Abstract
This chapter explores the continuities and discontinuities of thought between Blake and Wesley with reference to their treatment of John Milton, in particular their re-workings of Paradise Lost (1667).1 I begin my discussion with a general consideration of both writers’ attitudes towards Milton, subsequently refining my argument to focus on their responses to certain aspects of his theology; his Calvinism, his views on sexuality, and his understanding of Christ as the fulfilment of God’s rational law. I then consider the relationship between Blake, Milton, and Methodism as it is triangulated in the figure of William Cowper, a Calvinist, who could be seen as an embodiment of the psychically destructive consequences of Milton’s Puritanism.2
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Notes
Vala is often read as a re-writing of Paradise Lost: as Damon notes, ‘Both are epics beginning in medias res; both deal with the fall and salvation of man; both demonstrate the justice (or mercy) of God; both use the whole universe for setting.’ S. Foster Damon, A Blake Dictionary (London, 1965), 275. However, as with the previous chapter, a discussion of Vala is prohibited due to restrictions of space.
See Richard Butterworth, ‘Milton and the Methodist Hymn Book’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, 10 (1915), 97–103;
Thomas B. Shepherd, Methodism and the Literature of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1940), 123;
Ivor Lou Duncan, ‘John Wesley Edits Paradise Lost’ in Thomas Burton, ed., Essays in Memory of Christine Burleson in Language and Literature by Former Colleagues and Students (Tennessee, 1969), 73–85; and
Samuel J. Rogal, ‘The Role of Paradise Lost in Works by John and Charles Wesley’, Milton Quarterly, 13: 3 (October 1979), 114–19.
Jon Wesley, An Extract from Milton’s Paradise Lost, with Notes (London, 1791), i.
On Wesley’s editorial techniques see Thomas Walter Herbert, John Wesley as Editor and Author, (Princeton, 1940), 77–79 and
Oscar Sherwin, ‘Milton for the Masses: John Wesley’s Edition of Paradise Lost’, Modern Language Quarterly 12: 3 (1951), 267–86.
On Milton’s popularity and influence see Timothy Miller, The Critical Response to John Milton’s Paradise Lost (Connecticut, 1997).
On attitudes towards Milton in the period see Lucy Newlyn, Paradise Lost and the Romantic Reader (Oxford, 2007)
‘Milton lovd me in childhood & shewd me his face’ (Letter to Flaxman, E, 707). On Blake’s attitude towards Milton see Denis Saurat, Blake and Milton (London, 1935);
S. Foster Damon, ‘Blake and Milton’, in V de Sola Pinto, ed., The Divine Vision: Studies in the Poetry and Art of William Blake (London, 1957), 91–6;
Ross Woodman, ‘The Death and Resurrection of Milton According to the Gospel of Blake’, English Studies in Canada, 3: 4 (Winter, 1977), 416–32.
See John Howard, Blake’s Milton: A Study in the Selfhood (New Jersey, 1976).
See Pamela Dunbar, William Blake’s Illustrations to the Poetry of Milton (Oxford, 1980), Chapter 3;
Stephen C. Behrendt, The Moment of Explosion: Blake and the Illustration of Milton (Nebraska, 1983);
J. M. Q. Davies, ‘Blake’s Paradise Lost Designs Reconsidered’ in Deirdre Coleman and Peter Otto, eds., Imagining Romanticism: Essays on English and Australian Romanticisms (West Cornwall, 1992), 143–81;
Davies, Blake’s Milton Designs: The Dynamism of Meaning (West Cornwall, 1993).
See Edward J. Rose, ‘Blake’s Illustrations for Paradise Lost, L’Allegro, and Il Penseroso: A Thematic Reading’, Hartford Studies in Literature, 2: 1 (1970), 40–68 (40).
Crabb Robinson, Henry, Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb Etc. Being Selections from the Remains of Henry Crabb Robinson, Morley, Edith J., ed., (Manchester, 1922), 9.
For Calvin there are only two classes: the elect and the reprobate. According to his view one is either predestined to be saved or predestined to be damned (see John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Oxford, 2012), Book 3, Chapters 21–24). The third class, the ‘Redeemed’, is an Arminian category referring to those sinners who choose by an exercise of free will impossible in Calvin’s system, to accept Christ’s grace and thereby be saved. In Milton ‘redeemed’ is a synonym for ‘elect’. Wesley, however, uses all three categories, for example in his controversial sermon ‘Free Grace’ (1739). See JWS, 50–60.
Morton D. Paley, Apocalypse & Millennium in English Romantic Poetry (Oxford, 2003), 77–80.
See Morton D. Paley, ‘Cowper as Blake’s Spectre’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 1: 3 (Spring, 1968), 236–52 (238–9) and
Gerald E. Bentley, Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake (Yale, 2003), 221–42. Hayley would publish Cowper’s translation of the Latin and Italian Poems of Milton in 1808. He refers to plates by Blake for it in letters of 6 August 1802 and 15 January 1803, and Blake mentions the prospect of this work in a letter of 6 July 1803 (E, 730). However, the published volume – Milton’s Latin and Italian Poems, translated by William Cowper, edited by John Johnson, Joseph Johnson, 1808 – contains no engraving by Blake.
On Cowper and Methodism see Frederick C. Gill, The Romantic Movement and Methodism: A Study of English Romanticism and the Evangelical Revival (London, 1954), 129–46.
Cowper was the nephew of the poet Judith Cowper who married Colonel Martin Madan in 1723: their son, also Martin, was the Anglican Evangelical clergyman with close links to Calvinist Methodism who published Thelyphthora, or A Treatise on Female Ruin (1780), a controversial text defending polygamy. Some scholars hold that Blake reacted to this text (with hostility) in the Book of Thel. See E. B. Murray, ‘Thel, Thelyphthora, and the Daughters of Albion’, Studies in Romanticism, 20: 30 (Fall, 1981), 275–97.
Lodwick Hartley, ‘Cowper and the Evangelicals: Notes on Early Biographical Interpretations’, PMLA, 65: 5 (September 1950), 719–31.
British Critic, 18 (London 1801), 669–70. See Lodwick Hartley, ‘Coper and the Evangelicals: Notes on Early Biographical Interpretations’, PMLA, Vol. 65, No. 5 (September, 1950), 719–31.
William Cowper, The Complete Poetical Works of William Cowper, ed., H S. Milford (London, 1934), 428.
Letter to Hayley dated 3 October 1800, cited in Gerald E. Bentley, ‘Blake, Hayley, and Lady Hesketh’, The Review of English Studies, 7: 27 (July 1956), 266.
Leigh Hunt, ed. Examiner, 17 July 1808. See Leigh Hunt, An Attempt to Shew the Folly and Danger of Methodism in a Series of Essays, First Published in the Weekly Paper Called The Examiner (London, 1809), 42. On Blake and madness see Paul Younquist, Madness and Blake’s Myth (Pennsylvania, 1989) and
Andrew. M. Cooper, ‘Blake and Madness: The World Turned Inside Out’, ELH, 57: 3 (Autumn 1990), 585–642.
Interestingly, Brantley suggests that ‘Blake’s pity for God-tormented Cowper together with Blake’s admiration for Cowper as God-intoxicated may well be an accurate characterization of his attitude towards Whitefield.’ See Richard. E Brantley, Locke, Wesley, and the Method of Romanticism (Gainesville, 1983), 131.
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© 2014 Michael Farrell
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Farrell, M. (2014). Blake, Wesley and Milton. In: Blake and the Methodists. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137455505_8
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