David V. Urban
Surprised by Richardson:
C. S. Lewis, Jonathan Richardson, and Their Comparative Influence on Stanley
Fish’s Surprised by Sin: The Reader in “Paradise Lost”
1> For the past
twenty-five years, the idea that Stanley Fish’s seminal Surprised by
Sin: The Reader in “Paradise Lost” is “a methodologically radical
update” of C. S. Lewis’s A Preface to “Paradise Lost” “as
a literary monument to mainstream Christianity” (Rumrich, Milton 4)
has developed into a truism of sorts within certain circles of Milton
scholarship. This association between Lewis and Fish, as far as I can find, was
first posited by John Peter Rumrich in 1987 in his first book, Matter
of Glory: A New Preface to “Paradise Lost.” This book, which, as its title
indicates, is primarily a response to Lewis, discusses Fish’s book only
briefly, calling it the “most influential expression” of Lewis’s critical
paradigm, and asserting that Fish adjusted Lewis’s emphasis to offer a
“catechismal version” of Milton’s epic (Matter 9). In his Hanford
Award-winning 1990 article, “Uninventing Milton,” Rumrich called Surprised
by Sin “Fish’s theoretically sophisticated update of Lewis’s orthodox
model” (249), and in his 1996 book, Milton Unbound: Controversy and
Reinterpretation, Rumrich articulates the statement I cite in my opening
sentence. More recently, in his 2004 book, The Tyranny of Heaven,
Michael Bryson approvingly quotes Rumrich’s 1996 statement and himself calls Surprised
by Sin “a combination of C. S. Lewis and psychology” (22). And in a
2005 essay, Peter Herman argues that Fish’s book “turns
Lewis’ observation” that “‘many of those who say they dislike Milton’s God only
mean that they dislike God’ into a deliberate, pedagogical strategy for
instructing the reader as to his or her genuine state” (“Paradigms” 12, quoting
Lewis 126).
2> In my own 2011
article, which challenges what I consider unfair and inaccurate depictions of
Lewis’s book by certain scholars associated
with the New Milton Criticism, I spend a paragraph questioning the
legitimacy of Rumrich’s, Bryson’s, and Herman’s emphases on the degree of
influence which A Preface to “Paradise Lost” actually has
on Surprised by Sin. I note that Lewis’s discernible influence on
Fish is actually surprisingly meager, with Fish citing Lewis on only seven
pages, agreeing with him only briefly, discounting Lewis’s dismissive
statements concerning the style and content of Books 11 and 12 of
Paradise Lost, and, in his introduction, listing not Lewis as an influence
but rather highlighting A. J. A. Waldock and Joseph Summers, two Miltonists who
opposed Lewis on important critical matters (Urban, “Speaking” 101-02).
3> To my surprise, my article was answered by a forum of antagonistic responses from three important Renaissance scholars, all of whom, among other things, specifically take issue with my questioning of Lewis’s putative supreme influence on Fish. Herman (“C. S. Lewis” 258), Joseph Wittreich (270), and Richard Strier (272) all question the value of and accuracy of indices for measuring influence (indices, of course, amounted to only part of my support), and all confidently affirm a general similarity between the two works.1 But none of them puts forward a developed defense for why Surprised by Sin should be considered a kind of methodologically sophisticated updating of Lewis’s Preface. Neither does Bryson, nor, more significantly, does Rumrich in any of the three works I cite in the previous paragraph. The fact that Rumrich’s repeatedly stated connection between Lewis and Fish has gained such committed adherents reminds me of Douglas Bush’s statement that “in literary criticism, as in other forms of propaganda, confident assertion goes a long way” (2). My quoting of Bush is not done to cast aspersions on Rumrich and the others, all of whose scholarly insights have enriched my own scholarship, whatever our disagreements, but I continue to question the extent of the Lewis-Fish connection, and I think it crucial to recognize that it is a connection that has been often stated but never demonstrated.
4> Which
brings me now to the greater purpose of this present essay. Having seen
Herman’s, Wittreich’s, and Strier’s continued commitment to Rumrich’s orignal
formulation, I thought it necessary to again revisit Surprised by Sin to
see if Lewis’s influence on Fish was more pervasive than I had thought. But I
have still not found such pervasive influence. Rather, revisiting Fish’s book
has brought me to the following contention: that if Surprised by Sin should
be seen as “a methodologically radical update” of any previous
book’s view of Paradise Lost “as a literary monument to
mainstream Christianity,” that book is not Lewis’s Preface but
rather Jonathan Richardson the Elder’s Explanatory Notes and Remarks on
Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and its attached Life of the Author
and a Discourse on the Poem, which precedes the Explanatory Notes in
the same volume (1734).2 This issue is significant not
merely for the controversy at hand but also for the broader significance of
recognizing the pieces of earlier Milton criticism that helped to shape Surprised
by Sin. Because Fish’s book continues to be the most influential work of
Milton scholarship since its initial 1967 publication, critical works that
strongly influenced Fish can rightly be said to be among the most important
works of Milton criticism in history. Richardson’s volume, despite being rarely
studied, falls into this category. The remainder of this essay will demonstrate
both that Lewis’s Preface is not especially influential on Surprised
by Sin and that Richardson’s volume stands as the work of orthodox
Christian Milton criticism whose influence is most foundational to Fish’s
seminal study.
5> There are
several factors that make untenable the assertion of Lewis’s alleged supreme
influence on Fish’s book. The first is the comparative lack of explicit
reference. We should not minimize the fact that Fish himself clearly stated in
the preface of his work’s first edition that the scholars who “most influenced”
him were A. J. A. Waldock and Joseph Summers (lxxii). And, not surprisingly,
Waldock’s and Summers’s explicit influence on Fish’s book is reflected by
Fish’s consistent interaction with them throughout his work. According to
Fish’s index, Waldock and Summers are the two scholars whom Fish cites the
most, being cited on twenty-five and eighteen pages respectively.3 Not
insignificantly, the scholar whom Fish cites the most after Waldock and Summers
is John Peter (cited on seventeen pages), a Miltonist who notes in the preface
to A Critique of “Paradise Lost” the tremendous degree of
agreement between his book and Waldock’s “Paradise Lost” and Its
Critics (ix).
6> Fish’s
debt to Waldock is seen throughout Surprised by Sin, but
particularly in its opening pages where Fish develops his methodological
approach to Milton’s epic—largely regarding the epic narrator’s relationship to
his readers—over and against Waldock’s approach (2-9). Similarly, early on in
his book, Fish credits Summers for anticipating his emphasis on Milton’s use of
the technique of the “guilty reader,” an emphasis that guides Fish’s
hermeneutic of Paradise Lost (2; cf. 142). Both Fish’s
painstaking analysis of Waldock’s critical technique in relation to his own and
Fish’s explicit citation of Summers’s foundational influence upon Fish’s reader
response approach to Milton are especially significant in light of Wittreich’s
recent suggestion that Fish follows Lewis in Lewis’s contention that Milton
manipulates his readers (270). That is not to say that Lewis did not influence
Fish’s understanding of Milton’s relationship to the reader; indeed, late in
his book Fish cites Lewis in this regard (302).4 But Fish’s stated
primary influences regarding the Miltonic narrator’s relationship to the reader
are Waldock and Summers. Lewis’s influence in this matter is evident but not
primary.
7> And this
last point relates closely to the matter of Lewis’s influence on Fish’s book in
terms of Surprised by Sin being a “literary monument to
mainstream Christianity.” Simply put, Lewis is part of a broader orthodox
tradition that Fish engages, but Lewis does not stand out in Surprised
by Sin as the member of that tradition most significant to Fish’s
study. Early in the preface to his book’s second edition, Fish states that he
seeks to integrate the orthodox interpretive tradition, “stretching from
Addison to C. S. Lewis and Douglas Bush” (ix), with the Satanic/unorthodox
tradition represented by Blake, Shelley, Waldock, and Empson (ix-x). But unlike Waldock, whose frequent and
foundational presence in Surprised by Sin has been noted,
Lewis is cited only sporadically—on seven pages throughout the book and then
generally only in passing. For example, in the midst of his detailed response
to Waldock’s analysis of Satan’s character and the narrator’s intrusive voice,
Fish states, “It is not enough to analyse, as Lewis and others have, the
speciousness of Satan” (6)—and then Lewis is not mentioned again for nearly a
hundred and forty pages, at which point Lewis is briefly quoted but not
seriously engaged (145). Indeed, on the page where Fish engages Lewis most
closely—concerning Lewis’s contention that the Fall in Paradise Lost equates
to disobedience—Fish explicitly notes that Lewis aligns himself with Addison,
and he even chides Lewis for attempting to make the reader’s task too simple
(208).5 Similarly, Fish agrees with Lewis that Adam, instead
of falling along with Eve, could have “interceded with God on her behalf”
(Lewis 123; qtd. in Fish 269), but Fish does this in connection with his
approval of Irene Samuel’s admonition that Adam should have trusted in the
benevolence of the Father (Fish 269-70; Samuel 242-43). Notably, Fish’s
engagement with Samuel here is far more developed than his interaction with
Lewis. Again, Lewis’s influence on Fish here is evident, but it is simply not
dominant, and to suggest otherwise is to misrepresent Lewis’s importance to
Fish.
8> But if
Lewis’s lack of dominant influence on Fish is evident by the comparative
paucity of Fish’s direct interaction with him, it is particularly evident in
how Fish departs from Lewis on several crucial matters of interpretation, all
of which are matters that Lewis discusses only briefly but which Fish addresses
at length. The first concerns Lewis’s harsh deprecation of books 11 and 12 of Paradise
Lost, famously calling them an “untransmuted lump of futurity” (125). But
Fish strongly maintains the value of these books—explicitly disagreeing with
Lewis and noting several subsequent scholars who defended their value over and
against Lewis (300)—and he dedicates chapter 7 to a sustained analysis of the
very books that Lewis does not at all engage but rather dismisses with the
aforementioned statement.
9> A second
area in which Fish’s approach significantly differs from Lewis’s involves
Milton’s poetic presentation of God the Father, a presentation which Lewis
considers rather mediocre (126-27). Fish, by contrast, defends Milton’s
presentation of the Father throughout the second chapter of Surprised
by Sin, crafting his defense of Milton’s God in response to numerous
scholars from across several centuries, with Lewis being absent altogether. And
it certainly won’t do to agree with Herman that Fish “turns Lewis’ observation”
that “‘many of those who say they dislike Milton’s God only mean that they
dislike God’ into a deliberate, pedagogical strategy for instructing the reader
as to his or her genuine state” (“Paradigms” 12, quoting Lewis 126). The
problem with Herman’s assertion goes beyond the important fact that Lewis’s
quoted statement appears nowhere in Surprised by Sin. The bigger
issue is that Lewis’s statement specifically refers to unbelievers’ distaste
for both Milton’s God and the God of Christianity, while Fish’s book emphasizes
the reading experience of Milton’s assumed 17th-century Christian
reader, whose presumably sometimes adverse responses to Milton’s God are
orchestrated by Milton in order to test and refine that reader’s faith.
10> This
last point is especially germane to the final and perhaps most significant
interpretive difference between Lewis and Fish. Lewis states emphatically that Paradise
Lost “is not a religious poem” that enables a reader to have “his
devotion quickened,” and he states that a reader who hopes to gain such
devotional edification from Milton’s epic will find it “cold, . . . heavy, and
external” (127). For Lewis, reading Paradise Lost is not “a
religious exercise” (128), and its value for developing the reader’s spiritual
maturity and personal piety is minimal. But Fish’s book specifically affirms
the poem’s devotional value, arguing throughout that “for the Christian reader Paradise
Lost is a means of confirming him in his faith” (55). So Fish’s
perception of the poem’s relationship to the reader is fundamentally different
from Lewis’s. And to assert, as Rumrich does, that Fish’s “catechismal version
of Paradise Lost” is a variant “expression” of Lewis’s “basic
argument” (Matter 9) is to seriously overstate the similarity
between Lewis’s and Fish’s books.6 Indeed, such a deep connection between
Lewis and Fish should simply not be asserted if there is convincing evidence
that Fish draws significantly on a different orthodox Christian interpretation
of Milton’s poem for his own approach to Paradise Lost in Surprised
by Sin.
11> This is
where Richardson comes in. As I sought to find any precedent for Rumrich’s
original 1987 statement connecting Fish and Lewis, I read every review of Surprised
by Sin listed in Huckabay and Klemp’s bibliography (238). Not a single
reviewer states anything about Lewis’s special influence upon Fish, including
Earl Miner, who, in calling Surprised by Sin “unquestionably
the liveliest book on Milton since C. S. Lewis’s little Preface to
‘Paradise Lost’” (300), makes no substantive connection between the two. Two
reviewers, however, briefly but specifically note the deep similarity between
Fish’s and Richardson’s respective readings of Milton’s epic (Sims 535; Morris
137). As I will discuss below, Fish himself makes this connection explicitly,
but it has not been discussed by later scholars, and it has been missed or
ignored by those scholars who have continued to press the case for Lewis’s
special influence on Fish.
12> On the
surface, Richardson (1665-1745) seems an unlikely candidate to serve as a primary
influence upon Fish’s seminal work of reader response criticism, but a closer
look at his volume on Milton reveals the ways in which it anticipates Fish’s
concerns. A respected painter and writer of art theory and criticism,
Richardson demonstrates his high regard for Milton’s writings in his citations
of Milton in both his Essay on the Theory of Painting (1715)
and Two Discourses: An Essay on the Whole of Art Criticism (1719).
And his writing of the Explanatory Notes was at least partly
prompted by Richard Bentley’s “corrected” edition of Milton’s epic, Dr.
Bentley’s Emendation on the Twelve Books of Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” which
Richardson quite disdained (Gibson-Wood 113-14).7 Moreover,
Richardson’s high regard for Milton’s art was matched by his awed respect for
Milton as a man, something evident throughout Richardson’s Life of
Milton, which, in its various superlatively laudatory remarks about Milton’s
character can be rightly described as hagiography.8 Curiously,
however, it is perhaps Richardson’s idolization of Milton that gives rise to
his writings being a basis for Fish’s application-oriented approach to Paradise
Lost. For clearly Richardson considered Milton a man worthy of emulation
even as he considered Paradise Lost a poem worthy of personal
application. Before Richardson begins directly discussing Paradise Lost,
he notes of Milton that “Holy Scripture . . . was his Guide in Faith and
Practice; but interpreted by his Own Judgment Ultimately. What Better, what
Other can Any of Us Have, Desire, or Pretend to?” (xli). Richardson himself
seemed to imitate Milton in this regard, holding to a general Christian
orthodoxy,9 yet “not accepting religious authority uncritically
but rather . . . arriving at [his] own conclusions through reason” (Gibson-Wood
39).
13> Richardson’s
emulation of Milton also relates to his view of Paradise Lost itself.
In Richardson’s view, “Milton’s Religion” is best expressed in book 12 of Paradise
Lost, starting at line 561, in which “our Progenitor [Adam] professes his
Faith in One God, and that ’tis his Duty to Obey, Love, and Fear him; to
consider Him as Always Present, to Depend upon his Providence . . .”
(lxv-lxvi). Adam’s confession of faith, Richardson postulates, was likely
“Copy’d from what [Milton] found Engraven on his Own Heart” (lxvi). Moreover,
as I shall discuss below, Richardson goes on to contend that Adam’s situation
in book 12 is eminently applicable to the Christian readers of his day, a view
very similar to Fish’s contention that Paradise Lost was
written to awaken the spiritual convictions of Milton’s contemporary Christian
readers.
14> Richardson’s
direct and foundational influence on Fish is explicitly evident in the several
categories discussed above wherein Fish’s approach to Paradise Lost clearly
differs from Lewis’s. Richardson’s influence is seen not only in the number of
times Fish cites him, but also in the striking length of certain quotations and
the manner in which Fish draws on him in places especially important for Fish’s
formulations of certain of his most crucial critical assertions.10 First
and foremost it is seen in Fish’s approach to reading Paradise Lost as
a complex and involved linguistic and spiritual exercise. Fish relies heavily
on Richardson late in his opening chapter, where, as Fish puts forward his own
view of Paradise Lost as a work intended to spiritually convict
and quicken the Christian reader, he quotes Richardson no fewer than six times.
Fish calls Richardson his predecessor in his paradoxical emphasis on the reader
becoming “the detachedly involved observer of his own mental processes” (54). Fish
notes, “Repeatedly Richardson pays tribute to the subtlety of Milton’s method
and acknowledges the special claim the poem has on his Christian attention”
(54). Fish then cites approvingly Richardson’s emphasis on how Milton “will
Awaken” the reader’s “Attention” (Richardson cxliv, qtd. in Fish 54), and, in a
two-page span, Fish goes on to quote Richardson in several lengthy blocked
passages. The first of these passages is introduced by Fish with a sentence
whose importance can hardly be overstated: “Richardson’s description of the
poem’s demands accords perfectly with my own” (54; italics mine). In
light of this statement, it is difficult to imagine another Milton critic in
the orthodox interpretive tradition—Lewis or anyone else—who can be considered
a more foundational influence upon Fish’s book.
15> Fish
goes on to quote the following passage:
“A Reader of Milton must
be Always upon Duty; he is Surrounded with Sense, it rises in every Line, every
Word is to the Purpose . . . he Expresses himself So Concisely, Employs Words
so Sparingly, that whoever will Possess His Ideas must Dig for them, and
Oftentimes pretty far below the Surface. If This is call’d Obscurity let it be
remembered ’tis Such a One as is Complaisant to the Reader, not Mistrusting his
Ability . . . if a Good Writer is not Understood ’tis because his Reader is
Unacquainted with, or Incapable of the Subject, or will not Submit to do the
Duty of a Reader, which is to Attend Carefully to what he Reads.” (Richardson
cxliv-cxlv; qtd. in Fish 54)
16> I quote
this and other of Fish’s lengthy quotations of Richardson in their entirety to
demonstrate how important Richardson is to Fish as he develops his
reader-response hermeneutic, especially his belief that Milton intends Paradise
Lost to be a poem that brings the reader to greater Christian
maturity. In the passage directly above, Fish clearly resonates deeply with
Richardson on the matter of the responsibility of the reader to engage Milton’s
complexity.
17> And Fish
goes on to again quote Richardson at length regarding the way Paradise
Lost can serve as “an instrument by which the reader’s mind can be
educated to receive” the poem’s “sublime ideas” (55):
“And all These Sublime
Ideas are Convey’d to Us in the most Effectual and Engaging Manner: the Mind of
the Reader is Tempered, and Prepar’d, by Pleasure, ’tis Drawn, and Allured,
’tis Awaken’d and Invigorated to receive Such Impressions as the Poet intended
to give it: it Opens the Fountains of Knowledge, Piety and Virtue, and pours
Along Full Streams of Peace, Comfort and Joy to Such as can Penetrate the true
Sense of the Writer, and Obediently Listen to his Songs.” (clx; qtd. in Fish
55)
18> Clearly
Richardson’s celebration of the poem’s “Fountains of Knowledge, Piety and
Virtue” that bring “Full Streams of Peace, Comfort and Joy” to the obedient
reader differs tremendously from Lewis’s belief that those reading Paradise
Lost in hopes of devotional edification will find the epic “cold, . .
. heavy, and external” (Lewis 127). And Fish explicitly agrees with
Richardson’s assessment of Paradise Lost’s religious
value, unabashedly affirming the devotional riches Milton’s poem offers to its
obedient readers.
19> But Fish
goes further still. Introducing yet another lengthy Richardson quotation, Fish
adds that “the reader who does listen obediently will have participated in
something more than a literary experience, since this poem is concerned with his
very salvation” (55):
“What does the War of Troy,
or the Original of the Roman Name, say it was That of Britain,
Concern You and Me? the Original of Things, the First Happy, but Precarious
Condition of Mankind, his Deviation from Rectitude, his Lost State, his
Restoration to the Favour of God by Repentance, and Imputed Righteousness. . .
. These Concern Us All Equally, and Equally with our First Parents, whose
Story, and That of the Whole Church of God, this Poem sets before us. . . .
Whereas Whoever Profits, as he May, by This Poem will, as Adam in
the Garden, Enjoy the Pleasures of Sense to the Utmost, with Temperance, and
Purity of Heart, the Truest and Fullest Enjoyment of them; and will Moreover
perceive his Happiness is Establish’d upon a Better Foundation than That of his
Own Impeccability, and Thus possess a Paradise Within Far more Happy than that
of Eden.” (clxi-ii; qtd. in Fish 55)
20> Immediately
after this passage, Fish comments approvingly: “In short, for the Christian
reader Paradise Lost is a means of confirming him in his
faith” (55). Again, it goes without saying that Fish’s approach to the poem as
a profound aid to the Christian reader’s devotion fundamentally differs from
Lewis’s dismissal of such a devotional emphasis. And this all the more
demonstrates the problem with Rumrich’s view that Fish here is somehow
recasting Lewis’s “basic argument” into a “catechismal” reading of Milton’s
poem (Matter 9). Indeed, Fish here is not modeling his reading on
Lewis’s at all. Rather, he is modeling it explicitly and in great detail
directly upon the reading of Paradise Lost offered by
Richardson.
21> Fish
goes on to quote Richardson yet again as he concludes his opening chapter. Fish
notes that Richardson even “suggest[s] a comparison” between Paradise
Lost and the Bible, which, Richardson notes (quoting 2 Timothy 3.16),
is “Profitable for Doctrine, for Reproof, for Correction, for Instruction in
Righteousness” (clviii; qtd. in Fish 55, italics Richardson’s). But instead
of challenging such a hyperbolic comparison, Fish repeats and approves of it,
and he implicitly calls for his readers to agree: “Doctrine, reproof,
correction, instruction. Milton could not have wished for higher praise, and he
should not be judged by a lesser standard” (56). Fish’s suggestion that
Milton’s epic merits a response similar to one’s response to Scripture is drawn
directly from Richardson. For Richardson and Fish alike, Milton’s Christian
readers are to engage the poem with the expectation that it will teach,
challenge, convict, and inspire them on every level, including and indeed
specifically on a devotional level. By the end of Surprised by Sin’s
opening chapter, Richardson’s foundational influence upon Fish’s hermeneutic is
clear, as should be the stark difference between Richardson’s and Fish’s
approaches to Paradise Lost, on the one hand, and Lewis’s, on the
other.
22> With
Richardson’s foundational importance to Fish’s hermeneutic and his emphasis
upon reading Paradise Lost as a Christian religious exercise
established, I shall now examine Richardson’s influence upon Fish in the two
other specific areas about which, as I noted earlier, Fish starkly differs from
Lewis. The first area concerns the matter of Milton’s God the Father, whom
Lewis considers a less than successful poetic creation (126-27). Fish, of
course, defends Milton’s God throughout chapter 2 of Surprised by Sin,
and in that chapter’s final section, entitled “Carnal and Spiritual Responses,”
Fish summarizes the relationship between the reader and Milton’s Satan on one
hand, and the reader and Milton’s God and his heaven on the other, by
asserting, “The reader’s response to the two styles [Satan’s and God’s], and
thus to what each of them represents, determines his spiritual status,
measuring the extent to which in his soul the pride of life has been supplanted
by love of Heaven” (88). Fish goes on to invoke Richardson to support this
assertion: “Only the pure mind, Richardson remarks, is able to be touched with
the beauties of Heaven” (89), and he quotes Richardson at length:
“We have seen Hell; Now
Heaven opens to our View; from Darkness Visible we are come to Inconceivable
Light; from the Evil One, to the Supream Good, and the Divine Mediator; from
Angels Ruin’d and Accurs’d to Those who hold their First State of Innocence and
Happiness; the Pictures Here are of a very Different Nature from the former:
Sensible things are more Describable than Intellectual; Every One can Conceive
in some Measure the Torment of Raging Fire; None but Pure Minds, and Minds
Capable Of, and Accustom’d To Contemplation Can be Touch’d Strongly with the
Things of Heaven, a Christian Heaven; but He that Can may Find and possess Some
Ideas of what he hopes for, where there is a Fullness of Joy and
Pleasure for Evermore.” (99; qtd. in Fish 89)
23> Fish
quotes the above passage without further comment, but his dependence on
Richardson is clear, and Fish’s dependence on Richardson here links seamlessly
with his earlier use of Richardson to establish the reading of Paradise
Lost as a religious exercise. In the case of reading about God and
heaven in book 3 of Milton’s epic, readers can measure their spiritual maturity
by their response to Milton’s God and his heavenly entourage. And Fish’s
aforementioned Richardson-inspired emphasis on Paradise Lost’s
value for “Doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction” (56) is clearly
applicable here, both for the carnal and the spiritual readers of Milton’s
poem. As Richardson observes, pure minds accustomed to contemplation can be
moved and instructed by what they find in Milton’s heaven, and readers whose
purity is found wanting, being reproved and corrected, may, as Fish goes on to
note, “ascend on the stylistic scale by ‘purging [their] intellectual ray’ to
the point where [their] understanding is once more ‘fit and proportionable to
Truth the object and end of it,’ and [their] affections follow what [their]
reason (the eye of the mind) approves” (90). These, according to Fish, are the
rewards for obedient readers of Paradise Lost, and such rewards
recall Richardson’s previously quoted promise to such readers: that Paradise Lost “Opens
the Fountains of Knowledge, Piety and Virtue, and pours Along Full Streams of
Peace, Comfort and Joy to Such as can Penetrate the true Sense of the Writer,
and Obediently Listen to his Songs” (clx; qtd. in Fish 55).
24> If
Richardson’s influence is evident in Fish’s approach to book 3 of Paradise
Lost, it is seen even more clearly in his approach to books 11 and 12, the
books Lewis memorably dismissed, as noted earlier, as “an untransmuted lump of
futurity” (125). Unlike Lewis, Fish emphasizes the importance of these books
and, as he does with the rest of the poem, also emphasizes their personal
religious application to Milton’s readers, again drawing on Richardson to
support his analysis. In his opening paragraph of chapter 7, Fish discusses the
fallen Adam’s education in books 11 and 12, noting, “His failures parallel our
own at every point and his successes recreate the process by which we as
readers have attained the unity of vision he must now regain; at the end of
Book XII, as Richardson saw, he is brought ‘into the Condition in Which We Are,
on Even Ground with Us’” (287, quoting Richardson
535). For both Fish and Richardson, we as fallen readers are to recognize in
the Adam of these books our own fallen condition and identify with him as one
who, in Richardson’s words, represents “Every One of Us in particular” (535).
25> But we
are to recognize in Adam not only our fallen state, but also our capacity for
spiritual restoration and development. As Fish writes, “The reader is expected
to recognize the stages of his growth and to relate them to our own spiritual
history” (292), and he again quotes Richardson at length:
“ . . . ’tis Delightful
to see how Finely Milton observes observes all the Growth of
the New Man. Creation was all at Once, Regeneration is like the Natural
Progression, we are Babes, and come by Degrees to be Strong Men in Christ.”
(Richardson 484; qtd. in Fish 292)
26> Significantly,
Fish here draws on Richardson not only to explain how Milton’s readers may
measure their spiritual growth in relation to Adam’s, but also to defend
Milton’s oft-criticized stylistics in books 11 and 12. Following this quotation
by Richardson, Fish writes,
“Negatively viewed, this
stylized formality has been seen as evidence of a 'decline of poetic power,'
but one should understand that the regularity and predictability of the pattern
allow the reader to use it as a framework within which he gathers together and
orders the disparate intuitions he has brought with him from earlier books.”
(292)
27> Even as he
does in his analysis of Paradise Lost book 3, Fish
here makes foundational use of Richardson not only to explain the religious application
of a portion of Milton’s epic that many readers—including Lewis—have considered
inferior parts of the poem, but also to explain and defend the poetic
style of that portion. In both cases, matters of Milton’s stylistics
and religious applicability go hand in hand: those who chafe at the formalized
stylistics of Milton’s heaven and Adam’s education reveal their own spiritual
shortcomings, while those possessing genuine spiritual maturity can appreciate
both the quality and purpose of Milton’s poetry in books 3, 11, and 12 and will
use these books to grow even deeper in their maturity.
28> My
purpose in this essay has been twofold: to shed a corrective light on the
oft-repeated but inaccurate notion that Fish’s Surprised by Sin is
a methodologically sophisticated restatement of Lewis’s orthodox Christian
presentation of Paradise Lost in his Preface; and
to demonstrate the foundational influence of Jonathan Richardson’s Explanatory
Notes, over and against Lewis’s Preface, upon Fish’s
presentation of Paradise Lost as a poem designed by Milton to
cause his readers both to recognize their own sin and to grow in greater
Christian maturity. It is striking to consider that, in spite of the fact that
Fish’s book has been called “a methodologically radical update” of Lewis’s Preface (Rumrich, Milton 4),
Richardson’s volume’s influence on Surprised by Sin is evident
just as much for Richardson’s hermeneutical methodology as for Richardson’s
general understanding of Milton’s epic as an expression of orthodox
Christianity; indeed, Richardson’s hermeneutical influence is so pronounced
that, despite the clear methodological influence of Waldock and Summers on
Fish, it is not entirely accurate to say that Surprised by Sin is
a methodological update; rather, it is also, as Sims noted in 1968,
a study reminiscent of “the reading of critics near in time to Milton” (535). And
although, as noted earlier, Richardson stands as part of a significant line of
Milton critics in the orthodox tradition whose insight Fish draws upon, his
profound degree of influence on Fish’s book—still the most influential book on
Milton in the past fifty years—perhaps merits a call that Richardson’s book
itself—generally neglected in present-day Milton criticism11—be
reexamined more closely as a still-valuable contribution to Milton scholarship
in its own right, one that should be analyzed not merely for its place in the
history of Paradise Lost criticism but also for
its continued relevance to our understanding of Milton’s great epic.
NOTES
Thanks to Brian
Ingraffia, Paul Klemp, and the anonymous readers at Appositions for
their insights and suggestions regarding earlier drafts of this essay. Thanks
also to Calvin College, whose Calvin Research Fellowship assisted this essay’s
writing.
1. For my response
to Herman, Wittreich, and Strier, see “The Acolyte’s Rejoinder.”
2. Jonathan Richardson
the Elder alone wrote his Life of the Author and a Discourse
on the Poem as the lengthy preface to Explanatory Notes and
Remarks on Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” which he co-wrote with his
son, Jonathan Richardson the Younger. The majority of Fish’s citations to this
volume are to Richardson’s prefatory material, cited in Roman numerals. The Explanatory
Notes themselves are cited with Arabic numerals. Because the majority
of the passages that Fish interacts with are unquestionably those of Jonathan
Richardson the Elder, and because Fish always refers to him alone in his book,
I will throughout my essay refer only to the older Richardson, although it I
recognize that some of his insights cited may have
originated with his son.
3. Fish cites
Waldock’s “Paradise Lost” and Its Critics and Summers’s The
Muse’s Method.
4. I overlooked
this point of connection in “Speaking” 101.
5. Curiously
enough, Fish here chides Lewis for hoping to “prevent the reader from ever
raising certain questions” (Lewis 70), quoting the same passage that I have
noted that Herman and Bryson have taken out of context (“Speaking” 99-100). Here
Fish cites it in the context of Lewis’s discussion of the Fall.
6. Strier asserts
that because Surprised by Sin is largely “a response to
Waldock’s” “Paradise Lost” and Its Critics and because
“Waldock’s book is largely a response to Lewis’s, [...] it is not hard to figure
out why it is reasonable to see Fish’s book as, functionally at least, a
defense of Lewis’s” (272). But this statement is a faulty syllogism and
Strier’s conclusion does not logically follow.
7. For discussions
of the critical receptions to Richardson’s volume, see Wendorf 542 and
Gibson-Wood 116.
8. For example,
Richardson writes, “All his Writings have Intersperst an Odour of Sanctity, not
that Cant which was the Character and the Blemish of the Times in which he
Liv’d, but a Manly Eloquence flowing from a Heart in which shone the Divine
Grace” (lxv); and, “Above all, his Mind Shines with Noble Sentiments of
Religion, and Piety” (lxvii).
9. Richardson’s
volume was published nearly ninety years before the 1823 discovery of De Doctrina
Christiana, the heterodox volume of theology generally attributed to
Milton. Richardson directly addresses the “Conjecture” that “Certain Passages”
in Paradise Lost suggest “that Milton was an Arian,” but he
affirms his general assurance that Milton was in fact a Trinitarian (xlix).
10. Fish’s index
notes only six pages on which Richardson is cited, but the index misses pages
160-61, which also cite Richardson. More important is the fact that where
Richardson is cited, he is generally quoted lengthily, sometimes with multiple
quotations on a single page, and in places foundational to Fish’s larger
argument.
11. The general
neglect of Richardson has been somewhat remedied recently in the work of Fresch
and Lares. See also Leonard’s forthcoming volumes. A particularly valuable
study from 1990 is Moore 135-73. See also Walsh 86-91.
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_____
David V. Urban is associate professor of English at Calvin College.
He completed John Milton: An Annotated Bibliography, 1989-1999 and
is the co-editor of Visionary Milton. His most recent articles on
Milton appear in Appositions, Milton Studies, and Milton Quarterly. He has also recently published
essays on Fugard and Tolstoy and Pauline Rhetoric. He is completing a book on
Milton and Jesus' parables. His most recent reviews appear in the Review of English Studies and Early Modern Literary Studies.
_____
APPOSITIONS: Studies in Renaissance / Early
Modern Literature & Culture, http://appositions.blogspot.com/, ISSN:
1946-1992, VOLUME FIVE (2012): ARTEFACTS
