Introduction: Milton, Power, and the Power of Milton

Yale ENGL 220 Milton, lecture 1, explained in plain English

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Part 1 · 0:00–10:00

Lecture 1 introduces the idea that people think of John Milton as powerful, and it lists the kinds of power tied to his name and work.

Key ideas

Readers have often reacted to Milton in strong, even violent, ways, and Rogers links this to our habit of thinking about Milton in terms of power. 0:00
Milton believed early in his life that he would become a great poet. He expected his future epic to become famous before he had even started writing it. 2:29
Late in life, Milton tried to remake British and Western culture. He wrote about logic, grammar, history, and religion, as if he were inventing new systems for each. 4:01
Milton holds a central place in English literature, so many students must read him. Rogers says that simply calling him the greatest English poet does not fully explain his hold on readers. 6:06
In the 1600s, many of Milton's contemporaries feared his power was political and social. They saw him as a radical who could turn readers away from traditional values. 8:54

Words to know

canon: The set of books and authors that a culture treats as the most important and worth studying.
aesthetic: Having to do with beauty and the way a work of art affects the senses and feelings, rather than its ideas or facts.
iambic pentameter: A rhythm pattern in English poetry, with lines of five pairs of syllables, where each pair has a weak beat followed by a strong beat.
anachronistic: Placing an idea, word, or thing in a time period where it does not belong, such as using a modern term to describe an older period.

Example

Imagine a young chef who announces that her restaurant will be the best in town, years before she has even opened a kitchen. People may admire her confidence, but they also wonder whether her bold claims will ever pay off. Milton's early claims about his future poem work in a similar way.

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Part 2 · 10:00–20:00

This part explains how Milton became a powerful name in English writing, and how writers from the 1600s and 1700s, starting with Lady Mary Chudleigh, used his authority to argue about women.

Key ideas

Milton was a radical in his own time. He backed the execution of a king and supported divorce and plural marriage, so many people saw him as dangerous. 10:00
Today many people see Milton as the opposite: a conservative voice who supports old social values. Virginia Woolf's 1920s view of him as a force that keeps women in a lower place is a big reason for this picture. 11:44
Milton became an authority soon after he died. Younger writers quoted him as proof, much as he had quoted the Bible. 14:45
Lady Mary Chudleigh quoted Milton in 1699 to argue that women are just as valuable as men. She used his name because readers already trusted him. 15:53
Chudleigh had to take Milton's lines out of context to fit her point. The lecturer says Milton would not have agreed with her, because he wrote against overvaluing women. 18:06

Words to know

canon: the group of books and writers that people agree are the most important and worth studying.
reception: how readers and critics over time received, understood, and judged a writer's work.
ontologically valuable: having real worth or value in what a thing fundamentally is, not just in how it is treated.
posthumous: happening after a person has died.

Example

Imagine someone in an argument says, "Even the famous coach agrees with me," but only quotes one line from a long speech. The coach's name wins the argument, even though the full speech may have meant something different. That is how Chudleigh used Milton's name.

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Part 3 · 20:00–30:00

Milton's power is so strong and so contradictory that different writers, from the 1700s to Virginia Woolf in the 1920s, used him to support opposite causes.

Key ideas

Mary Astell saw Milton as a subversive revolutionary, a rebel against tyranny. She read his attacks on the king as a call to free all oppressed English people. 20:26
Astell felt Milton did not go far enough. He fought tyranny in politics but not the tyranny of men over women at home, which she saw as the same kind of wrong. 20:57
Milton's language of rebellion was so powerful that it could be used against him. Astell borrowed his words to support a cause he probably would not have supported. 23:28
Virginia Woolf told women writers to look past 'Milton's bogey,' a frightening shadow that makes women feel poetic strength belongs only to men. 28:46
Even while urging women to escape Milton's influence, Woolf echoes his poetry. This shows how hard it is to escape his power. 29:11

Words to know

orthodoxy: The traditional, accepted way of thinking. Here it means views that follow what most people in authority believe.
subversive: Trying to overturn or weaken the existing rulers or the existing order of things.
patriarchal: Relating to a social system where men hold most of the power, both in public life and in the family.
bogey: A frightening figure or fear that haunts people. Woolf uses it for an idea that scares women writers away from trusting themselves.

Example

Think of a famous speech that a freedom fighter gave against a king. Years later, a different group could quote the same words to fight for a cause the speaker never backed. The words keep their power even when the speaker's own views are left behind.

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Part 4 · 30:00–42:39

The lecturer uses Satan's speeches in Paradise Lost to show how power can be questioned, and suggests Satan's way of thinking can guide readers of Milton.

Key ideas

Milton is blind, so he asks a heavenly helper to let him see invisible truths that his eyes can no longer show him. His loss of sight shuts out the visible world but opens the way to divine truth. 30:09
Virginia Woolf says Milton's shadow blinds later readers, yet her own argument repeats Milton's language. The lecturer says this shows how hard it is to step outside Milton's influence in the modern world. 30:52
After losing the war in heaven, Satan argues that God's power may not be absolute. He suggests God only seemed powerful because He was afraid of the rebels' strength. 35:02
Satan says God's throne rested on custom and tradition, and his strength was hidden until the fight. This shows that authority can look like natural power but may be human-made. 38:07
The lecturer says power is something people create by treating a person or idea as godlike, such as a king, God, a book, or a poet. Milton did the same kind of questioning when he opposed King Charles. 36:52

Words to know

omnipotent: having unlimited power, able to do anything.
deify: to treat someone or something as a god, or as if it were godlike.
demystify: to explain something so it no longer seems mysterious, magical, or untouchable.
dialectic: a way of reasoning that looks at two opposing ideas and how they work together.

Example

Think of a school principal whose rules everyone obeys without question. If you learn the rules only exist because people agreed to them, the principal's power looks less natural, though the rules still matter. Satan does something similar when he asks whether God's power is real or only a habit people accept.

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Notes written by AI (Claude) from the lecture's official transcript, so check anything important against the lecture. Open Yale Courses · CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 · not affiliated with or endorsed by Yale. These notes are shared under the same license.

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