L’Allegro & Il Penseroso

1. L’Allegro & Il Penseroso • In 1991 Casey Finch and Peter Bowen wrote that neither poems ‘can stop thinking and dreaming about its companion’ • In 1983, Gerard H. Cox wrote that ‘it is obvious that L'Allegro and Il Penseroso are companion poems, but precisely how and why they are related remains an open question’ • In her book The Gendering of Melancholia, Juliana Schiesari writes that the very nature of the melancholic was to be that of a ‘self split against itself’

2. ‘Plotting’ Episodes L’ Allegro – The Cheerful Man • Banishment of Melancholy (1-10) • Invitation to Mirth (11-24) • Catalogue of Mirth’s companies (25-26) • Pastoral depiction of the world (57-88) • Concluding distich (151-152) Il Penseroso–The Pensive Man • Banishment of ‘vain deluding joys’ (1-10) • Invitation to melancholy (11-30) • Catalogue of Melancholy’s companion (31-64) • Description of nocturnal stroll (65-76) • Concluding distich (175-176)

3. End- rhyme – abbacddeec(line 11 onwards rhyming couplets) Hence loathed Melancholy Of Cerebus , and blackest Midnight born, In Stygian cave forlorn ‘Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy; Find some uncouth cell, Where brooding darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night raven sings; There under Ebon shades, and low-brow’d rocks, As ragged as thy locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell Hence vain deluding joys, The brooding folly without father bred, How little you bested, Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys; Dwell in some idle brain, And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless As the gay motes that people the sunbeams, Or likest hovering dreams, The fickle pensioners of Mopheus’ train

4. Similar Images Opening: Hence loathed Melancholy Opening: Hence vain deluding joys Line 4: Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy; Line 5: idle Lines 6-7: brooding darkness spreads his jealous wings And the night raven sings

5. Lines 33-34: Come, and trip it as ye go On the light fantastic toe Lines 31-32: Come pensive Nun devout and pure, Sober, steadfast, and demure Lines 41-42: To hear the lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night Lines 12-13: Hail divinest Melancholy! Saintly visage is too bright Closing: Those delights if thou cans’t give Mirth, with thee I mean to live Closing: These pleasures, Melancholy, give and with thee will choose to live

6. Intertextual Meaning Intertextual Meaning • The two poems typographical continuity, form and content clearly links L’Allegro and Il Penseroso • However as Cox has argued there is much debate over what this link means • Many critics such as Tillyard have seen the poems as combative or opposing • A battle between Day and Night/Mirth and Melancholy • The two poems typographical continuity, form and content clearly links L’Allegro and Il Penseroso • However as Cox has argued there is much debate over what this link means • Many critics such as Tillyard have seen the poems as combative or opposing • A battle between Day and Night/Mirth and Melancholy

7. Galenic vs. Aristotelian • Works of critics Babb and Samuels has placed the poems in the genre of mediaeval debate or Renaissance disputation • Two types of melancholy • Black melancholy responsible for severe medical depression • Aristotelian ‘gold tinged with purple’ melancholy, the concern of the poet • This reading focuses on the latter as the ‘highest of mans artistic achievements’ (Miller) • Evidence to support this lies in the choice of Penseroso rather that Melancholio in the title

8. Prioritising Il Penseroso This reading leads to critics arguing Milton prefers Il Penseroso Ascetic life of study vs. Dionysian pleasure seeking Arguably seen in his sixth elegy addressed to Charles Diodati

9. Reading Milton through Milton? Reading Milton through Milton? • W Scott Howard has argued that this subordination of L’Allegro to Il Penseroso is a result of reading the poems progressively as records of Milton maturing • Colin Burrows argues poems are not necessarily or explicitly autobiographical • Musing on ‘undirected’ on different temperaments • W Scott Howard has argued that this subordination of L’Allegro to Il Penseroso is a result of reading the poems progressively as records of Milton maturing • Colin Burrows argues poems are not necessarily or explicitly autobiographical • Musing on ‘undirected’ on different temperaments

10. Fluidity • Fluidly associative syntax invites reader not to make firm choices • No grammatical subject of many of the clauses • Though Greene has argued Il Penseroso has less drifting parataxis, ‘whimsically free reading’ still creates meandering thoughts • Poems refuse singular and simple meaning

11. Further thoughts • Creation of a voice that has continuity with other poems in the collection, leads on both to the whimsical lovers in the sonnets and to the erotic visions of the elegies • Perhaps not opposing parts of pleasure/wisdom but a warning of intemperance in either direction- forerunner to Milton’s examination of excess in Paradise Lost

12. Frontispiece to the 1645 edition of the Poems of John Milton

13. 1740 International Music Score Library Project

15. William Blake’s ‘Mirth’ c.1816-20 “goddess fair and free” “frolic wind” “fresh-blown roses washed in dew” “... buxom, blithe and debonair” Allegorical Celebration of the happy Pastoral Cheerful life Blakearchive.org

16. William Blake’s ‘Melancholy’ c.1816-20 “goddess, sage and holy” “black staid wisdom’s hue” “come pensive nun, devout and pure,” “sober, steadfast and demure” “secret shades” Digressive Gothic scene Melancholic reverie

17. ‘Milton’s Mysterious Dream’ ‘Milton in His Old Age’