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Eroticism and the Integral Self: Milton's Poems, 1645 and the Italian Pastoral Tradition

Eroticism and the Integral Self: Milton's Poems, 1645 and the Italian Pastoral Tradition ??? COHPAnATIST : MILTON'S POEMS, 1645 AND THE ITALIAN PASTORAL TRADITION Patrick Cook Few are likely to disagree with Harris Fletcher's remark that "for Milton, throughout his lifetime, the most important of all Italian poets was Torquato Tasso" (2.307). Yet, the existing criticism does not confirm Fletcher's insight of Tasso's importance to Milton "throughout his lifetime." The evidence that has been advanced almost exclusively concerns Paradise Lost, where MUton defined himself against Tasso as the culmination of epic tradition and created an allusive poetics of unprecedented complexity in which Gerusalemme Liberata figures prominently. Milton's own pronouncements may be responsible for the critical süence about Tasso's presence in the earlier poetry. In the 1642 Reason of Church Government (3.237) Milton ranks Tasso's epic of the first crusade with the epics of Homer and Virgil, and in the 1644 Of Education (4.286), he finds in Tasso's Discorsi del Poema Eroico the "laws of true epic." I intend to argue that these statements have produced a critical imbalance, that in fact they were made at the time when Milton was using Tasso's other influential masterpiece, the pastoral drama Aminta, as a crucial intertext in the poetry, written in four languages, that http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Comparatist University of North Carolina Press

Eroticism and the Integral Self: Milton's Poems, 1645 and the Italian Pastoral Tradition

Cook, Patrick J.
The Comparatist , Volume 24 (1) – Oct 3, 2000
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University of North Carolina Press
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Copyright © Southern Comparative Literature Association.
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1559-0887
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Abstract

??? COHPAnATIST : MILTON'S POEMS, 1645 AND THE ITALIAN PASTORAL TRADITION Patrick Cook Few are likely to disagree with Harris Fletcher's remark that "for Milton, throughout his lifetime, the most important of all Italian poets was Torquato Tasso" (2.307). Yet, the existing criticism does not confirm Fletcher's insight of Tasso's importance to Milton "throughout his lifetime." The evidence that has been advanced almost exclusively concerns Paradise Lost, where MUton defined himself against Tasso as the culmination of epic tradition and created an allusive poetics of unprecedented complexity in which Gerusalemme Liberata figures prominently. Milton's own pronouncements may be responsible for the critical süence about Tasso's presence in the earlier poetry. In the 1642 Reason of Church Government (3.237) Milton ranks Tasso's epic of the first crusade with the epics of Homer and Virgil, and in the 1644 Of Education (4.286), he finds in Tasso's Discorsi del Poema Eroico the "laws of true epic." I intend to argue that these statements have produced a critical imbalance, that in fact they were made at the time when Milton was using Tasso's other influential masterpiece, the pastoral drama Aminta, as a crucial intertext in the poetry, written in four languages, that

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The Comparatist – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Oct 3, 2000

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