Dear Son of Memory: Milton's Engagement with Shakespeare
type: CreativeWork
description: Dear Son of Memory establishes new lines of inquiry into Milton’s engagement with Shakespeare, exploring explicit verbal allusions to Shakespeare’s plays in Milton’s works, as well as echoes of characters, scenes, and themes. It argues that Milton viewed Shakespeare sympathetically, rather than as a rival and it therefore revises the legacy of Harold Bloom’s “anxiety of influence” model, which still dominates scholarship in Milton studies today. More specifically, this project offers evidence from Milton’s early poems to show that Milton regarded Shakespeare as a fellow vatic poet and a friendly influence who helped him to dramatize the two central tenets of his own Protestant vision: the vital importance of Christian mercy, and the need for trust in, and obedience to, a loving God’s providential design. Chapter 1 re-examines the two texts that scholars generally recognize as the places where Milton most clearly engages with Shakespeare: “On Shakespeare” and Comus. In “On Shakespeare,” Milton transforms panegyric imagery to demonstrate his appreciation of Shakespeare and to figure him as a fellow visionary poet. In Comus, Milton draws upon The Tempest to dramatize the Lady’s Christian faith and the Attendant Spirit’s divine origin. Milton models his Attendant Spirit on Shakespeare’s Ariel and his Lady on Shakespeare’s Miranda, Christianizing the role of both. This argument challenges critics who have interpreted these texts as Milton’s anxious reactions to Shakespeare’s imaginative power instead of as a resource for articulating Milton’s own poetic vision. Chapter 2 analyzes verbal and thematic echoes between the soliloquies of Adam and Eve in books nine and ten of Paradise Lost and the soliloquies of Hamlet and Brutus. Milton revisits these Shakespearean soliloquies in order to show the mind’s proclivity to doubt and error, but, unlike Shakespeare, Milton suggests that erroneous logic fueled by personal desires can be overcome, and that a relationship with God can …
abstract: Dear Son of Memory establishes new lines of inquiry into Milton’s engagement with Shakespeare, exploring explicit verbal allusions to Shakespeare’s plays in Milton’s works, as well as echoes of characters, scenes, and themes. It argues that Milton viewed Shakespeare sympathetically, rather than as a rival and it therefore revises the legacy of Harold Bloom’s “anxiety of influence” model, which still dominates scholarship in Milton studies today. More specifically, this project offers evidence from Milton’s early poems to show that Milton regarded Shakespeare as a fellow vatic poet and a friendly influence who helped him to dramatize the two central tenets of his own Protestant vision: the vital importance of Christian mercy, and the need for trust in, and obedience to, a loving God’s providential design. Chapter 1 re-examines the two texts that scholars generally recognize as the places where Milton most clearly engages with Shakespeare: “On Shakespeare” and Comus. In “On Shakespeare,” Milton transforms panegyric imagery to demonstrate his appreciation of Shakespeare and to figure him as a fellow visionary poet. In Comus, Milton draws upon The Tempest to dramatize the Lady’s Christian faith and the Attendant Spirit’s divine origin. Milton models his Attendant Spirit on Shakespeare’s Ariel and his Lady on Shakespeare’s Miranda, Christianizing the role of both. This argument challenges critics who have interpreted these texts as Milton’s anxious reactions to Shakespeare’s imaginative power instead of as a resource for articulating Milton’s own poetic vision. Chapter 2 analyzes verbal and thematic echoes between the soliloquies of Adam and Eve in books nine and ten of Paradise Lost and the soliloquies of Hamlet and Brutus. Milton revisits these Shakespearean soliloquies in order to show the mind’s proclivity to doubt and error, but, unlike Shakespeare, Milton suggests that erroneous logic fueled by personal desires can be overcome, and that a relationship with God can …
author: Fox, Bradley
keywords: Literature in English, British Isles, Milton, Shakespeare, Influence, Comus, Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes
date published: 2018-09-01T07:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:58:22Z
provider: City University of New York - Graduate Center
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York