How Milton Works

by Stanley Fish

Stanley Fish's Surprised by Sin , first published in 1967, set a new standard for Milton criticism and established its author as one of the world's preeminent Milton scholars. The lifelong engagement begun in that work culminates in this book, the magnum opus of a formidable critic and the definitive statement on Milton for our time. How Milton works "from the inside out" is the foremost concern of Fish's book, which explores the radical effect of Milton's theological convictions on his poetry and prose. For Milton the value of a poem or of any other production derives from the inner worth of its author and not from any external measure of excellence or heroism. Milton's aesthetic, says Fish, is an "aesthetic of testimony": every action, whether verbal or physical, is or should be the action of holding fast to a single saving commitment against the allure of plot, narrative, representation, signs, drama--anything that might be construed as an illegitimate supplement to divine truth. Much of the energy of Milton's writing, according to Fish, comes from the effort to maintain his faith against these temptations, temptations which in any other aesthetic would be seen as the very essence of poetic value. Encountering the great poet on his own terms, engaging his equally distinguished admirers and detractors, this book moves a 300-year debate about the significance of Milton's verse to a new level.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Nonfiction

640 pages, Hardcover

First published June 12, 2001

About the author

Stanley Eugene Fish is an American literary theorist and legal scholar. He was born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island. He is often associated with postmodernism, at times to his irritation, as he describes himself as an anti-foundationalist.

He is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and a Professor of Law at Florida International University, in Miami, as well as Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the author of 10 books. Professor Fish has also taught at the University of California, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, and Duke University.

Reviews

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

After p. 300

"How Milton Works" is spectacularly successful literary criticism. In it Fish documents his reading of the entire corpus of Milton's work - poetry and prose - a reading that has evolved over at least 40 years of close attention to every scrap of paper that bears one jot from Milton's pen. In it Fish presents what he has decided is the key to understanding all of Milton. I am normally skeptical of such "high arguments." But not in this case - for the reason that I find echoes of my own readings in Fish's chapters. This is NOT to say that our readings are inevitably correct, only that there is agreement.

So the question for me is: Who should read this book? What preparation should he/she bring to a reading of "How Milton Works"?

My sense is that someone who had never read Milton at all and who picked up this book in order to find the key to Milton without ever grappling with the poetry or prose might well become altogether befuddled. Fish assumes that a reader of his book must already have read a great deal of Milton, for he furnishes no introduction to Milton at all, nor attempts in any way to build from some "square one" to his arguments. I suppose that someone might/could read Fish on Milton and profit without having first read extensively in Milton's work. I am not such a person, however, nor anyone I've ever known.

I think it necessary to mention another prerequisite. It seems to me that many readers might find in Milton a very strange creature, whose world view and responses to his world are entirely alien. That wasn't my experience. I found him immediately comprehensible because I was raised in a strongly religious household of orthodox Presbyterians/Calvinists. At a laughably early age I had memorized the Shorter Catechism - derived from the Westminster Confession of Faith (1643, of course), which was ready to hand in my home, along with Calvin's "Institutes of the Christian Religion," a copy of which I've owned for decades - but never read. [Should it appear on my currently reading shelf, someone send help. Pronto. Please.] I heard sermons every week for decades that reflected the content of Calvin's reading of the Bible, etc., etc. So great swaths of Milton's world were already familiar to me when I read the opening lines of Paradise Lost for the first time. But that was long ago and in a world far away.

I will not claim that persons who are not so prepared, shouldn't read Milton - or Fish. I am saying, however, that for many, Milton's world, as Fish presents it, might well be incomprehensible, or if comprehensible, then repugnant. Fish makes not attempt to attenuate Milton's mysogeny, for example.

So it may well be that a reader new to Milton and to Fish's criticism, but whose background hasn't prepared him/her for Milton, would need to be willing to suspend judgement altogether, to adopt another's perspective, to see through other eyes, as it were, to experience life and the world in a way perhaps entirely unfamiliar, even momentarily distasteful, to him/her. Moreover, I can imagine that this exercise could be quite taxing.

But for me the reward has been the pleasure of marinating over most of a lifetime in the most beautiful and expressively powerful texts ever rendered (or that ever could be rendered) in the English language. And it seems to me that Fish's readings make sense of it all.

At End
This is perhaps the second book of literary criticism (along with Auerbach's "Mimesis") that I plan to read yet once more. So I will be turning to page one immediately after I finish the last page of Fish's commentary. I might even scan his index.

His Epilogue is especially interesting. In it Fish reports the substance of a panel discussion (sponsored by the Modern Language Association) of the epistemological assumptions/convictions that he has applied in all of his analytical/critical/literary theoretical projects, assumptions and convictions that render all his various works the products of what amounts to a single project. And this material, which appears in the last 10-12 pages of "How Milton Works", might very well equip persons unfamiliar with Milton to read Fish's "How Milton Works." As it turns out, Milton works in just about the same way that Fish works. Hardly a surprise, I suppose. I will say that I would have read the epilogue first had I known what I found there - eventually. Had I been Fish's editor, I would have made a preface of the epilogue - or tried, at least.

[Virginia Brackett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stanley Fish maintains his position as the best author for non-Milton scholars to read. His explanations are straight forward and serve as a reading guide. All readers should remember what is true about any critique of literature - critics are opinionated and like all readers, cannot be objective about their topics. Thus, make up your own mind about John Milton's works, many of which are amazingly applicable to today. My favorite short reading is his sonnet conventionally titled "When I Consider How My Light is Spent." Its popular final three lines, always of course used out of context, will have new meaning to those who have not previously encountered the sonnet.

[Georgie · Rating 5 out of 5]

biggest brain ever

[J. Alfred · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had some Milton ideas percolating in my head for what I maybe wanted to do my Master's thesis on. Then I come to learn that my thesis had already been written, and that it was a five hundred page book by a Harvard professor. Don't you hate it when that happens?
Anyway, this guy is megabrilliant (he did a way better job than I would have, so, yeah, no big loss to humanity there) and is a fantastic writer. If you're into Milton, or not into Milton because there are some fallacious Romantic views floating around in your head about how Satan is really the hero in Paradise Lost or some such thing, you should probably read this book.

[Phil Mullen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of it quite ponderous, but the thesis argued & re-argued, helps me get a take on what Milton may well have intended by Lost & Regained.