Milton and the Martial Muse:
Taylor, Mark
In brief Milton and the Martial Muse: Paradise Lost and European Traditions OF War, by James A. Freeman, Princeton University Press, $17.50, 253 pp. Professor Freeman's intention is to relate...
...Despite the approval of proper military display that this poor behavior implies, Freeman believes that Milton is generally against the military in all forms...
...Satan masses his rebellious angels in the northern part of Heaven (5,689), a circumstance, writes Freeman, citing a 1593 military manual, that "would not surprise any Renaissance geopolitician since it was a byword 'that Northern people are commonly more valiant and venturous, than those of Asia & Afrike.' " In fact, the main reason that no one would be surprised by the geographical detail is Isaiah 14, 12-13, where the proud Lucifer is specifically placed in the north of Heaven...
...In the most tendentious part of the book he argues that Milton subtly but vigorously opposed an anti-war stance to a prevailing tradition that was almost entirely pro-war...
...Milton knew his military authorities, as Freeman well shows, and he used them, to good purpose, in particularizing place, character, and event in his poem...
...MARK TAYLOR THE FRENCH, by Theodore Zeldin, Pantheon, $17.95, 538 pp...
...Even the recent Paris demonstrations did not deter them...
...Part of the goal of Paradise Lost, Freeman writes, was to "correct" the attitude of Milton's contemporaries, almost all of whom "approved of war...
...First of all, although Freeman does a good job of marshaling pro-war authorities over the centuries, he ignores the substantial contribution of the early Renaissance humanists to the articulation of an anti-war position, which was thereafter available to, if not necessarily endorsed by, all educated Europeans...
...Satan's troops obviously embody many dreams of military theorists by having a firm chain of command, precise formations, unquestioning obedience, fine equipment, swift communications, sensible operating specialties, high performance, and bouyant morale...
...But it is not, finally, adherence to military doctrine, or violation of it, that makes the case against Satan and the fallen angels...
...Their round of incomparable historic and artistic treasures would provide little contact with French people outside the tourist trade...
...Elsewhere he claims, "Milton implies that the communal nightmare of his age is the heroic vision of war allowed by centuries of lazy analysis...
...Still, I don't find the wealth of military detail in Paradise Lost to be an implicit criticism of the heroic vision of war (though the war in Heaven may have been a very bad idea...
...All that, I should say, is true: the poem's reader, like its author, rejects the fallen angels not because they are soldiers and it is better not to be, nor because they are poor soldiers and it is better to be good ones, but because they are on the side of what is evil and false...
...the practices thus discredits the damned legions...
...On the other hand, Freeman helpfully glosses a moment in Hell (1, 663-68) when the fallen angels applaud their chief by banging their swords against their shields...
...Freeman curtly dismisses the work of Erasmus (and, in the same sentence, that of other ancient and Renaissance anti-warriors), yet The Praise of Folly, various of the colloquies, and most important the essay Duke helium inexpertis were repeatedly translated and reprinted throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries...
...To historian Theodore Zeldin this is an error which his perceptive and comprehensive study seeks to repair...
...The consequences of this investigation are sometimes dubious, sometimes illuminating...
...Some of his personal encounters in different regions of France were inhibited by the sense of privacy the French often manifest toward foreigners, but he manages to present a convincing picture of various men and women in all walks of life...
...The author views the French from many angles with little evidence of their spiritual life...
...He bolsters many of his general observations with striking statistics...
...His procedure was not easy...
...He gives an intriguing account of each individual's attitude toward job, life-styles, sex and marriage, health, education, movies and TV, not to mention the widespread fear of Americanization...
...In one extremely pertinent observation Freeman admits as much: "The soldiers of Hell fail to sustain our unqualified acceptance for one basic reason: they worship a false god...
...With more and more francs to the dollar and competing overseas airlines offering bargain rates, there was additional incentive for Americans to visit France this summer...
...Professor Freeman's intention is to relate Paradise Lost to European traditions of war by demonstrating the debt of many details in the poem to Milton's familiarity with a vast array of classical and especially Renaissance works on warfare...
...Such display is very poor show, the kind of thing, according to classical writers, done by the barbarian enemies of Rome but never by Roman soldiers themselves...
...Doubtless most flew over as mere sightseers except that they may have had (and would not be disappointed in) their expectations about French food...
...If Milton was anti-war, he had an established tradition behind him...
...There are problems here...
Vol. 110 • September 1983 • No. 16
