticipated there. Milton introduced a variety of subject-matter and a new modification of the Petrarchan sonnet form, but his sonnets could not capture readers’ attention after the poet’s death until the last few decades of the eighteenth century. Such eighteenth-century critics as Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson, who preferred the balance and clarity of the heroic couplet over the sonnet form, criticized Milton’s sonnets. Johnson, for instance, disregarded them because “Milton . was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones” (Boswell 305). 400 Chulmin Chung However, as the sonnet tradition revived in the mid-eighteenth century, poets such as Thomas Edward, Thomas Warton, Anna Seward and Mary Robinson and even the major Romantic poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth declared Milton’s influence on their understanding of the sonnet form. Consequently, the criticism in the early eighteenth century turned into praise acknowledging - though misreading - him as a pioneer of the sonnet tradition. For instance, a comment in the Monthly Review of 1797 wrongly identifies Milton, rather than Thomas Wyatt, as having introduced the sonnet into English: “Milton . was, we believe, the first Englishman that was induced to attempt the sonnet in the language of our island” (Robinson 17). George Henderson also neglects, in his sonnet anthology written in 1803, the sonnets written before and after Milton: “Immediately after DRUMMOND, there does not appear to have been any writer of the sonnet of considerable consequence except Milton” (33). While those misleading comments undervalue the quality of Elizabethan sonnets, they serve to underline the importance accorded to Milton in the development of the English sonnet. Milton’s distinctive use of the sonnet form is apparent in form and theme. By rejecting the elaborate conceits and exaggerations of the Elizabethan sonnets, Milton turned against the practice of the Elizabethan sonneteers. In most Elizabethan sonnets, including the sonnets of Shakespeare, the quatrain division, and the octave-sestet division, are enforced by a full stop at the end of the first and second quatrains, and, in general, the use of caesurae and run-on lines is avoided in the sonnets. Milton, however, disregards the strict octave-sestet division and makes frequent use of caesurae and run-on lines in his sonnet practice. In the poet’s famous sonnet on his blindness (Sonnet 19), for instance, the poem’s syntax runs across the formal division between octave and sestet: Milton and the Romantic Sonnet Revival 401 When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And 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, I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need Either man’s work or his own gifts, who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best, his state Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed And post o’er land and ocean without rest: They also serve who only stand and wait. (Milton 330) Here, Milton demonstrates his distinct approach to the form, showing how syntax can play against the established rhyme-scheme of the Petrarchan form to give the sonnet a greater chance to attain spontaneous expressions of each thematic unit. For instance, Milton’s enjambments, in lines 4-5 and 8-12, break not only the division between the first and second quatrains, but also between the octave and the sestet. His use of caesura, in addition, results in an early turn after the second foot of line 8, instead of at the beginning of the sestet. The formal qualities of the sonnet highlight the solemn turn of thought, moving from agitation to the calmness of resignation. The subject matter of Milton’s sonnets, which manifest little use of romantic Petrarchan conventions, also marks his departure from the Elizabethan sonnet tradition. Milton’s sonnets are highly individuated and they record strong reactions to personal and political events. Some of them are addressed to persons like Fairfax and Cromwell, some address public matters. In his 402 Chulmin Chung sonnets, Milton strove for a republican spirit that revealed itself in sincerity, austerity, and simplicity of mind. Plainness of thought, the noble and energetic tone, and the formal freedom, which are reminiscent of the vigorous blank-verse movement of Paradise Lost, are what make Milton’s sonnets distinctive from the Elizabethan sonnets which employ elaborate conceits and hyperbole. Of his twenty four sonnets, Milton wrote seventeen sonnets between 1642 and 1658, which signifies not only his politically active years but also an unproductive period in Milton’s poetic career. Nevertheless, essential Miltonic concerns such as pride, temptation, faith and acceptance, which are developed in his major poems, are already found in his sonnets. Unlike their Petrarchan models, Milton’s sonnets repeatedly represent the struggle of the individual and the need for the poet to have a better understanding of himself and reality. Working against the sonnet’s predetermined bipartite structure through a controlled use of run-on lines and caesurae, the poet creates dramatic movement that highlights the persona of the sonnet who progresses from doubt to reaffirming faith. Milton’s sonnet 19, quoted above, depicts a speaker in Milton’s thematic antithesis between darkness and light, and between the speaker’s turmoil and calmness of mind. Faced with the hardship of blindness, in the octave, the speaker becomes impatient with his loss of sight, being concerned about living in a “world and wide” (2). The octave reveals frustration, dejection and fear, all connected to the sonnet persona’s desire to serve God. The sestet illustrates anxiety soothed by “Patience” (8). The word “patience” (8) signals the turn of thought that allows the speaker to see his error. He comes to understand through the virtue of endurance that he must “stand and wait” (14) to serve God. When his nervousness is soothed and his recovery is complete, the Milton and the Romantic Sonnet Revival 403 speaker’s blindness becomes a “mild yoke” (11). Thus, the sonnet presents a process of mind in which the speaker moves from doubt to confidence, from discontent to patience. The power of mind, represented as human patience, plays a central part in the process. Milton projects in his sonnets his ideal in which the individual progresses from confusion and anger towards self-knowledge and confidence. Consequently, Milton’s sonnets never forget the strength and development of the inwardness of man, and they serve the poet best as a meditative poetic form to express his sincere thoughts about himself. Shakespeare also employs a “meditative structure” (Burrow 410) in his sonnets 12 and 15 to focus on his deepest feelings about himself. Here is sonnet 15 which contains a similar first line to Milton’s sonnet: When I consider every thing that grows Holds in perfection but a little moment; That this huge stage presenteth naught but shows, Whereon the stars in secret influence comment; When I perceive that men as plants increase, Cheered and checked even by the selfsame sky, Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease, And wear their brave state out of memory; Then the conceit of this inconstant stay Sets you most rich in youth before my sight, Where wasteful time debateth with decay To change your day of youth to sullied night, And, all in war with Time for love of you, As he takes from you, I engraft you new. (Shakespeare 411) The movement from the repeated subordinate clauses in lines one and five to 404 Chulmin Chung the main clause in line nine, culminates in the expression of a particular wish that the young man be spared the depredations of time. Both Milton’s and Shakespeare’s sonnets depict the movement of the individual’s strong feeling. However, whereas the conclusion of Shakespeare’s sonnet is addressed to his lover, Milton’s Sonnet 19 concludes with a synthesis between anxiety and calmness, and between frustration and confidence in the human mind. Thus one can see dramatic movement, in which the individual mind moves psychologically from one position to another, more clearly in Milton’s sonnet. Milton challenged the inherited Petrarchan polarities by breaking the octave-sestet division through the careful use of enjambment. Through his sonnet writing, in addition, he saw a possibility to use the conventional form as a meditative poetic form in which he could express his thoughts about vocation, virtue, blindness and faith. It is the towering personality and the sublimity of human mind that Milton achieved unprecedentedly in his sonnets; that eighteenth-century sonneteers recognized as inaugurating a new tradition; and that Coleridge and Wordsworth reproduced and intensified in their sonnet practice to highlight the power of their perceiving mind. 2. Milton and the Eighteenth-Century Sonnets Milton’s influence on the revival of the sonnet in the mid-eighteenth century was apparent, but his energetic and public voice was scarcely heard in the sonnets of his successors. Although eighteenth-century sonneteers, such as Thomas Edward, Thomas Warton, Anna Seward, and Mary Robinson, claimed Milton as their master, their sonnets resemble Milton’s sonnets only superficially.
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