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“What about a Story?”: Winnie-the-Pooh as Literature for Adult Readers

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Katie Arthur

One of the oddest things about Winnie-the-Pooh is that it is so embarrassingly funny.  I am a grown adult, and I laugh out loud in the middle of my university library and have to apologize to my neighbors because Mr. Milne knows exactly how to pull a guffaw out of my throat at exactly the wrong moments.  But, you ask, I thought it was a children’s story?  Is it the sort of funniness we could imagine children enjoying?  Is it below our mature threshold for thinking, adultish entertainment?  In my reading, no.  This is genuinely clever funniness for young and old, and the hilarity is a function of what narrative theorists call the implied reader.  In the 1960s, Wayne Booth initiated theory on the implied reader, saying the text itself constructs a sense of the audience it intends, assuming knowledge and giving knowledge according to what it wants the reader to be.  That ideal audience corresponds to nothing in the real world.  The real readers of the text may or may not be anything like the reader the text asks for, but the sense the real readers get of the implied reader nonetheless shapes the way we receive the text.  It is here that Winnie-the-Pooh is successful. 

Winnie-the-Pooh incites two kinds of implied readers.  It is a book either for older children to read for themselves or for adults to read out loud to younger children, and it works very well both ways.  There are three kinds of humor in this book: humor for both the adult readers and the children listeners to enjoy together, and two kinds of humor only the adult readers will enjoy: the first, a humor accessible only to the adult readers as a function of the printed text, which naturally the young children will not appreciate; and the second, a humor that allows the adult to enter into the funniness of a child’s world.  We will look at all three kinds of humor but dwell on the last for the longest because it is the reason I have to excuse myself from quiet places.

The humor made for both children and adults is the most easily explained.  These are instances of simple confusion and embarrassment, like most of the comical things we encounter in our lives.  In the fourth chapter, “In Which Eeyore Loses a Tail,” in order to find the tail, Owl suggests a reward be issued.  “‘Just a moment,’ said Pooh, holding up his paw.  ‘What do we do this — what you were saying?  You sneezed just as you were going to tell me.’  ‘I didn’t sneeze.’  ‘Yes, you did, Owl.’ . . . ‘What I said was, “First, Issue a Reward.”’  ‘You’re doing it again,’ said Pooh sadly” (50, 51).  This is purely delightful confusion between the sound of the word issue and the sound of a sneeze, and absolutely accessible to young and old minds.  In Chapter II, “In Which Pooh Goes Visiting,” Pooh finds himself stuck in Rabbit’s front door, which was constructed to allow Rabbits and hungry Pooh Bears through, but had forgotten to take into account not-hungry-anymore Pooh Bears (32).  People stuck places they should not be is just comical.  This too, is simply an embarrassing situation most children and adults can relate to and laugh about.  When Kanga and Roo come to the forest, and the animals have to decide what to do about these strange visitors, Piglet must, according to the plan, pretend to be baby Roo to trick Kanga into leaving. As Kanga, only fooled for a few moments about the difference between a baby pig and a baby kangaroo, gives Piglet a spluttering cold bath to continue the joke, both reader and listener can laugh at Kanga’s cleverness and Piglet’s sad and unheeded insistence he is not Roo and does not need to have this bath and take this medicine (106).

And then there is humor Mr. Milne threw in just for the reader, which the child listener would have no access to, unless he were an older child following along with the reading.  This is located in the clever misspellings of certain things in the text.  These animals are the toys of a young boy, so they do not naturally have a very large capacity for educated writing and reading, and yet, living in a forest, one finds the need for many things to be written.  So Owl, the wise one, finds himself doing most of the spelling work when Christopher Robin cannot be found, and the result is funny for the reader.  For example, on Eeyore’s birthday gift from Pooh, Owl writes “HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY.  Pooh looked on admiringly. ‘I’m just saying “A Happy Birthday,”’ said Owl carelessly.  ‘It’s a nice long one,’ said Pooh, very much impressed by it.  ‘Well, actually, of course, I’m saying “A Very Happy Birthday with love from Pooh.”  Naturally it takes a good deal of pencil to say a long thing like that’” (83).  Mr. Milne took the time to write out in the text the funny misspelling that would only be seen by the reader.  (Although, this might better fit into the first category.  As we are supposing this to be read out loud, the pronunciation of the misspelled birthday message could be a point over which listener laughs at reader, and we might actually need to create a new category.)  Another instance that is truly only for the reader is when Pooh brings Christopher Robin news of the flood waters in other parts of the forest, bringing with him a note he found in a bottle.  He calls it a “missage,” and Mr. Milne continues, for the enjoyment of the reader, to spell it missage even when he has finished reporting Pooh’s actual words (142).  And at Owl’s house are two signs which read: “PLES RING IF AN RNSER IS REQIRD” and “PLEZ CNOKE IF AN RNSR IS NOT REQID” (48).  These are intelligible signs and can be read out loud to a child without problem, and the misspellings are just a little treat for the reader.

But the most interesting parts of the book for the adult reader are the places where Mr. Milne’s adult narrator speaks as if he were a child and allows the adult reader the joy of watching children think.  In the introduction and first chapter, our narrator sets up the book as a collection of stories about a little boy named Christopher Robin and his stuffed bear.  Really, Christopher Robin has told our narrator Winnie the Pooh has asked for some stories about himself, “because he is that sort of Bear” (4).  Christopher Robin is the explicit narratee here, the one receiving the story.  When Pooh needs a friend, “the first person he thought of was Christopher Robin” (9).  Christopher Robin here interrupts the story with a question about whether or not Pooh really meant him, and the narrator assures narratee Christopher he did.  We know, though, the story Christopher Robin and the listener Christopher Robin exist on different levels, one in the nursery listening to the story, and one in the Hundred Acre Wood being the story, and so they cannot be exactly the same.  But good storytelling encourages the listener to feel involved, so we can let him think Pooh meant him.  On page 10, Milne grants Christopher Robin permission to be called “you” by the narrator in a brief moment of dialogue.  Then on page 11, the story continues with Pooh and Christopher Robin, we assume.  But the Christopher Robin character is now called “you.”  Before, the listener Christopher Robin was “you.”  Now the character Christopher Robin is “you.”  In this tiny switch hangs a great deal of the success of the book, because in it the reader is invited to be Christopher Robin listening to his father.  As the narrator/narratee framework disappears with the disappearance of quotation marks surrounding the story and the reader receives the text in pure naked narration, the reader is addressed directly as “you.”  In this way, the adult implied reader is asked to put himself in the shoes of a child, to put on a child’s perspective and think like Christopher Robin.  The results are hilarious, and one of my favorite manifestations of this child-thinking is the time we are introduced to Piglet’s grandfather.

Piglet lives in a great beech-tree, and “next to his house was a piece of broken board which had: ‘TRESPASSERS W’ on it” and Piglet explains that it “was his grandfather’s name, and it had been in the family a long time” (34).  We the readers know, as the narrator intends for us to know, that Trespassers W is not short for Trespassers William, as Piglet says, but for Trespassers Will Be Shot.  If you are a child, though, trying to make sense of the world around him it makes perfect sense for a grandfather to be named Trespassers W.  The funniness here is a function of the particular adult implied reader who does have a pretty good sense of the world around him, but who has hung next to his adult sensibility a child sensibility and has let them clink around a little at odds with each other.  This clinking sounds like laughter.  So a story can begin, “once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about last Friday,” and it both makes sense and is laughably wrong, because the adult knows how a child can feel that last Friday was an eternity ago and also know it has really only been a few days since then (4).  And of course when you are a child trying to discover the North Pole, it makes perfect sense to look for a stick in the ground and preferably rather close to where you live, when you the adult knows it is actually a huge lonely snowy place very far away with no real poles at all (127).

To become an implied reader, to put oneself in the brains of someone else, is one of the greatest joys of reading narrative, and it is especially fun when the new brains are joyful and juvenile.

Works Cited and Related Reading

Booth, Wayne. The Rhetoric of Fiction. University of Chicago Press, 1961.

Iser, Wolfgang. The Implied Reader. Johns Hopkins UP, 1974.

Milne, A. A. Winnie-the-Pooh. E. P. Dutton & Co., 1961.

Prince, Gerald. “The Narratee Revisited.” Style, vol. 19, no. 3, 1985, pp. 299-303.

On the Same Playing Field: Milton’s Usage of Mythology and Similes in Paradise Lost

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Katie Arthur

John Milton’s time was one during which the religious attitudes and atmospheres were in a constant shifting flux.  The Roman Catholic Church had been challenged, the newly-founded Anglicans were being put on trial for their inauthenticity, and each man had to decide for himself where he stood.  John Milton, true to his nature, decided to stand half-heartedly with the Puritans while faithfully maintaining every single one of his own personal beliefs and conforming to none of theirs with which he did not entirely agree.  He was stubborn in his own views, to the point he did not believe in the complete sacredness of the written Scriptures.  In his long treatise outlining all of his fundamental Christian beliefs, he describes what he understands to be a “double scripture.”  The written Scriptures are a valuable thing, but only insofar as they give instructions on salvation.  The rest of the content of the Bible, because it has been handed down from generation to generation of flawed mankind, is subject to flaw itself.  There is another, more authoritative scripture, though, he says manifested in the heart of the individual believer as the promised Holy Spirit.  He is the ultimate guide, again, for each individual believer, to real Truth, found in either the Bible, or merely divinely inspired.  Along with this rather demeaning position he gives to the written Scriptures, Milton also holds in rather abnormally high regard the ancient literature of his classical education.  He in a sense treats both the sacred literature of his deeply-rooted religious beliefs and the mythical tradition literature with the same veneration, using both simply as pointers to the Truth revealed to him by the Holy Spirit.  (See Austin Woolrych’s article).  Rebekah Waltzmann says in her dissertation very prettily,

for him, the Bible was the book of paramount importance but by no means the only one.  His love of literature took him far beyond the confines of religion, and the Bible is supplemented and enriched by the classics.  While the Bible contained spiritual truths, stories, poetry, and numerous examples that could be used within his work, Milton found within the myths an artistic and moral resonance that could provide him with elements the Bible could not (71).

As he is writing Paradise Lost, which is such a richly religious story, Milton supplements the truth found in the dull words of the Scripture with the beautiful language patterns of the mythical writers.  In particular, he uses the epic simile.  He speaks of biblical truths, for example, the Garden of Eden, in reference to mythological stories, for example, the field in which Proserpine is abducted by Pluto.  Similes used in the way Milton uses them in Paradise Lost are very particular to classical epic poetry, and he makes this allusion quite consciously and unapologetically.  The combination of his rather demeaning position on Scripture, and his blatant passion for pagan mythology gives us leave to wonder about his true opinion of the Scriptures.  He claims they are important, but in his day-to-day living and writing, the way he treats them will show us to what degree he truly values God’s Word (and beyond that, perhaps, God’s authority in his life).  I have chosen to focus on Milton’s epic similes, and, in particular, the comparison he draws between the Garden of Eden and Proserpine’s field of flowers.

First, it will be important to understand a little bit about the way a simile can function formally in a text, and the way Milton uses these formal functions in his poem.  Shane Gasbarra, in his doctorate dissertation for Yale University, says there are four things a simile can do.  First, it can add to what the reader sees, either explaining the narrative subject more fully, in words and images familiar to the reader, or by simply saying it again, giving a mental picture of the narrative subject to the reader, almost acting as a relieving break for the mind that has been at high attention as the author unfolds the narrative.  Second, the simile can be of a form called “multiple-correspondence.”  This is really a sub-purpose of the first, explanatory purpose, but a bit more significant, because in the multiple-correspondence simile, “each detail in the simile must answer some detail in the main narrative” (8).  Obscure nuances of the narrative can be brought out with ease and literary gracefulness by significant things within the simile.  On the other hand, there is the danger searching for one-for-one correspondence within a simple simile can be misleading, or trying to create a one-for-one correspondence can cause the simile to become strained and disgracefully pieced together.  C. A. Martindale, though, says we as readers of Milton are safe to treat all his similes as multiple-correspondence, and should assume any detail we draw out of his similes was intended to be drawn out of the narrative.  Third, a simile can also act as an antagonistic parallel, a contrasting comparison.  The simile can present opposing images to throw into greater relief the virtues of the narrative image.  Fourth, the simile can act as anticipation for events to come later on in the main narrative.  While one detail of the simile image parallels specifically with an image in the main narrative at the very moment of the simile’s presentation, another aspect of the simile may parallel something not yet presented in the main narrative.  The author can use the simile to slip in an almost subconscious suggestion to the reader of what is to come.  So Milton, when he writes his similes, draws on all his classical influences, but because he is John Milton, surpasses them in usage even as he depends on them for his content.  Martindale says some aspects of his similes are like Homer’s and in some aspects they are like Virgil’s, but in every case, he outdoes them.  The important question for us now, is, “why?”  Why does he go to such lengths, displaying his breadth of knowledge and writing capability?  Is it simply to show off, proving he could out-write even the best?  Milton was known to be uncommonly confident in his own superiority.  Or, is it to elevate by antagonism the subject and the characters he is treating in this deeply religious epic poem?

In order to answer that, we must first understand what Milton is drawing from, so we can compare his treatment in his simile to the original treatment.  Milton would have grown up studying all the classical authors: Ovid, Homer, Virgil, Hesiod, Claudian, etc.  The Proserpine simile from Paradise Lost alludes to a myth many of these authors recorded.  In Book IV, Milton is setting the scene for Adam and Eve to be introduced to the reader, painting an extensive picture of the lavish beauty of the Garden in which these two first perfect beings are to dwell, and he says the beauty of this Garden is greater than even that of Proserpine’s field of flowers.  Who was Proserpine?  Good question.  Claudian, in the 5th-century AD, wrote the most complete version of the story Milton would have been familiar with, in his De Raptu Proserpinae (The Rape of Proserpine).

The basic storyline starts with Pluto, the god of the lower regions, and he brings a complaint against Jove, his brother and authority, saying he deserves a wife.  Jove decides that is probably a fine idea, and chooses Ceres’s beautiful maiden daughter, Proserpine, for his brother.  Meanwhile, unaware of the plans made for her daughter, Ceres is fending off hoards of unfit suitors who are looking to win Proserpine’s hand in marriage, and, fed up with the whole process, Ceres hides Proserpine away in Sicily, in a beautiful castle where she will be away from her relentless pursuers.  But Venus, sent by Jove, comes to Proserpine’s castle, saying with sweet words of friendship, she should venture outside the castle every once in a while, her mother is being unfair to her keeping her shut up in the castle, and there is a lovely field of flowers just waiting for her to come and enjoy.  Proserpine is convinced.  She goes, and much to her dismay, finds the beautiful narcissus flower she has just picked was placed by Jove to lure her to the place where Pluto waits to snatch her away in a foggy cloud of violent fury.  Ceres finds an empty castle when she returns to greet her daughter, and in the attempt to find her, flies over the whole earth in despair, asking everywhere for her precious child, spreading her knowledge of agriculture to mankind as she goes.  She happily discovers after much searching Pluto has taken her to be his wife, but because Proserpine has unfortunately eaten the pomegranate he gave her, she is bound to him.  Ceres can take her up to the heavenly regions for part of the year, but she must remain with Pluto for the rest.  Traditionally, this is the explanation given for the changing of the seasons: Spring and Summer are when Proserpine is with her mother, and Ceres is happy and blessing the earth, and Winter and Fall are when she must return to Hades.

The first interesting thing we must note is the context in which Milton brings up this story.  Milton is talking in Book IV of Paradise Lost about the beauty of the Garden, and he brings in this allusion.  The Proserpine myth is not about the field where she picks flowers at all.  Claudian’s account does not mention anything about the field except it has flowers in it.  Of course, we can assume because Ceres found it a fit place to put her beloved daughter, it was beautiful, but Claudian does not dwell on that point the way Milton dwells on the beauty of his Garden.

… Not that fair field,

Of Enna, Where Proserpine gathering flowers,

Herself a fairer flower by gloomy Dis

Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain

To seek her through the world

… might with this Paradise

Of Eden strive (IV.268-275).

Milton uses this simile as explicit antagonism here.  He says Proserpine’s field was beautiful, of course, but it comes nowhere near to being as beautiful as the Garden of Eden.  It seems interesting he should pull out so obscure a detail from the myth to compare to his narrative, but as we look closer, we must give in to the brilliant piece of literary construction Milton creates here.  There are certainly more popular beautiful places in mythological tradition Milton could have chosen to compare to the Garden of Eden, but there is none that plays host to a story as similar to the rest of Milton’s Fall narrative as the story of Proserpine which plays itself out in “that fair field of Enna.”  While seemingly talking only about the beauty of the Garden, Milton lets his simile also do some anticipation here, subtly foreshadowing the entire narrative he is about to unfold.

Milton chooses Proserpine’s story because she herself is a representation of Eve, or more broadly, of mankind in general, whose innocence is taken by evil.  Proserpine allows us to understand more of Milton’s Eve because of both who she is and the situation in which she finds herself.  Proserpine is a child, innocent, but learning how to make decisions on her own.  Eve, we remember, is just newly created, and must learn how to make decisions on her own in keeping with the pleasure of her loving Creator.  Proserpine is the daughter of Ceres.  Eve is the daughter of God.  They are both supremely beautiful, which, in many minds, flawed logic aside, invites ideas of supreme virtue.  It must be pointed out, though, each one-to-one correspondence Milton creates here between the two women is a sort of diagonal parallel.  Each of Proserpine’s characteristics must be positioned in our minds slightly lower than Eve’s corresponding characteristics because Milton says explicitly the Garden of Eden, and naturally, the whole situation he is discussing in the narrative, is more impressive than that of Proserpine’s field.  Proserpine is the daughter of Ceres, but Eve is the daughter of the Lord God Almighty.  Proserpine was an innocent young lady, but Eve was created without flaw, the pinnacle of a perfect creation from the mind of a perfect Creator.

The situation each woman finds herself in is a sort of diagonal parallel as well.  The Garden and the Field are places of both beauty and of potential.  What does it matter, though, that the Garden and the Field are beautiful?  And beyond that, what does it matter that the Garden of Eden is more beautiful than Proserpine’s field?  The magnitude of the beauty snatched from Proserpine and Eve represents the magnitude of the beauty of peace and virtue they lose as well.  But interestingly, Claudian never says Proserpine’s field is a place of innocence.  He presents Proserpine’s field as a sort of neutral ground, full of potential, not necessarily off limits to her, but potentially exposed to danger.  As long as Persephone is without the influence or the presence of anything really corrupting, she is innocent in this place, free from guilt, and she can take full advantage of all the beauty around her with confidence and joy.  But as soon as there is something evil with her, the beauty is snatched from her.  Milton makes the same statement, showing the massive beauty Adam and Eve have access to, but always allowing them their free will, allowing their potential to be corrupted, even in this place of beauty.  But we will notice, like Proserpine, they maintain their innocence until something comes into the beautiful place from outside to corrupt them.

This diagonal parallel Milton sets up between his narrative and his simile is an encouraging indicator of his attitudes toward Scripture.  It cannot be denied that often, the written Scriptures are dull and dry in their verbiage.  Even C.S. Lewis, who of course, loved the Lord and venerated the Scriptures very highly said “it will not continue to give literary delight very long, except to those who go to it for something quite different.”  The Bible was not intended to be read as beautiful literature, but as Truth.  That Milton does not simply compare the Garden of Eden with Proserpine’s Field is significant.  If he had said “The Garden where the blesséd pair was found, was as beautiful as That fair field of Enna, Where Proserpine gathering flowers, etc.,” his language would assume the preexistence of the Field, setting the Field as the first and ultimate standard of beauty.  But he does not say that.  He says the Garden, the reality we find within the written Scriptures is more beautiful.  The myth here is simply a familiar supporting comparison for our minds’ understanding.  Milton does value the Scripture over the pagan texts.  He has looked to them for his source of Truth, and has let the rest of his learning fall into place underneath them.

Bibliography

Claudianus, Claudius. The rape of Proserpine, from Claudian. In three books. With the story of Sextus and Erichtho, from Lucan’s Pharsalia, Book 6. Trans. Jabez Hughes. London,  [1714]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. James Madison University. 5 Dec. 2015.

Gasbarra, Shane Stuart. “Conceptions of Likeness in the Epic Similes of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton.” DA9117619 Yale U, 1991. ProQuest. Web. 15 Nov. 2015.

Lewis, C. S. “Literary Impact Of The Authorized Version.” London Quarterly And Holborn Review 186. (1961): 100-108. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials. Web. 12 Dec. 2015.

Martindale, C. A. “Milton and the Homeric Simile.” Comparative Literature 33.3 (1981): 224-38. ProQuest. Web. 15 Nov. 2015.

Waltmann, Rebekah. “Don’t Take Orpheus without the Lyre: The Intricacies of using Pagan Myths for Christian Purposes in ‘the Divine Comedy’ and ‘Paradise Lost’.” 1510326 Liberty University, 2012. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Web. 1 Dec. 2015.

Woolrych, Austin. “Milton’s Political Commitment: The Interplay of Puritan and Classical Ideals.” Wascana Review 9 (1974): 166-88. ProQuest. Web. 4 Oct. 2015.

Not Separate, Not Sufficient

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Katie Arthur

The word “holy” has been used throughout time to mean many different things, but I will be using it in a very specific sense that has very little to do with the halos around the apostles’ heads in those flat early paintings.  When we see the gold words pressed into the kind crinkly black leather, “The Holy Bible,” the word “holy” takes on two important implications.  Because it is holy, it is first separate.  It is on its own level high above all other teaching, in authority, trustworthiness, and power because it is not from human minds, but from the mind of God.  Second, it is sufficient.  Because it is the highest, most ideal form of teaching, it is necessarily the most comprehensive.  None other is needed.  God, being by nature perfect, would not create something incomplete if it needed to be complete.

In 17th-century Europe, the Renaissance was reintroducing a general appreciation for academia in the ancient manner, for classical ideals and thoughts.  Living among the upheaval of traditional thought patterns was John Milton, a Puritan, not a Catholic, and beyond that, not an Anglican.  He was a very independent man in his views on everything in life.  The Renaissance gave him leave to use his mind as he wished, and his Puritanism gave him leave to use his beliefs as he wished.

In this setting of classicism, of noble and high estimations of the intellectual mind of man, paired with his fierce independence, Milton goes into creating the greatest poetic work in the English language.  With the general intellectual interest shifting back to the classical period, naturally the literary structures of the Renaissance were also informed by the classical modes, and most specifically by the ancients’ mythology.  Guibbory points out because the themes and patterns of the ancients’ writings had been instilled in him since the beginning of his education, Milton must necessarily be influenced in the way he thinks and writes, even about Christianity, by this classical mythology.  I would argue, based on the personal freedom he exercised, and that freedom seen especially in his doctrine of Written Scripture, it is clear Milton did not consider the written Word of God to be “holy,” and this is the reason for his rampant use of the styles and themes from classical mythology in Paradise Lost.  For Milton, the Bible was not separate, for he used mythology and scripture together.  For Milton, neither was it sufficient, for he found he could not write about Ultimate Truths completely without the use of his classical mythology.

Milton wrote a giant treatise outlining all his beliefs on all things Christianity, and within it, we find he believed some things about the Scriptures that are key to understanding the way he wrote Paradise Lost.  He says in his De Doctrina Christiana the Scriptures are “divinely inspired” and “an ideal instrument for educating even unlearned readers in those matters which have most to do with salvation” (Kerrigan 1296).  Milton says the written word is sufficient for salvation, but he goes on to say “we have, particularly under the gospel, a double scripture.  There is the external scripture of the written word and the internal scripture of the Holy Spirit which he, according to God’s promise, has engraved upon the hearts of the believers, and which is certainly not to be neglected.…  The pre-eminent and supreme authority, however, is the authority of the Spirit, which is internal, and the individual possession of each man.…  The external scripture, particularly the New Testament, has often been liable to corruption and is, in fact, corrupt.…  But no one can corrupt the Spirit which guides man to truth” (1300).

This brings up a valid concern in the mind of a careful reader who would like to believe Milton was trustworthy in his handling of the written Word.  If we take this idea to its fullest, albeit, most cynical, conclusions, this looks like an excuse for the Christian to interpret the written Word, and even further, to live his life, taking whatever licenses he desires, all with the assumption of the Holy Spirit working in him the internal scripture.  The only thing keeping him in line is the power of the Holy Spirit, about which Milton is strangely silent in De Doctrina Christiana.  He does not mention anything at all about the Spirit’s day-to-day work in the believer.  He only presents his thoughts on the Spirit’s nature.  It seems Milton believes in the Spirit’s presence and working in the Christian’s life, but decides not to deal with how or to what extent He works.  By ignoring it, Milton leaves himself free to simply live his life, again, however he chooses, assuming the Spirit is working somehow in it.

Peggy Samuels talks in her article “Dueling Erasers” about Milton’s view of the Holy Spirit and the reader of the Scriptures.  She says there is a triadic relationship among the reader, the text, and the Holy Spirit, and the text and the reader deal with each other in the reading process while the Holy Spirit works as mediator.  The reader, of course, comes to the text with his own set of preconceived ideas, simply because he has lived a life before setting these words before his eyes.  Those preconceived ideas that make up the mind of the reader will of course shape the meaning of the text as it enters his mind, but the text, too, shapes the reader, Samuels says, by discovering things in the reader’s mind he may have not known were there.  In this way, Samuels says Milton understood the Christian and the Scriptures to work together.  It sounds to me, even from Samuels’s kindly clarifying explanation, it is much more feasible for the mind of the reader to discover from the text what he himself chooses than for the text to force its way into the places of the reader’s mind he does not want it to go.  The text is static.  It is laid bare in all its vulnerable, unchanging meaning.  But the mind of the reader is actively defensive of meanings and beliefs it does not want exposed.  When this fear of exposure by the fixed moral standard of a written Scripture is paired with the security of an authorized individualism such as the Holy Spirit, it is understandably concerning Milton might be condoning a radical subjectivity in the life of the Christian.  Milton has once again given a blanket permission to the believer to read the Scripture however he chooses by affirming the text will do its powerful work to shape the believer, even though the reality of experience shows the text is simply not more powerful than its reader.

The question now becomes, can Milton take on his Paradise Lost project the way he does?  He is dealing with huge, important truths here, and based on his double scripture doctrine, it is concerning he may present Biblical truths untruly, and even more concerning as he comes at them with his classical mythological background.  In theory, it is feasible for him to combine mythology and scripture into one piece of writing and do it correctly.  In fact, many authors have done it with skill and success.  C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien are prime examples.  They set the truths found in the Bible down as their template, and set out to make much of Biblical truth.  They understood with cheerful and freeing clarity that as the Ultimate Truth, the truth found in the Bible is at the top of the hierarchy, and the pagan myths flow from and are subservient to it.  As they get further and further away from the source, the myths contain lessening degrees of truth, but they still contain it, with the purpose of pointing back to the Ultimate Truth.  Thus, for example, Lewis came to love the dying and resurrecting god archetype from pagan mythology long before he knew Jesus as even a historical figure.  His discovery of Jesus as the origin of the archetype was that much sweeter, knowing the idea he loved for so long was a true and relatable human being in the same realm as himself.  The myth did not lose any of its excitement for turning out to be true, and the truth did not lose any of its weight for turning out to be a good story.  The myth simply served to make the heart love subjectively what the mind knew to be objectively true.  Michael Nelson says this when he says Christianity is simply the pagan myths fulfilled.  He quotes Lewis, saying, “Christianity [answers] two vital questions: ‘Where has religion reached it true maturity?  Where, if anywhere, have the hints of all Paganism been fulfilled?’” (628).

Mythology is useful and good when we use it as a pointer to the Ultimate Truth found in the Bible, and Guibbory makes the claim Milton does indeed use it this way.  He says Milton uses mythology traditions appropriately within the hierarchy of Christianity, knowing these pagan explanation stories in reality present a theology rivaling his own and being careful in how he uses them.  The allusions he makes to classical nature descriptions, for example, are very carefully chosen to never present anything opposing the Christian God’s supremacy, but only those which still allow him to be the Ultimate within the hierarchy, and which magnify Him as such, according to Guiborry (196-198).

This may be the way Milton appears to use mythology in Paradise Lost, but I would bring you once more to his De Doctrina Christiana description of the Scriptures.  Lewis and Tolkien begin with the assumption the written Word of God is at the top of the hierarchy, and, to a degree, simply allow mythology to come into subordination to it.  Milton does not start with the Word of God the way they do.  He begins with the Holy Spirit theoretically in each believer at the top of the hierarchy of truth and allows everything else to come into subordination to it, even the written Scripture.  Let’s return for a moment to the definition of “holy” we were looking at in the beginning.  The Scriptures Lewis and Tolkien held as their Ultimate were separate and sufficient — on a different level than every other writing because of a weightiness that comes from truth, and absolutely complete in the fullness of their truth.  Milton, though,  believed, although they were divinely inspired (which could mean “separate”), they have not been kept so because of the imperfect human hands that have preserved it (so it does not mean “separate”).  He believed, although they are an ideal instrument to illuminate salvation to humanity (which could mean “sufficient”), their authority lies only over salvation and does not extend into the rest of life (so it does not mean “sufficient”).  Therefore, he feels he needs to “justify the ways of God to men” (PL, line 26).  From the very beginning of Paradise Lost, his entire purpose for taking up this giant undertaking is bound up in his belief the written Scripture has not done enough to satisfactorily explain to mankind God’s actions.  This is where mythology comes in.  Since written Scripture, according to Milton, is simply a tool used to support the individual believer’s faith, guided by the Holy Spirit, and since mythology, like we’ve said, is a tool for pointing the believer to Truth, written Scripture and mythology play the same role in Milton’s writing.  They are both simply support for the Ultimate Truth found in the individual believer’s revelation from the Holy Spirit.  John Milton has just essentially said the Word of God and the word of Homer are on the same playing field.

This affects, then, the way we read Paradise Lost.  It calls into the question the degree to which we have made it such a significant cornerstone of English literature.  It mistakenly combines two separate literary traditions.  It should make us wonder whether we have been wrong to make it a cornerstone of Christian literature.  It is misleading to the Christian.  As we read the poem, each allusion he makes must be careful and prayerfully considered and lined up against the measure of the Scripture because we cannot be entirely sure Milton himself lined it up and measured.  It might be possible to read Paradise Lost and see it as simply another clever combination like Lewis’s or Tolkien’s.  Although the written Scriptures seem to be supported in Paradise Lost by the mythological literary tools, understanding from his De Doctrina Christiana he did not believe the written Scriptures to be holy forces us to come to the conclusion the mythology within the poem is not placed below the Scripture but beside.  Perhaps he took his notion of free will a little too far, and as a consequence, produced a massively beautiful, massively successful, massively mistaken contribution to literary tradition.

Works Cited

Guibbory, Achsah. Attitudes Towards Classical Mythology in Seventeenth-Century English Literature. Diss. University of California, 1970. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1975. Print.

Kerrigan, William, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon, eds. The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton. New York: Random House. 2007. Print.

Nelson, Michael. “‘One Mythology among Many’: The Spiritual Odyssey of C. S. Lewis.” Virginia Quarterly Review: A National Journal of Literature and Discussion 72.4 (1996): 619-33. ProQuest. Web. 6 Oct. 2015.

Samuels, Peggy. “Dueling Erasers: Milton and Scripture.” Studies in Philology 96.2 (1999): 180-203. ProQuest. Web. 4 Oct. 2015.

The Freedom to Choose

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Katie Arthur

One of the most exciting things about growing up, after Christmas and trips to Walmart, is learning about the way the world works, and so many things go into creating that excitement.  Parents tell you, “don’t touch the hot stove; you’ll get hurt.”  Granddad says, “bake flour and sugar and eggs together, and you’ll get cookies.”  Your backside says, “don’t yell at your sister, or I’ll get spanked again.”  Eventually, you come to understand patterns in the world, and you find there is a cause and effect tendency in the universe.  You come to expect certain things in certain situations, and you discover in those expectations, you have an exciting power over your circumstances.  You can plug “x” social tool into “y” social situation to invariably come up with “z” desired social outcome.  But there has been a questioning among the literary minds, a wondering about whether cause and effect is actually a valid way to understand the world.  They wonder whether we shouldn’t unlearn those patterns we grew up into, whether we shouldn’t toss our expectations for anything and everything, perhaps, out the window.  Absurdist literature is a great challenge to readers’ expectations, calling into question their means of knowing anything.  In their plays Waiting for Godot and The Importance of Being Earnest, Samuel Beckett and Oscar Wilde present a challenge to their audiences, asking them especially to examine their assumptions about the universality of words, by creating radically different meanings in different contexts, despite using the same words.

The primary underlying understanding when reading absurdist literature, the only universality granted by absurdists, is relativity.  Nothing can be assumed to be the same for separate people, times, situations, places, etc.  Although extreme relativism is accepted as a universal in the absurd, it cannot be understood to be a set down rule, a binding law governing all that happens in the world.  It is simply a coincidence.  Like a scientific theory, it is an observed pattern — or lack thereof, in this case — helping us understand the world and the limits of our understanding of the world.

When we happen upon them, Vladimir and Estragon are sitting there, “waiting for Godot,” not quite sure he will ever come, discussing a scattered montage of topics, progressing from suicide to taking off boots to painful suffering to buttoning one’s fly.  Vladimir ends the scene, saying concerning the maintenance of one’s fly, one should “Never neglect the little things of life” (Godot, Act I).  In other words, he is saying, the little things are too important to be overlooked, and in doing so, he makes an interesting word choice.  In my personal experience, “little” things are just … small.  He seems to be comparing buttoning his fly with a bigger, one might say, more important, weightier issue.  But that’s exactly the point.  That is my experience.  One might say that.  The problem for the absurdists is we can’t say anything about Vladimir’s experience.  We haven’t lived it.  To Vladimir, buttoning his fly is a valuable thing, despite being called “little,” despite my understanding of the word “little.”  He also does an interesting thing with the language style.  This is said in the style we often associate with proverbs, pithy sayings meant to be applicable to just about everything, everywhere, and in all times.  But, my experience is not the same as Vladimir’s.  The proverb works for him, but it does not work for me, which totally defeats the point of a proverb.  We can’t expect one proverb, Beckett’s work shows us, to apply to all times and places and people.  The proverb, as a literary device, has been subtly attacked and its readers and writers asked to reevaluate its use entirely, because Vladimir wants to button his fly and I don’t see the big deal about it.

Wilde also uses his play on the Significance of Being Sincere (wait…?) to ask his audience to reconsider their expectations of absolutes.  Algernon and his dear friend Jack are calmly discussing their complicated marriages over an afternoon snack, and, as they often do, things get a little tense.  Jack is annoyed with Algernon for continuing to calmly eat muffins, Jack’s muffins, when they are in such a terrible heap of trouble.  “I say it’s perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances” (Earnest, Act II).  Jack then goes to eat a muffin, and Algernon retorts.

ALGERNON: But you have just said it was perfectly heatless to eat muffins.

JACK: I said it was perfectly heartless of you, under the circumstances.  That is a very different thing (Earnest, Act II).

Algernon sees an incongruity in Jack’s logic, as did I when I read this (although, I cannot speak for anyone else who reads this, as per absurdist suggestion).  It is heartless for Algernon to eat muffins.  It is not heartless for Jack to eat muffins.  They are in exactly the same situation.  The rules for eating are arbitrary.  There is no reason behind their existence, and that does not create any problems in the absurdist universe.  They are also performative to a degree.  It is heartless for Algernon to eat muffins because Jack says so.  This does not follow any of the social patterns we’ve learned as children.  There is no cause and effect here.  He simply says “so,” and it is “so.”  Words are used here to create arbitrary value.  Jack is free to say whatever he choses, to create whatever kind of values he choses, because he is using words: “I said it was perfectly heartless of you…” (Earnest, Act II, emphasis added).

Beckett’s fake proverb and Wilde’s arbitrary value assigning change the way we read absurdist drama.  We must now understand, language is versatile.  It can apply to many situations or only a few.  It is powerful to create and change the world.  It is itself only regulated by use, so must therefore change as its use is changed.  This is a freeing idea, they say.  With the versatility of language in mind, there is freedom to read without the need to expect universality.  We are free to simply be delighted by the author-creator’s (hopefully) clever uses of the language.  In speaking and writing, the absurdists claim there is freedom to discard the expected patterns, the rules that must regulate his creation (which are fairly arbitrary themselves).  Absurdist literature must be read as a challenge to discard patterns and accept the freedom of relativity.

Works Cited

Beckett, Samuel. Waiting For Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Vol. 8. Eds. Jahan Ramazani and Jon Stallworthy.  New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2012. Print.

Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People. Project Gutenberg, 2006. Ebook.