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Milton and Critical Re-Estimates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Cleanth Brooks
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Extract

Let me begin by agreeing most heartily with Professor Woodhouse's closing remarks. The disciplines that we represent can have no quarrel; they are both necessary, and necessary to each other. I say this not merely as one warmed and mollified by the excellent paper that we have just heard. For the last decade I have been saying it over and over. But it has to be said over and over, for the world would have it that we must quarrel, and a stubborn prejudice can exert almost as much influence as a social law.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 66 , Issue 6 , December 1951 , pp. 1045 - 1054
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1951

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Footnotes

*

This paper was read before the Milton Group of the Modern Language Association of America on 28 December 1950. It was preceded by a paper on “The Historical Criticigrn of Milton” bv A. S. P. Woodhouse.—ED.

References

* I had thought that this claim was sufficiently modest, but in view of the reservation which Professor Woodhouse emphasizes in an addition (note 3) to his original paper, I should like to add a further point myself. The discussion of Milton's imagery in this paper does not pretend to represent fully the kind of contribution which the modern critic can make. It certainly does not exhaust the possibilities. It is intended merely to suggest the king of thing that I have in mind. As for the relation of imagery to conceptual structure in Milton, I should prefer to state the relation in another way. But there is no space for that in a brief paper. I again refer the interested reader to the Wellek-Warren volume.