I Trinal Unity: The Sources, Traditions, and Craftsmanship of Milton’s "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" LeMoyne Mercer A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 1978 ABSTRACT Although source study is a technique which has been very productive in revealing aspects of Milton’s artistry it has not been heretofore applied to n0n the Morning of Christ’s Nativity." This general source study focused particularly on Milton’s use of the Golden-Age tradition as a structurally significant aspect of the poem. Critical attention to the Nativity Ode has attributed structural unity in the poem to Milton's use of images of light/darkness and harmony/discord. This imagery is applied to three themes in the Nativity Ode: the universal peace, the music of the spheres, and the flight of the false gods. An investigation of the Golden-Age tradition revealed that these three themes are also unified by their relationship to the tradition as well as by Milton’s use of imagery. The Roman Saturnalia, which celebrated the return of Saturn and the Golden Age, is an analogue to Christmas. The universal peace which reigned at the Nativity is a characteristic of the Golden Age and the Saturnalia. The music of the spheres, which joins the angel choir at the Nativity, was audible only during man's state of innocence — the Golden Age. The flight of the false gods which occurred at the Nativity is also an aspect of Saturn’s reassertion of his position as the "true god" during the Saturnalia. By relating each of the three themes in the Nativity Ode to the Golden-Age tradition Milton achieves a "trinal unity." Ill TABLE OF CONTENTS I. The Study of Hilton's Sources: Introductory Page Remarks.................................................1 II. The Nativity Ode and theG olden-Age Tradition. ... .8 III. Milton's Craftsmanship in theN ativity Ode........... 65 Summary Remarks........ ...........................-.93 Bibliography 95 1 I. The Study of Milton’s Sources: Introductory Remarks In the twentieth century the value of source studies has been both widely appreciated and deprecated. The "I'fevr Criticism," "archetypal" and "mythic" treatments of literature tend to minimize the importance of sources as guides to the appreciation of poetry. H. J. C. Grierson summarizes the objections to source study in saying that "poems are not written by influences or movements or sources, but come from the living hearts of men."^ Even if this is true, we, as readers, respond to what is written by associating it with other material with which we are familiar. Marc F. Bertanasco points out that "whether the reader wishes to or not, he will in fact set the art object down squarely into a cultural milieu, either into its proper context, or 2 into his own contemporary one." The warning of G. Wilson Knight provides some balance: The danger of studying him alone is the dang®r?of working into the essence of Shakespeare what is just convention and the dodges of an overworked and underpaid writer; the danger of studying him together with his contemporaries is the danger of reducing a unique vision to a mode.5 Arnold Williams defines two kinds of source study—the specific and the general. The specific source study seeks to establish the author’s indebtedness to a particular source, and the general source seeks to relate the author’s work to other material in the tradition. "Metaphysical Poetry," in William R. Keast, ed., Seventeenth— Century English Poetry:'Modern Essays in Criticism (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 6. Grashaw and the Baroque (Montgomery, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1971), p . 2(T. z Wheel of Fire: Essays in Interpretation of Shakespeare's Somber Tragedies (London: Oxford University Press, 1930), p. xiii. 4 "Methods and Achievements in the Study of Milton’s'Sources: A ' Defense," Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science., Arts, and Letters, 32 (1946),.471-480. 2 Since George Coffin Taylor’s investigation in Milton’s Use of Du Bartas in 1934 the general tendency in Miltonic source studies has been toward the examination of Milton’s relationship to traditions. F. Michael Krouse, for example, explains his rationale for general source study in Milton's Samson and the Christian Tradition: By attempting to do no more than read this poem from the point of view of our own day, we have had to conteht ourselves with reading it badly. Samson Agonistes, like every other poem from a past age, contains, and is built upon, the thinking of a day that is gone. Much of that thinking is hidden in what Professor Lovejoy called 'implicit assumptions.' It is these unknown ‘ and unsuspected dead ideas which must be disinterred, indentified, and raised like Lazarus if we are interested in reading those poems as the poet meant them to be read. Most of our traditions have changed greatly during the past three hundred years, and many traditions have, in that interval, been altogether lost and for­ gotten. Such salient and concealed changes greatly affect our understanding and evaluation Of writings as old as Milton's Samson Agonistes because, as a pair of English critics have observed, 'value in any art depends on the interaction of an individual creative will and a valid tradition,' and for this reason 'three-quarters of our study must always be the attempt to reacquire the tra­ ditional content of the imagination.'5 The value of general source studies is.further demonstrated in books on Milton’s major works by Grant McColley, Arthur E. Barker, Elizabeth Marie Pope, Scott Elledge, and John Demaray.^ (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1949), pp. 3-4. McColley, Paradise Lost: An Account of Its Growth and Major Origins, with a Discussion of Milton's Use of Sources and Literary Patterns (Chicago: Packard and Co., 19407? Barker, Milton and the' Puritan Dilemma (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1942) ; Pope, "Paradise Regained": The Tradition and the Poem (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press?'Î947)Î Elledge, Milton's Lycidas: Edited to Serve as an Introduction to Criticism (New York: Harper and Row, 19657; Demaray, Milton and the Masque Tradition: The Early Poems, "Arcades," and Comus (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968). 3 An examination of Milton’s relationship to the'general sources of the Nativity Ode has not yet been made, although there are , numerous allusions to possible specific sources. Milton’s editors, such as Carey and Fowler, often designate sources for some of his allusions, and Albert S. Cook, in his "Notes on Milton’s ’On?the 7 Morning of Christ's Nativity,’" proposes sources for every allusion in the poem. Studies by C. A. Patrides and A. F. Leach deal with limited sections of the poem and their sources. Patrides, in g "The Cessation of the Oracles: The History of a Legend," traces that theme from its ultimate source in Plutarch through a number of versions available in the Renaissance. Patrides offers no comment on the manner in which Milton uses the legend, being content to supply information concerning its availability. Similarly, Leach takes a "scholarly" rather than "critical" approach in linking Milton with Prudentius in g his "Milton as Schoolboy and Schoolmaster." Both scholars are more concerned with establishing that Milton uses particular sources than they are in discussing what he does with these sources. The purpose of a general source study is aesthetic and critical rather than scholarly; that is, the object is to appreciate the artistic achievement of the author rather than to uncover or establish data. Charles G. Osgood explains the benefits which flow from general source studies: 7 Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, xv (1909),". 307-368. Modern Language Review, IX (1965), 500^507.* — 9 pr0Ceedings of the British Academy, III (1907-1908), 310-513. The student who diligently peruses the lines of a great poem may go far toward a realization of its character. He may appreciate, in a degree, its loveliness, strength, and direct hold upon the catholic truth of life. But he will be more sensitive to these appeals, and receive gifts that are richer and less perishable, according as he comprehends the forces by whose interaction the poem was produced .... From a contemplation of the poem in its genesis one return to a deeper under­ standing and enjoyment of it as a completed whole. The present study, though it deals with but one of the important cultural influences affecting Milton, and with it but in part, endeavors by this method to deepen and clarify the appreciation of his art and teaching.1® Critical response to the Nativity Ode has tended to stress Milton's use of imagery as the primary structural device. The recurring images of darkness/light and discord/harmony join the three main divisions of the "Hymn." Milton’s poetic craftsmanship in manipulating images has inspired critics to search for, and find, evidence of even more complex and esoteric organizational devices. M. S. R/stvig finds that the structure of the Nativity Ode is based upon occult arithmology in which mystical significance is attributed to the number of lines in stanzas, the number of heavy stresses in stanzas, and the number of syllables.^ In another vein, Harriet-. Frazier attributes the unity of the poem to Milton’s use of the Boethian time-eternity paradox. The entrance of God into Man at the Nativity 12 is the sign of the union of heaven and earth, time and eternity. The Classical Mythology of Milton’s English Poems (1900; rpt. New York: Gordian Press, 19045, p.