Italia Conquistata: The Role of Italy in Milton’s Early Poetic Development Submitted by Paul Slade to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in December 2017 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: ………………………………………………………….. Abstract My thesis explores the way in which the Italian language and literary culture contributed to John Milton’s early development as a poet (over the period up to 1639 and the composition of Epitaphium Damonis). I begin by investigating the nature of the cultural relationship between England and Italy in the late medieval and early modern periods. I then examine how Milton’s own engagement with the Italian language and its literature evolved in the context of his family background, his personal contacts with the London Italian community and modern language teaching in the early seventeenth century as he grew to become a ‘multilingual’ poet. My study then turns to his first published collection of verse, Poems 1645. Here, I reconsider the Italian elements in Milton’s early poetry, beginning with the six poems he wrote in Italian, identifying their place and significance in the overall structure of the volume, and their status and place within the Italian Petrarchan verse tradition. After considering the significance of the Italian titles of L’Allegro and Il Penseroso, I assess the impact of Italian verse forms (and particularly the canzone) upon Milton’s early poetry in English and the question of the nature of the relationship between Milton’s Mask presented at Ludlow Castle and Tasso’s ‘favola boschereccia’, Aminta. Finally, I consider the place in Milton’s career of his journey to Italy in 1938-9 and its importance to him as a personal ‘conquest’ of Italy. I suggest that, far from setting him upon the path toward poetic glory, as is often claimed, his return England marked the beginning of a lengthy hiatus in his poetic career. My argument is that Milton was much more Italianate, by background, accident of birth and personal bent, than has usually been recognised and that an appreciation of how this Italian aspect of his cultural identity contributed to his poetic development is central to an understanding of his poetry. 2 Acknowledgements Thanks first to my supervisor Professor Karen Edwards for her unfailing support, advice and wisdom in guiding me through the research for this thesis. Dr Mark Davie was kind enough to read and discuss with me Milton’s poems in Italian. His advice on Italian versification in general, and on Petrarch and the Petrarchan tradition was invaluable. In Italy, at the University of Trieste, Professore Giuseppi Trebbi took me under his wing during the semester I spent there and was always ready to advise, share knowledge, suggest contacts and lines of enquiry about Milton’s time in Italy. It was Professor Trebbi who put me in contact with Dott.ssa Michela Dal Borgo, Archivista at the Archivio di Stato di Venezia, whose suggestions led to my research in the records of the Council of Ten. I am also grateful to Prof.ssa Laura Tosi and Prof.ssa Daria Perocco of the Università Ca’ Foscari who both gave me their time to discuss avenues of enquiry during my stays in Venice. Thanks too to Professor Neil Harris with whom I spent a pleasant afternoon in Udine discussing Milton and other matters (and who was punished for his kindness by being appointed one of my PhD examiners). I was also very fortunate in having two fellow students, Philippa Earl and Dr Esther Van Raamsdonk, who began their Milton-related PhD’s at Exeter in 2013 with me and were happy to share problems, ideas, advice and support. They were also kind enough to treat me as a peer rather than a grandfather. I should also perhaps mention my long-suffering family whose eyes now begin to close when the ‘M’ word is mentioned. 3 This page is intentionally blank. 4 Contents List of illustrations page 6 Abbreviations 7 A note on texts 8 Preface 9 Introduction 12 1 ‘The great subtiltie and wonderful wisedome of the Italians’ – 18 Anglo-Italian cultural relations in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Periods 2 Milton’s Italian Acculturation 42 3 ‘Poems of John Milton, Both English and Latin’ - the place and 72 time of the Italian verse 4 The Italian Poems – Genesis and Execution 99 5 Italian Verse Forms in ‘Poems 1645’ – the canzone 137 6 Tasso’s Aminta and Milton’s Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle – 157 model relationships 7 The Italian Journey 182 Conclusion 236 Appendix 1 243 Bibliography 251 5 List of Illustrations 1. Excerpt from ‘The Trinity Manuscript’ 185 2. Milton’s Entry in Count Camillo Cedogni’s Album Amicorum 198 3. Malatesti’s Dedication to Milton 212 6 Abbreviations CSP Complete Shorter Poems, ed. by John Carey (Harlow: Pearson, 2007). EEBO Early English Books Online, http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home. ESTC English Short Title Catalogue, http://estc.bl.uk. NLS National Library of Scotland OCW III The Complete Works of John Milton, Volume III: The Shorter Poems, ed. by B. Lewalksi and E. Haan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edition, January 2008). OED Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) online edition, http://www.oed.com/ RFCTS The Registers of the French Church of Threadneedle Street SBN Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale (Italia) 7 A Note on Texts For the texts of the early poems, I have relied upon Lewalski and Haan’s revised 2014 Oxford edition: The Complete Works of John Milton, Volume III, The Shorter Poems, ed. by Barbara Lewalski and Estelle Haan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). I have also referred extensively to John Carey’s edition: The Complete Shorter Poems, ed. by John Carey, 2nd edn (Harlow: Pearson, 2007). My single quotation from Paradise Regained is also taken from the new Oxford Complete Works of John Milton, Vol II, The 1671 Poems: Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes, ed. by Laura Lunger Knoppers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). For the prose, I have used The Essential Prose of John Milton, ed. by W. Kerrigan, J. Rumrich and S. Fallon (New York: Random House, 2007) as my main source, after some debate. The texts I wished to cite were almost all included in this collection and the translations from Milton’s Latin were, I felt, more reliable and less prone to ‘poeticisation’ than those found in older editions. However, for the Commonplace Book, I have used Volume 18 of The Works of John Milton, ed. by F.A. Patterson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940). I have used this edition in preference to the Yale edition of the Complete Prose Works because the Columbia edition contains an untranslated text. Therefore, for the sake of consistency, in the one other instance when I have quoted a prose passage not included in The Essential Prose (from ‘The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce’, p. 145), I have also used the Columbia edition. I have also referred to the introduction to the Camden Society’s edition, A Commonplace Book of John Milton, and a Latin Essay and Latin Verses presumed to be by Milton, ed. by Alfred J Horwood (London: Camden Society, 1876). 8 Preface I arrived at the topic of this thesis via the rather improbable route of writing an MA dissertation about Samuel Beckett’s ‘bilingualism’. Beckett came to his distinctive later style (and stepped out of James Joyce’s shadow) partly by re-creating in English the texts he had originally written in French just after World War II. This led me to ponder the significance of this form of literary ‘bilingualism’ – involving the construction of the things signified through two different systems of ‘signification’. When I began to consider a PhD topic, this led me to Milton. I was intrigued by the fact that Milton had written six poems in Italian early in his career. Milton’s command of Italian was not as complete as Beckett’s command of French (although some would perhaps claim this for him). Beckett spent more than fifty years living and writing in France, whilst Milton spent about fifteen months travelling in Italy where, as far as we know, he wrote only in Latin. In fact, a more exact parallel with Beckett’s French would have been Milton’s relationship with Latin, no one’s native tongue in the seventeenth century, but a lingua franca from Poland to Portugal. Latin was Milton’s first ‘second language’. I suspect it was also the language he used on a day to day basis when he first arrived in Italy. Milton’s relationship with Italian was, therefore, very different from Beckett’s relationship with French. Nonetheless, during one short period of his life, almost certainly before he ever set foot on Tuscan soil, he wrote six poems in Italian, a ‘lingua ignota e strana.’1 I then realised that there were other Italian features in his English verse and, as I began to research the topic, I came to see that what had seemed initially a minor facet of Milton’s poetic make-up, almost a temporary aberration, was fundamental to his poetic development.