The Relationship between the Grotesque and Revolutionary Thought in Milton's Paradise Lost
and Shelley's Prome the us Un bound
BY
Michael White
B.A., University of Toronto, 1994
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty
of The Department of English in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of
Masters of A r t s
McGill University
1997
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Acknowledgements
Many thanks to rny supervisor, Professor Kenneth Borris,
whose expertise and helpful suggestions were greatly appreciated.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
....................................... Introduction i
1 . Rebels Without a Cause: Revolution and ............ the Grotesque Worlds of Paradise Lost 18
II . Shelley and the Romantic Grotesque .............. 52
III . Prometheus Un bound The Grotesque ............................ as Revolutionary Code 62
........................................ Conclusion 84
Introduction
No substantial studies, at least to my knowledge, have yet been
dedicated either to Milton's or to Shelley's extensive poetic use of the
grotesque. This omission surprises me, especialiy given the
voluminous critical attention both authors receive. Neither Milton
nor Shelley's grotesquerie can be viewed as the basis of artistic
method or artistic achievement as we rnight with , Say, Rabelais, or
Poe, or even Kafka. And neither Milton nor Shelley is self-
consciously an artist of " the grotesque." In fact, Milton, from his
seventeenth cen tury perspective, would scarcely have regarded the
term as being applicable to Literary criticism at all. And as a late
Romantic, Shelley defined himself rather as a poet of the imagination.
Nonetheless 1 will show that both artists avail themselves of a
grotesque aesthetic to achieve some of their most powerful and
provocative poetry: we may here consider, for instance, Milton's
mernorable descriptions of the incongruities of Heii and the
deformities of its fallen denizens in Paradise Lost, or Shelley's Gothic
touches and his perplexing dis tortion of conven tional linguis tic and
dramatic form in Prometheus Un bound.
Aside from general considerations of the grotesque in these
texts, 1 will especially focus on how Milton's and Shelley's uses of the
grotesque mode provide us with unique, and often fascinating
vantage points from which to appreciate their respective political
concerns and revolutionary interests. While 1 expect this critical
approach wiIl elucidate Milton and Shelley in their own separate
artistic and political spheres, 1 am especially interested to compare
and contrast the poets, to show how the quite different uses made of
the grotesque in Prometheus Unbound and Paradise Lost reflec t the
various ways in which Shelley responds to Milton in his role as a
revolutionary forefather.
Milton and Shelley as Political Poeis
Though little critical attention has been paid to either Milton's
or Shelley's use of the grotesque, diverse recent critics have
examined Milton's role as a political poet from the perspective of his
Romantic followers. In fact, to the extent thac the English Roman tic
poets are seen as politically motivared, it is virtually impossible to
l a v e Milton out of the discussion. Many of the Romantics - notably
Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley -- eulogized Milton in their poetry
for his cornmitment to liberty. Shelley's fragmentary poem "Milton's
Spirit" begins
1 drearned that Milton's spirit rose, and took
From life's green tree his Uranian lute;
And from his touch sweet thunder flowed, and shook
Al1 human things built in contempt of man,--
And sanguine thrones and impious altars quaked,
Prisons and citadels . . . . ( Poetical Works 45 3 )
Nonetheless, until quite recently, Milton's political influence upon the
Romantics was al1 but ignored, mainly due to T.S. Eliot's influential
opinion that Rornantic poetry is characterized by the expression of
intense feeling without thought. Eliot held that the Metap hysical
poets of the seventeenth century were the last practitioners of a
poetry which fused thought and feeling. Following the
Metaphysicals, and perhaps tellingly, just prior to the English Civil
War, Eliot claims a debilitating "dissociation of sensibility set in, from
which we have never recovered" (288). This supposed dissociation
began with Milton, whom Eliot charged with writing in a lofty,
iatinate style whose remoteness from living speech implied a
remoteness from felt experience. Su bsequent to Milton, p e t s were
guilty either of thinking too much, like the eighteenth century
Augustans, or feeling too much, Like the Romantics.
Eliot's thesis has been attacked on a number of fronts by a
multitude of critics, leading to a thorough revaluation of Romantic
poetry. In the 1960ts and 1970's. there was a growing critical
movement, led by Harold Bloom and M.H. Abrams, to politicize the
Romantics. Abrams counters Eliot's view that the Romantic poets
were merely gushing sentimen talists or brainless idealis ts, and
claims rather that they were "to a degree without parallel . . . obsessed with the realities of the era" (93). In The Visionary
Company, Bloom charges Eliot with grounding his critical judgernents
of Romantic poetry upon a conservative politicai and religious
agenda Bloornts controversial thesis makes the claim that English
culture has been continuously divided since the seventeen th cen tury
betvveen those that accepted the English Puritan revolution and
those, like Eliot, that rejected it. For critics like Bloorn and Abrams,
Rornanticism represen ts the reemergence of the revolutionary ideals
that inspired the republican side in the English Civil War. Milton and
the Romantics thus corne to be read side by side, as radical political
voices urging the renovation of society. In The Roman tics on Müton,
Joseph Anthony Wittreich supports this view, arguing -- much almg
the same lines as Bloorn and Abrams - that as "the hero of political
radicaiism during the Romantic era, Milton -- more than any other
artist - taught the Romantics what it meant to be a revolutionary
artist" (21). Also, insofar as the Romantic poets conceived of
themselves as prophets or visionaries, they were part of what
Wittreich calls "the line of vision," or a Miltonic tradition of prophecy
in which the poets regarded themselves as spiritual leaders who
would bnng about a new order and a new age.2
However the critical revision which sees Milton and the
Romantics as proponents of a common revolutionary political agenda
introduces nearly as many problems as it solves in moving beyond
Eliot's critique. Few critics, 1 think it is safe to Say, would now
challenge the view that Milton had a profound impact upon Romantic
sensibility, or even that his impact was as rnuch political as it was
artistic. More difficult to determine, however, are Milton's own
political views, especiaily on the delicate matter of revolu tion, and
we cannot hope accurately to determine the nature and scope of
'~arold Bloom, The Visionary Company: A Reading of hgiish Romantic Poe- (Ithaca: Corneii UP, 1971).
Z~oreph Anthony Wittreich. Jr., Milton and the liDe of Vision (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1975).
Milton's influence upon the Romantics as a revolutionary forefather
until we understand the basis (and limits) of his own views on the
su bjec t.
This understanding initially involves recognizing that Milton's
politicai opinions must be seen in the light of his religious beliefs.
There has been considerable critical debate over the vexed question
of how Milton's politics relate to his religion. Some commentators
assume that Milton's support of the republican cause in his own
political life and in his political prose tracts cannot possibly be
rneaningfully reconciled with the monarchicai and hierarc hical
religious foundations of Paradise Lost.3 Though the next chapter
shows that, on the contrary, these two strands of Milton's thought are
indeed consistent and even complementary, 1 will briefly survey the
issues here to dari@ the main lines of rny general argument.
In the political tract, The Ten ure of Kings and Magistra tes,
Milton argues that revolution and regicide are defensible and even
necessary responses to political tyranny, w hich derives from political
rule camïed out in defnnce or conternpt of reason -- reason k i n g
the foundation of social organization if uue liberty and justice are to
be secured. Paradise Losr dramatizes the flip side of the same
argument, as it assumes Satan's and Adam and Eve's revolutions
agains t God are indefensi ble and undesirable because they deviate
from reason and lead ultimately, not to freedom, but to bondage.
Satan and Adam and Eve fail to keep their rightful places within the
3~ prominent proponent of the view that Milton's politics and poetry are irreconcilably ar odck ir C.A. Patrides. See Milton and the Christian Tradition (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1C)GG).
divine hierarchy headed by God, whom Milton portrays as the
essence of rational (and thereby justifiable) rulership.
Both the cause and result of rebellion in Paradise Lost involve
loss of the rebels' divine image within them; Satan and Adam and
Eve revol t because they suppress their God-given rational
judgement, their birthright as rational creatures under Cod, and are
punished by their separation from their deiform nature and from the
greater God. The Miltonic grotesque, then, springs from the loss of
the image of Cod in fallen angel and fallen hurnanity. I t is a
movement away from the rational center and formal perfection,
closely associated with Cod, into irrationality and deformity. On a
moral and spiritual level, Milton uses the grotesque to denote inner
evil and its outward manifestation, sin. At the same tirne the
grotesque brings the political argument of Paradise Losf into sharp
focus by allowing us to identify and examine political transgression,
its causes and outcornes, in terms of the deformities of the poem's
wayward rebels.
On the other hand, Shelley's approach to the grotesque in
Prometheus Unbound allows us to see more clearly what many critics
seem to miss - that his stance toward revolution and political rule
differs markedly from Milton's, and that one of his main aims in the
poem is to revise and update his predecessor.4 The Shelleian
4~ackie DiSalvio's War of Tirans: Blake's Critique of Miron and the Politics of Religion (Pittsburgh, ü of Pittsburgh P, 1983) shows a movement away from the Bloom-Abrams-Wittreich critical camp in arguùlg that Blake does not wholiy accept Milton's political example, but rather democratizes and feminizes Milton's elitis t republicanism. Little has been written about Shelley frorn this point of view, though Michael Chappell's interesthg articie(to which 1 later refer) entided "De-fencing the poet: the political dilemrna of the
grotesque is a vehicle of regenerative power, a forrn of art which, in
breaking down al1 hierarchical boundaries and in deforming the
known world, creates the possibility of radical imaginative and
political transformation. Importantly, by incorporating prominen t
elements of the grotesque into Prometheus (Inbound, Shelley is
reacting against a Miltonic brand of political organization which
privileges reason. The social and political boundaries Shelley is
trying to dismantle in his poetry, and especially in his grotesque
poetry, are precisely those he views as having been erected in the
name of reason. Yet in order to appreciate fully the social and
political import of the grotesque and its relationship to rational
thought, we must, before turning to consider Milton and Shelley,
examine i ts his tory as an aes thetic category.
The Grotesq ue: History and Critical Receprion
Our modern understanding of what we regard as "the
grotesque" in art and literature developed out of the fifteenth
century discovery of sorne ancient Roman ruins, buried since the
Augustan period. The excavated pain tings, whic h adorned the
ceilings and walls of the "Golden House of Nero," were intricately
arranged and fantastical creations. The designs showed a pattern
-- - --
poet and the people in Milton's Second Defense and Shelley's Defense of Poerry," gives a reading of the nvo authors' respective prose writings which points to the difkrent roles each plays in the politicai structure. My study supports Chappell's reading of the prose, though rny focus ir the pwtry, and especially the grotesque character of the poetry.
consisting of mythological creatures, as well as various flora and
fauna. Classical standards of artis tic organization were flou ted and
heterogeneous forms were fearlessly cornbined. This decora tive
style, termed grottesche in 1502, was received with much
enthusiasm in Italian artistic circles. Raphael and Michelangelo were
among the first of many prominent Italian artists who adapted the
style of the ancient murais into a new form, which rapidly became
the artistic standard throughout Europe. This novel approach to art
was widely acclaimed for its capacity to liberate artistic expression in
its disregard for conventions of form and style. Through the
grotesque artists were able ço move beyond the strictures of rule and
reason upon which the classicai method had been grounded.
The most infiuential proponent of the new style was the Italian
art critic Giorgio Vasari, who consiciered grotesque creations to be
both beautiful and divine.5 Vasari's celebration of the work of such
artists as Raphael and Michelangelo, however, met resistance from
another camp of critics in Italy who upheld the classical standards of
taste, rule, and proportion endorsed by the ancient Roman
commentator, Vitruvius. The latter grouprs claim was that grotesque
art, in its deviation from pure abstraction and reason, was licentious
and immoral for rejec ting divine harmony and order. According to
Vitruvian supporters, the grotesque style represented a debasement
and degradation of culture, while from the perspective of Vasari and
s~iorgio Vasari, Liver of the Mosr hinent Painters Sculptors and Archirects (New York: H a m y Abrams, 19791.
his followers, the use of the grotesque in art heralded a significant
advance in creative and artistic achievemen t.
Critical opinion on the grotesque remained very much divided
when the style appeared in England in the mid-sbteenth century.
Not surprisingly, the artists and critics most averse to the spread and
popularity of grotesque art in England were those with the most
inves ted in the onhodo~y of classical learning and its conceptions of
artistic propriety. By the end of the century, Edmund Spenser, to
whom John Milton was much indebted as an artist, would describe
grotesque art in The Faerie Queene as "wilde antickes" and
" monstrous formes" (3.1 1.5 1 ). Yet, in fact, Spenser used grotesque
art to great purpose. Notably, as part of the overall artistic design of
The Faerie Queene, the characters opposing the work's privileged
moral and political values are depicteci in grotesque physical forrns:
monsters, rnalformed wi tches, and various O ther bestial creatures
lurk around every corner as forces opposed to Spenser's knigh ts,
unrernittingly challenging their defense of Gloriana's realm and i ts
value system. Within the poem's multi-layered symbolic structure, a
charac ter's physical deformation suggests a corresponding moral,
religious, or political degeneracy; the grotesque form is attached to
chose who are "other," or those whorn Spenser depicts as immoral,
irnpious, or corrupt.
The grotesque was used almos t exclusively in a pejorative
sense throughout neoclassicai Europe. For many English Pro testan ts
especially, grotesque art came to be regarded as superfluously
ornamental and inhannonious, whereas the most highly valued
lorms of art demonstrateci sirnplicity, restraint, order, and
proportion. ItwasnotuntiltheRomanticrnovementhadtakenhold
that the grotesque began to lose its negative associations. There was
at this time a significant artistic and critical shift which altered how
the grotesque was used and perceived -- a movement, in broad
terms, from a Vitruvian perspective to a Vasarian perspective. i
address the reasons for this shift and its nature in my discussion of
Shelley and Romanticism in Chapter Two.
Studies of the grotesque in the modern era (by which 1 mean
the last hundred or so years) have sought primarily to define the
grotesque in art and to assess its purposes. A cornmon thread
existing between contending theories is that the grotesque, in its
reorganization of cacegories and its characteristic paradigm shifts,
requires a necessary reorientation of perspective on the part of the
subject. Arthur Clayborough defines grotesque art, for instance, as
"that which is not congruous with ordinary experience" (1 2 ) .
Geoffrey Galt Harpham makes a similar case, claiming that "ail
grotesque art threarens the notion of a center by implying
coherencies just out of reach, rnetaphors or analogies just beyond Our
grasp" (43 ) . and that the grotesque "calls into question our ways of
organizing the world, of dividing the continuum of experience into
knowable particles" (3). The fundamental sense in which critics
understand the grotesque is remarkably consistent, as they tend to
identify it with aspects of abnormali ty, irrationality, indeterminacy,
and a transgressive destruction (or restructuring) of order.
However, consideration of why the grotesque is used at all, and
its relation to a work of art as a whole. is more contentious. Though
none would deny, for instance, rhat Rabelais employs elernents of the
grotesque in his writing, there is still the matter of deterrnining what
the grotesque may reveal about Rabelais as an artist. Critics are
likely to ask, in other words, for what reason, and with what
intended effect, does Rabelais make the grotesque a prominent part
of his art. Often such enquiries reveal as much about the critic as
about the artist under examination, as my subsequent discussion of
Bakhtin and Kayser indicates. Broadly speaking, w hether the
grotesque is affirmative or pejorative, liberating or destructive,
depends upon the culture within which grotesque art is created, and
aiso upon the cultural context for the critical axamination of that art.
By establishing CO nventional condit ions of order and coherence,
culture determines the particular forms the grotesque will take in
art, and the meanings attached to grotesque representation.
In the modern period, to a greater extent than ever before, we
rnay not, to be accurate, speak of a single cultural consciousness.
Conceptions of cultural " normdcy ," we fiind, are prej udiced by class,
race, gender, and so on; in short, by political considerations which
disting uish benveen dominant and rnarg inalized perspectives on the
world - al1 of which impinges upon how the grotesque is used and
how it is experienced. Insofar as the grotesque is commonly
associated with change and flux, and with the distortion or disruption
of "ordinarytl experience, the uses made of the grotesque by the
artist, and the responses of the critic to grotesque art, rnay be seen as
indicators of a political point of view or orientation towards the
prevailing cultural orthodoxy.
Not surprisingly, the grotesque in the modem period has
generated more controversy than ever before. And yet, the debate
proceeds according to the same basic arguments which pitted a
Vasarian interpretation of the grotesque against a Vitruvian
viewpoint in the sixteenth century. On the Vitruvian side there is
John Ruskin, whose pioneering study, The Stones of Venice, remains
an enduring work of grotesque scholarship primarily on account of
the simplicity and rightness of its central assertion that "the mind,
under certain phases of excitement, plays with terror" (III.iii.23 ) . Yet Ruskin's discussion of the grotesque is but a part of his massive
treatise on medieval and Renaissance Venetian art and architecture,
in which he aims to show how the Venetians fell off from a healthy
and pious society into decadence and a11 forms of excess. Within this
larger design, what makes Ruskin's treatment of the grotesque so
novel and astute is his examination of the connec tion between
artistic expression and cultural trends. He regards the "ignoble"
grotesque ornamental style, which liberated Venetian artists from
artistic imitation in favor of non-representational, fantastic modes of
art, as one important aspect of the culture's debasement and decline.
He attacks Raphael's work, for instance, as "an elaborate and luscious
form of nonsense . . . a poisonous root; an artistical pottage,
composed of nymphs, cupids, and satyrs, with shreddings of heads
and paws of meek wild beasts, and nondescript vegetables."
Deploring Raphael's art for its qualities of confusion and ambivalence,
Ruskin is horraed at "the depth to which the human mind can be
debased in following this species of grotesque" (III.iii.39).
Ruskin's assessrnent of grotesque art as corrupt and impious is
a gauge of his investment in a world which privileges reason, order,
and classical decorum. He takes his point of view from the center, in
effect, and consequently fears and despises the grotesque in art for
what Harpharn has called its capacity to "effect the liberation of
ornament from the domination of the center" (29). The marginalized
monstrosities of the world achieve an extraordinary conspicuousness
in the grotesque. What lies behind Ruskin's condemnation of the
grotesque, therefore, is a recognition of its power to invert
hierarchies and challenge codes, and thus forcibly to reorient the
perceived nature of reality, with the ultimate result that worldly
reality is itseif transformed.
In The Sense of Beauty (1896), George Santayana succinctly
cap tured the grotesque's transformative capacity in his often-quo ted
- though largely misunderstood -- remark "The good grotesque is
novel beauty" (258). Seen in this light, the grotesque has the power
to question and even transforrn edsting conceptual models and
cultural standards. [t is through a continual exposure to the
monstrous and the malformeci, says Santayana, that "the incongruity
with the conventional type then disappears, and what was
impossible and ridiculous at firs t takes its place among recognized
ideais. The centaur and the satyr are no longer grotesque; the type is
accepted" (260). Not surprisingly, then, the grotesque is often
discussed in connection with revolutionary changes of one kind or
another. Says Harpham: "It is one characteristic of revolutions,
whether literary, political, or scientific, that they liberate, dignify,
and pass through the grotesque. A shift in vision . . . and suddenly
the deformed is revealed as the sublime" (20).6
In the modern era, most critics follow Ruskin's and Santayana's
lead in viewing the grotesque in art as, at least in part, a cultural
phenornenon, and specifically, as a vehicle of cultural
metamorphoses. Particular emphasis has been placed upon the
challenge which the grotesque poses to the rational and ordered
basis of Western culture. Mikhail Bakhtin and Wolfgang Kayser are
probably the two most prominent reviewers of the grotesque in this
century, and they generally agree that the grotesque is characterized
by irrationality and by the destruction of al1 order and hierarchical
organization. In Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin refers to the
grotesque as "the negation of the entire order of life," (307) and
Kayser, in The Grotesque in Art and Licerature, daims that
"structurally, the grotesque presupposes that the categories which
apply to our world view become inapplicable" ( 185). Though these
authors concur in determining what the grotesque is, they differ
markedly on what the grotesque means. While Bakhtin views the
grotesque as developing out of a spirit of joyousness and festivity,
and containing a regenerative energy, Kayser conceives of the
grotesque as, above all, terriwing and threatening. We have, as it
were, returned to the pre-Romantic debate which pitted a Vasarian
incerpretation of the grotesque against a Vitruvian viewpoint.
the scientific realm, for instance, revolutionary breakthroughs are often explained in terms of paradigm shifts caused by an analysis of abnomalities or anomalies found within the exisring paradigm. in Kevol u tion in Science (Cambridge: Harvard UP. 1985), J. Bernard Cohen explains, "The activity of scientists within one accepted paradigm is often called 'normal science' and usually consists of 'puzzle solvhg,' that is, adding to the accepted stock of knowledge. Such normal science continues untii anomaiies tum up which evenrualiy cause a criais, foliowed by a revolution producing a new pmdigmt' (26-7).
Bakh tin's Rabelais and His World, while limited in its scope by
dealing with a single author, aims nonetheless to provide a
comprehensive interpretation of the purpose of grotesque art. It is
Bakhtin's contention that, within the grotesque, carnival atmosphere
of Rabelais' world, there lies a degradation of authority; amid the
corrupting and fecundating bodies (what Bakhtin terms "grotesque
realism") exists the "unofficial speech of the people" (3 19). The
grotesque is the people's triumphant laughter which dethrones the
shibboleths of the "official" world, undercutting the center by
substituting for its lifeless and oppressive officialdom a carnival
atmosphere grounded in the abundance of iife and the
indomitableness of the collective human animal. The grotesque
body, debased to a level of materiality which breaks down
boundaries between bodies and between the body and the world.
provides a vital ünk to the "change of epochs and the renewal of
culture" (325). We are never left in any doubt that Bakhtin views
change and renewal as both positive and necessary.
The vantage point from which Wolfgang Kayser views the
grotesque substantially differs from Bakhtints. Kaysert s treatise, The
Grotesque in Art and Lirerature, accually refers us back to Ruskin
and to The Stones of Venice. The grotesque world for Kayser is to be
distinguished from our world. Bakhtin's "grotesque realism," of
course, suggests the opposite, that the carnival world is on the side of
reality and an integral part of this world. Kayser's grotesque world,
on the other hand, is located out there, "estrangedu from the known
world.7 It is a place which he variously describes as "sinister" and
"abysmal," to be contemplated with terror and revulsion, as opposed
to joy, hope, or sympathy. Kayser's Rabelais, for instance, "savagely
[piles] epithet upon epithet to an ultimate effect of terror," dragging
the reader "into the nocturnal and inhuman sphere" ( 15 7) . Kayser, in
sharp contrast with Bakhtin, does not want to see the ordered and
familiar world distorted and fragmented, and so regards the
grotesque as a demonic and destructive power.
Kayser's perspective on the grotesque. like Bakhtin's, helps us
read certain texts, while contributing little to our reading of others.
We must conclude that no single theory of the grotesque in art is
applicable to al1 works, some of which, in fact, would seem flatly to
involved in attempting a holistic analysis of the grotesque. That said.
it is still generaily true that Milton's treatment of the grotesque in
Paradise Losr is best read in the light of Ruskin's or Kayser's critical
perspective. Or it may be quite as accurately stated that Ruskin and
Kayser follow a Miltonic conception of the grotesque, for Milton is in
many ways the originator and progenitor of grotesque literature in
English, as Dante and Rabelais are for continental literature. Milton's
manipulation of grotesque imagery is, as with so many aspects of his
7 " ~ h e grotesque," Kayser notes "is the estranged world" (184). In some translations of Kayser's The Grotesque in Art and Licerame, the word "esvanged" is replaced by "aüenated. I mention this because "alienatim" is a virally important concept in Milton's Paradise Lost. The grotesque is introduced into the poem in conneccion with Sam's and Adam and Eve's dienation frorn the divine image of God.
crafr, subtle and ingenious. It is characteristic of the poet thar he is
able to masterfully weave together seemingly disparate s trands of
thought into a consistent and unified vision. Accordingly, the
grotesque in Paradise Lust is much more than poetic flourish, but is,
as it were, a strand of thought integrally related to the epic's major
themes; my reading of the poem, therefore, atternpts to show how
the grotesque is especially valuable as a key to tracing the contours
of Milton's revolutionary thought. Shelley's use of the grotesque in
Prometheus Unbound also clearly reflects a political point of view,
though one that is quite different from Milton's. Much like the
Rabelaisian grotesque according to Bakh tin, the Shelleian grotesque is
an aesthetic mode which celebrates the possibility of human
0 revolution and liberation through an. The Miltonic grotesque in
Paradise Lost, on the contrary, correlates to a form of revolutionary
activity which the poet deerns unj ust, and so is us& pejoratively.
- 1 -
Rebels Without a Cause: Revolution and the Grotesque Worlds
of Paradise Lost
According to Wolfgang Kayser, "the various forms of the
grotesque are the most obvious and pronounced contradictions of
any kind of rationalism and any systematic use of thought" ( 188).
Such an explanation of the grotesque is, as we shall see, quite
relevant to Paradise Lost; but we need first to understand the sense
in which Milton understands racionalism and systematued thoughr,
for they are concepts integrally related co both his politics and his
Christian faith. In Paradise Losr, reason and order derive lrom and
are centered on Cod, the creator and defender of a rationalistic and
hierarchically ordered universe. The poem's two principal
revolutions against God, Satan's and Adam and Eve's, represent the
transgression of boundarîes as ordained by God. So, in the trespass
of hurnanity, "Man disobeying, / Disloyal breaks his fealty, and sins /
Against the high Supremacy of Heav'n, / Affecting Godhead, and so
losing dl" (3.203-6, my italics). Satan is also punished for "Affecting
allequality with Cod" (5.763). For both Satan and Adam and Eve,
prima1 transgression invoives the attemp t to undermine God's
hierarchy. Milton aims to "justifie the wayes of God to men" ( 1 A)
partly by showing that God's hierarchy is as inviolable as God
0 himself, and furthemore just. If Milton's defense of God is to be
coherent, the rebels must be shown to have no just cause to want to
subvert Gd's divine order. Their revolutions rnust be proven to
have no rational justification. [t must be shown that the rational
choice, the right choice, is to serve God in whatever capacity he has
ordained. What is made abundantly clear in Paradise Lost is that to
rebel against God is futile, and ultimately self-defeating. By virtue of
their resistance to God's sovereignty, Satan is cast from heaven and
Adam and Eve barred from Eden, both realms governed by divine
reason and order. Milton represents the rebels' expulsions in terms
of the their alienation from Cod: Satan is addressed by the faithful
angel, Abdiel, as "O alienate from Cod," (5.877) while Adam and Eve,
due to their " revolt and disobedience" are from heaven "Now
alienated" (9.7-9).
Milton funher emphasizes that in the very act of revolting, the
rebels are already fallen, are already alienated from God, because
they have relinquished the image of God within themselves. Milton's
understanding of the divine image, as Hugh MacCaIlum notes, relates
fundamentally to a capacity for rational judgement? While the
perfect image of the Father is located in his divine Son, angels and
humans are also made in the image of God. The Son is most fit to
rule heaven and earth because his rational judgement is faultless;
Adam and Eve are equipped with sufficient rational powers to be
lords over Eden in the service of God. The revolutions waged by
Satan and by Adam and Eve in resistance to Gd's sovereignty
contradict reason as well as good ethical and political judgemen t.
The atternpt to supplant or resist God is furthemore an assault upon
8 ~ u g h MacCallum, Milton and rhe Sons of God (Toronto: U of Toronto P. 19861.
the divine image within, the rational cornponent of human or angel.
And so when Adam asks why man, after the fall, should be debased
and deformed, these effects arise, we End, from impairment of the
image:
Thir Makers Image, answerd Michel, then
Forsook them, when themselves they villifi'd
To serve ungovemrd appetite, and took
His Image whom they servtd, a brutish vice,
Inductive rnainly to the sin of Eve.
Therefore so abject is thir punishment,
Disfiguring not Gods likeness, but thir own,
Or if his fikeness, by themselves defac't
While they pervert pure Natures healthful niles
To loathsom sickness, worthily, since they
Gods Image did not reverence in themselves.
(11.514-25)
As Michael's speech indicates, to oppose God is to oppose the divine
image within; to rebel against one's own inborn rational character
leads to wanton appetite, sickness, perversion. and deformity. This is
the source of the grotesque in Paradise Lost. The grotesque is
intricately tied up with revolution, but not in the way a critic such as
Bakhtin would imagine: the grotesque is not a progress toward
revolution, but rather vice-versa. Furthermore, Milton's post-
e revolutionary grotesque worlds are not places of moral or political
ernancipation, but rather of confinement, bitter servitude, and terror.
Sovereign ry and the Figure of God in Paradise Lost
Contrary to the opinion of some critics, as noted earlier,
Milton's views on the subject of the tyranny of kings and political
freedom are indeed consistent with his religious views, and in
particular, his unders tanding of Christian liberty and obedience to
Cod. Refemng to the problem of Paul's injunction to civil obedience
in Romans 13, Milton States:
Our freedom belongs not to Caesar, but it is rather a gift
from Cod himself given at birth, and to surrender it to
Caesar, when we did not receive it of him, would be an
act of shame most unworthy of man's origin. If any
person should gaze upon a man's face and features and
inquire whose likeness was found there, would it not be
easy for anyone to reply, the Iikeness of Cod? Since
therefore we are God's own, and indeed his children, we
are for this reason his property alone, and accordingly
cannot without wickedness and extreme sacrilege deliver
ourselves as slaves to Caesar, that is to a man, and a man
who is unjust, unrighteous, and a tyrant (Yale 4. pt. 1:
376-77).
Caesar, of course, represen ts the archetypal despo t. Milton abhors
political tyranny in al1 its forms and in every historical period, and
his political tracts are fiiled with scathing indictments of kings from
Babel to Charles 1. in Milton's view, the only appropriate answer to
regai tyranny is regicide, which he presents as a social obligation and
as an act of piety, ennobling men before God. Milton quotes the
words of Seneca: "'Jove on his altar can receive no sacrifice / Of
higher worth, or richer, than an unjust king"' (Yale 4. pt. 1: 446) .ci
Satan is Milton's prototype of a tyrant. His role as despot of
Hel1 makes him the mode1 for al1 the tyrants of earth which Michael
makes visible to Adam in the final books of Paradise Lost. Yet Milton
did not have to Look fa. to find similar forms of tyranny in the world
of real political events. In EikonoWastes, Milton, charges Charles I of
milking parliament of more money "then would have bought the
Turk out of Morea, and set free al1 the Greeks," the suggestion here
being that the English king is a sultan over the English (Yale 3: 448).
In contrast to the kingship of the Son, who " by right of rnerit Reigns"
(6.431, Satan's (and indeed Charles') daim to sovereignty is
fraudulent. Satan's infernal kingdom is a perversion of Cod's
heavenly empire of "Rational Libertie" (1 2.82). Satan hungers for
personal glory and power. His subjects are his slaves, in bondage for
renouncing "Right reason for their Law," ( 6.42) as represented ideally
in the Son.
Yet Milton is not opposed to sovereignty on principle. There
need not be anything the matter w i t h absolute rule, nor with the
hierarchical division of society. But for Mil ton, sovereign ty and
hierarchy must be of a certain kind to be considered just. A ruler is
just and legitimate when he governs in accordance with "sovran
9~ am indebted to Stevie Davies' book for bringing this passage of Milton's prose ta rny attention. See Images of Kingship in Paradjse Losr, (Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1983) 91.
Reason" (9.1 l3O), as was required of Adam in Eden. Likewise, the
form of hierarchy Milton approved in society was specifically one
which ranked members according to relative rnerit, rather than by
hereditary privilege. C.S. Lewis, then, is correct when he remarks
that one of the central principles of Paradise Losc is hierarchy,
though Milton's approval of hierarchy is rather more specific than
Lewis suggests. 10 In the Second Defence Milton States, " nothing is
more natural, nothing more useful or more advantageous to the
human race than that the lesser obey the greater, not the lesser
number the greater number, but the lesser virtue the greater virtue,
the lesser wisdom the greater wisdom" (Yale 4: 636). Abominable to
Milton are political models based on the subjection of the worthy. He
regards meritocracy as the only tme ethical form of human
governrnent anci socid organization.
Milton appiies the same principle to the celestial sphere in
Paradise Lost, in which God's Son is anointed king only after he has
dernonstrated his virtue. God says to him:
Because thou hast, thou Thron'd in highest biiss
Equal to God, and equaily enjoying
God-like fruition, quitted al1 to Save
A World from utter loss, and hast been found
By Merit more than Birthright Son of Cod,
Here shalt thou sit incarnate, here shalt Reign
i o ~ . ~ . Lewis, A Preface CO Paradise Losr (Oxford: Oxford UP. 1942) 72-80.
Both Cod and Man, Son both of God and Man,
Anointed universal King. (3.304-1 6)
Rightful sovereign power is invested in those who, like the Son,
prove themselves to be worthy of the role. Specifically, fitness for
rulership requires the exercise of rational judgement. It should be
noted that the qualities of virtue and wisdom, which are the
hallmarks of a good sovereign, are closely aligned in Miltonic usage
with superior reason, upon which al1 the higher faculties of
humankind depend. This parallel is brought out both in the prose
and in the poetry: in DeDocaina Chrisciana, for instance, Milton
equates the exercise of God-given " right reason" with "whatever is
intrinsically good" (Yale 6: 3 IO), and in Paradise Lost, Mic hael
explains to Adam rhat liberty is losr when individuals or nations
swerve "From vertue, which is reason" ( 12.98).
Political liberty depends upon rational govemmen t For as
Michael counseis Adam: "true Libertie . . . / with right Reason dwells
/ Winn'd, and frorn her hath no dividuai king" ( 12.83-85). Failure
to rule according to reason, as Michael goes on to Say, amounts to
tyranny:
Reason in man obscur'd, or not obeyd,
Immediately inordinate desires
And upstart Passions catch the Government
From Reason, and to servitude reduce
Man fiil then free. Therefore since hee permits
Within himself unworthie Powers to reign
Over free Reason, Cod in Judgement just
Subjects him from without to violent Lords. (12.86-93)
For Milton, freedom is above al1 Liberation frorn one's lower self, the
self of the passions- Lawrence Babb notes how reason and passion
were understood in seventeenth century thought: "A man who allows
his emotions to overrule his reasonable will sacrifices his freedom
and his virtue" (47). That interna1 freedom lost, a parallel loss of
external freedom will follow as a consequence. Andrew Milner puts
the matter succinctly: "Those who lai1 in the government of
themselves will, then, necessarily fail prey to a tyrannical
government imposed from without" ( 163-4)- Just as a state
governed by a rational d e r is a free state, so is the man who is
guided by reason a free man.
Though the causes of the Fa11 are cornplex, Satan and Adam and
Eve fa11 largely due to the triumph of passion over reason.li
Raphael's final set of instructions to Adam before the fa11 makes the
point clearly:
Be strong, live happie, and love, but first of ail
Him whom to love is to obey, and keep
His great command; rake heed least Passion sway
L1~enis Saurat was probably the fxst to identify how Milton had redefmed the nature of the Fa. In his landmark smdy, iclilton: M m and Thinlter (Hamden: Archon, 1924), Saurat shows, though perhaps oversirnplifying the issue, how Milton wants to see the Fa11 in te- of passion overcoming reason, rather than as a search for forbidden knowledge, as the Biblical source for the story would suggest.
Thy Judgement to do aught, which else free Will
Would not admit. . . . (8.633-37)
Ali ratioiial creatures possess free will, for as God says, "Reason also
is choice" (3.108). To choose rightly is to choose in obedience co the
dictates of reason. In order to defend God's justice, Milton must
show that Satan and Adam act irrationaily and illegitimately in
choosing to revolt against Cod.
Their acts of rebellion lack a rational justification, we learn,
because God is an ideal ruler whose kingdom is based upon a
rneritocratic order. " k c h in thir several Sphears assignd, / Till body
up to spirit work, in bounds / Proportiond to each kind" (5.477-79).
God's kingdom is in Milton's eyes an ideal political rnodel, Cod an
ideai ruler. There is liberty under God for those who know and
respect their proper station. I t is well known that after the failure of
the English revolution, Milton began to despair that human liberty
was ever attainable in any earthly States. We may speculate,
however, that if he had found a king in seventeenth century England
who approximated God, there would have beeri scant reason for the
p e t to embrace the Good Old Cause.
Yet the Guâ of Paradise Lost is an elusive figure. Are we to
understand God as representing reason itself? Andrew Milner claims
that Milton's Cod is "abstract reason." and that therefore Miltonic
rationalism is logically atheistic ( 1 59). This claim, however, seems
counter-intuitive, and furthemore at odds with the basis of Milton's
theological principles, as it needs rationalism to explain the existence
of God, rather than the other way around. Cod is more than an
@ abstraction in Milton's thought. Yet there is no question God is
somehow to be associated in Milton's system with reason, which is
also goodness, truth, and justice. I t is perhaps safer and more
accurate to say that Milton's God is the source of rationality.
Part of the problem, of course, is that Milton himself often
seems unsure of how to account for the Cod in whom he believes. I t
is often held that Milton bungled his characterization of Cod, or that
he undemined him from the start, as William Empson daims in
Miiton 's cod. Certainly God is a less compeliing figure than Satan or
Adam in Paradise Lost. But this does not mean that Milton was
(knowingly or unknowingly) of the devil's Party, nor that his praise
of Goci is disingenuous, nor even that his characterization of God is
unsuccessfuL From Milton's perspective, God represents the
principle of creation; yet paradoxically, as the source, he defies visual
representation, becomes featureless. Milton certainly regarded
scriptural revelation as the chief means through which humanity cm
approach knowledge of Cod; but Milton also assumes that the Bible
cannot fully represent its divine inspiration. We may know Cod also
through his rational creations, and yet even in these vessels, his
image appears in varying degrees of incompleteness. And so Milton's
God in Paradise Lost swims just outside of our imaginative grasp,
"Imrnutable, ïmmonal, Infinite" (3.3 72), w hile Satan, by contrast, in
his body of leviathan proportions, is visually striking, but diminished
in cornparison to his creator. Milton would seem to be saying that
Satan - like the nature of evil itself - appeals to our senses. while
God may not be approached thus directly.
Nonetheless, Milton's God must be accounted for if we are to
understand the hierarchical basis of the poet's political and religious
views. Milton, we find, considers capacity for rulership to depend
upon the exercise of rationai judgement, and he regards God as an
ideal sovereign who rules with rational wisdom, and whose kingdom
is based upon a perfect meritocratic order. As such, Satan's and
Adam and Eve's rebellions possess no rational or legitimate
foundation, but rather spring from passionate and self-serving
motives. Revolu tion in Paradise Lost, therefore, connotes a
movement away from divine rational order; with an unmatched
variety and rïchness of lurid detail, Milton characterizes this
unfortunate change as a descent into the grotesque.
Sa tan and the Grotesq ue
Let us first assess Satan's reasons for rebelling against God, for
herein lies the root cause of his grotesque nature. As leader of the
rebel army of angels in heaven, Satan's alleged justification for
chaiienging Cod's sovereignty is not uncompelling at first glace.
Godts rule is absolute. His authonty may not be challenged. Indeed,
such a form of rule readily appears to be tyrannical. And yet, as
Milton wants to show, the rational and moral position is to choose to
serve God. who is benevolent and just. I t is important to emphasize
that Satan chooses evil. He understands his actions to be wrong and
he knows the consequences. This is Satan's pervers@, to use his
free will to turn al1 that is good into evil. He does not. therefore,
actually believe in the rightness of his actions, for if he did, he would
not be freely choosing evil and his punishment would lose its
justification. 12 Further acquaintance with Satan's character reveals
plainly that his actual motives for revolution are self-serving and
nefarious: pride, envy, and revenge. Satan's moral Mure is usuaily
cited as the mainspring of his actions. The text, however, makes
more of his inability to reason effectively. As Abdiel rightly
observes, Satan employs reason which is "Unsound and false" (6.121),
or a kind of pseudo-rationality. It is his lack of right reason which
corrupts his ability co make the correct choices. Instead of choosing
to continue to serve God in heaven, Satan instead allows his corrupt
desires to motivate his conduct, and thus chooses to turn away from
Cod in active rebeliion.
I t is through Satan's rebellion rhat Sin enters the world. Milton
gives this fateful change visuai and symbolic resonance through the
use of grotesque imagery. Sin is born out of Satan's mptured head.
By bringing her into existence, Satan forfeits his own divine image, as
well as those of his legions of followers. Sin's awful physicality is a
measure of her role as the source (and thereafter the root cause) of
the grotesque in the world; for it is she that " first / Distemperd al1
12~he doctrine of free wili is, of course, a centrai tenet of Milton's theology. In De Docmina Chnstiana, Milton explains, ". . . everyone is provided with a sufficient degree of innate reason for him to resist evii desires by his own effort. . ." (Yale 6: 186). Sunilarly, in Areopagitica, Milton notes that Cod "gave [Adam] freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing" (Yale 2: 527). The rebel angds, Milton believes. are more blameworthy than Adam and Eve because, though both freely chose a sinful path, the angels tempted and deceived themselves, whereas humanity was Fust tempted and deceived by Satan. This difference in degree of sin corresponds ta the difference in the possibilicy for attaùiing grace: The f i r t son by thk own suggestion fell, / Self-tempted. self-depraved: Man therefore shaii fmd grace, / The other none. . . ( 3.129-32 1.
things, and of incorrupt / Corrupteded" (1 1.55-7). Sin is described in
typically grotesque language: "Woman to the waist, and fair, / But
ended fou1 in many a scaly fold / Voluminous and vast, a Serpent
armrd / With mortal sting" (2.650-653). Like Spenser's Duessa, Sin's
body is double, at once human and bestial, alluring and repulsive;
this kind of categorical confusion is, according to Harpham, the
essence of the grotesque, apprehended in "the sense that things that
should be kept apart are fused togetheru( l 1 ). 13
Death, Sin's child by her father, also defies categorization. but
for the reason that it lacks a physical form altogether, existing simply
as a terrible black shadow. The only time Milton provides Death
with physicality is in Book 10, following the fall of Adam and Eve,
a when it is incarnated as a "vast unhide-bound Corps" (10.601),
suggesting a flayed cadaver. The image is suitable, as Death, newly
introduced into the world through the Fall, "de-forms" the living
world, divesting bodies of their corporeal shape. Death is the
destroyer as Cod is the creator, and Death is as "dreadful and
deform" as God is sublime (2.706).
13111 her book, P & v and Danger (London: Routledge, l966), Mary Douglas offers a fascinating account of how categoricai hybrids have become associated with moral, social, and religious forms of transgression. She seeks to explain why, for example, in Leviticus, certain creatures are considered impure and inedible according to diemry law, while others are regarded as pure and edible. Douglast study reveals that the forbidden anunals share certain features in common: they may contain an interstitial quality (eg. crawting creatures from the sea), or be seen as incomplete members of their class (eg. rotting objects), or be regarded as hybrids or confusions (52-55). She writes: "ln short, our pollution behavior is the reaction which condemns any ob ject or idea likely to conhise or contradict cherished classifications" (48). It is worth notùig that Milton's God, the source and paragon of wholeness, order, and unity, ir described (through Belial) as ~unpoUutedtv (2.139).
Satan, though of regal appearance and bearing, is fully as
grotesque as Sin and Death. Sin, in fact, is describeci as Satan's
"perfect image" (2.764) in the absence of the divine image (2.764).
Satan's deformation is, of course, the result of his rebellion and
subsequen t fall. Harpham sees Michelangelo's sketches of The Las t
Judgement as exploiting a similar theme, in which groups of nudes
are changed into monstrous demons upon descent into Hell. The
distortion of Michelangelo's rebels is fitting, according to Harpham,
for they have "surrendered their structural integrity and formal
coherence in the act of transgression" (7). Milton's Satan and his
cohorts, we find, are likewise "gross by sinning grown" (G.GG 1 ). They
are variously described in Hell as 'trnonstrous shapes" and as "brutish
forms / Rather than hurnan" (1.479-82). The standard from which
they have fallen is a classicai one, in which bodies are closed,
homogeneous, centered, and symmetrical - features which are a
measure of ordered and proportional rationality. Satan appears
deformed beyond recognition before the angel, Zephon, who
apprehends him whispering to Eve. Once honored arnong the ranks
of angels, Satan condescends to Zephon, but is met with a sharp
rejoinder which reminds him of his place outside the hierarchy of
heaven:
Think not, revolted Spirit, thy shape the same.
Or undiminished brightness, to be known
As when thou stood'st in Heav'n upright and pure:
That glory then, when thou no more wast good,
Departeci from t h e and thou resembl'st now
Thy sin and place of doom obscure and foul. (4.835-40)
Satan's charac ter is revealed no t only b y his physical
degradation, but also by his slippery, changeable physical form This
"doubleness" of character is indicated by his ability to assume
assorted shapes; just as Satan minces "Ambiguous words" (5.703), so
does he inhabit an ambiguous physical shape. The tradition of the
shapeshifting devil is as old as the demonic tradition itself. The
capacity to remake the body is also a prominent feature of the
grotesque, wherein, as Bakhtin says, the body is always "in the act of
becoming. It is never finished, never completed; it is constantly
built, created, and builds and creates another body." The grotesque
form, Bakhtin alleges, is notable for "transgressing its own body"
(3 17). From Bakh tin's perspective, as we have seen, the grotesque's
transgressive quaiities are viewed as positive, containing a creative
(and procreative) energy integral to cultural change and renewal.
From Milton's perspective, on the other hand, God is the unique
creative force in the universe; Satan's transgressive function,
therefore, far from being regenerative, is a horrific perversion of
Cod's creative ordering function. Milton's Cod, in contrast to Satan, is
characterized by "oneness" and by his "imrnutable" form (3.373),
symbolizing the indivisibility of truth. Just as the divine is
characterized by formal unity and wholeness, which is a measure of
spintual perfection, so is the dernonic given a grotesque plasticity
which is the material analogue of spiritual corruption, and reflects
the arnorphous, degenerate instability stemming from loss of the
divine image.
As punishment for waging war in heaven against God, the
devils are plunged into Hell. Significantly, Hell is created from out of
the center rather than being created in reaction to the center - as
much as Satan would like to believe otherwise. Hell rnay be usefully
seen in terms of Kayser's aiienated world, grotesque for standing in
contradiction and opposition to rationalism and systematic thought.
Its denizens are rebels and transgressors, thus held as a "captive
multitude" in "strictest bondage" (2.3 2 1-4). Their position is one of
marginality, their place lying on the "utmost border of [God's]
Kingdom" (2.36 1). Milton's Hell is remarkable for arresting our
imagination with the vividness of its imagery while simultaneously
appearing confused, systemless beyond al1 recognition. It is rhis fine
line between referentiality and non-referen tiali ty that every artis t
ernploying the grotesque must tread.
In its ambiguity and ambivalence, Hel1 is suitably defined in
terms of paradox, which asserts both terms of a contradiction at once,
embraces both and neither, and dances on the margins of sense and
nonsense. In its "deformation" of language and meaning, paradox is
the basis of the grotesque; this relatedness is succinctly captured in
Harpham's defmition of grotesqueries as standing "at a margin of
consciousness benveen the known and the unknown, the perceived
and the unperceived" (5). Just so, out of Heu's flames emanates
"darkness visible" (L.63), and its atmosphere "Burns fore, and cold
performs the effect of fire" (3.595-6). Hell is furthermore where "al1
iife dies, death lives, and nature breeds, / Perverse, ail rnonstrous, al1
prodigious things, / Abominable, inutterable" (2.624-26). Paradox
challenges the lirnics of our realms of experience, breaking down
boundaries of thoughr and sense. I t is the ultimate expression for
that which exceeds al1 bounds. This is likewise how we commonly
apprehend the grotesque, w hich constitu tes, in Harpham's phrase,
"the things left over w hen the categories of language are exhaus ted"
(3).
As the grotesque is defined by excess, by an overflowing of
bounds, so is it opposed to order. Bakhtin's formulation of the
grotesque as "the negation of the entire order of life" gets to the
heart of the matter (307). In Paradise Lost, God is the architect of
order, which he creates from Chaos. Urie1 reports:
I saw when at his Word the formless Mas,
This worids rnaterial mould, came to a heap:
Confusion heard his voice, and wilde uproar
Stood rul'd, stood vast infinitude confin'd. (3.709- 12)
Milton's use of language in this passage is extremely precise. The
conjunction of the active verbs "rul'd" and "confmrd" show God as
bringing disorder to bear within the ordered bounds of his sovereign
sway.
The rebel angels, in their disregard for God's order, especially
his irresistible hierarchical order, are chased into Hell. As fallen
creatures estranged frorn the divine image of God, the rebels
institute a perverted order of their own, which while based upon
hierarchical limits, is ernpty of reason and justice. The fallen angels
in Hell are not ranged according to relative merit, as would be
rational and just, but rather according to their ability to persuade
courses of evil under various pretenses, to rnobilize the masses of
demons to a common nefarious purpose; the ability to lie
persuasively guarantees political power, and so Satan is a natural
leader. Reason, which justifies political rule, is subtly distorted by
Hell's leading figures. The demonic counsel is a perversion of right
reason, orchestrated to mislead the masses. Belial, we are told,
speaks to the assembled "with words cloth'd in reason's garb"
(2.226). The "settl'd State / Of order" (2.279) to which the devils
ostensibly aim is a sham, a perversion of God's rational order. I t is
suitably the temple of "Pandemonium" which is built in the center of
this disordered empire divorced from Cod. l4
Yet the disorder of Hel1 is not identical to the anarchic disorder
of Chaos, a place described as a "dark unbottom'd infinite" (2.403, an
"abortive gulf' (2.441), and as the " unfounded deep" (2.829). Chaost
elements mingle confiisedly in " Etemal Anarchy" (2.896). I t is a
space without Limits or boundaries, and thus eludes visuai
representation. Milton's depiction of Hell, on the other hand, rnakes a
striking visuai picture. Hell's landscape, with its lakes, forests and
mountains, is much like our Earth. And yet it is also a nightmarish,
otherworldly space of "doleful shades" ( 1.65 ) and " Floods and
14~he precise nature of this disorder is succinctly captured by Milton in his repeated use of the word confowided. The term is brilliantly used to connote simultaneously such various meanings as "confused," "damned," and "overthrown"; for it is the rebels' failed coup, and their overthrow by God. that results in their damnation and confusion. Banished from heaven, they are thrown into the abyss, to lie "vanquisht, rolling in the fiery Gulf / Confounded though ïmmonal" (1.53-4). Satan, in tum, makes it his mission to "confound the race / Of mankind in one root" (2.382-3). After he has succeeded, Adam and Eve are described in th& destitute condition: "silent, and in face / ~onfounded long they sate" (9.10634). Their sin shows in theV being "de-faced," much as Satan has k e n phyricaiiy altered through hir rebellion fram Gad.
Whirlwinds of ternpestuous fire" (1.77). This kind of corrupted
familiarity is often considered the basis of grotesque representation.
As Harpham notes, we experience the grotesque in its most poignant
manifestation when "in the midst of an overwhelming impression of
monstrousness there is much we can recognize" (5). Milton often
succeeds in making the grotesque horrors of Hell vividly recognizable
through metaphor. The dernons' movement en masse over the
surface of Hell recalls the plague of locusts brought down by Moses
( 1.341), and they are furthermore compareci to bees "In clustersl'
(1.771), as a swarm (1.776), and as a numberless throng (1.780). As
these exarnples indicate, Milton commonly compares the devils to
animals, which points to how they have surrendered their higher
rational natures in their rebeiiion from God. They are also often
linked,asabove,toobjectswhichlackstrucrureandresistclosure.
Masses of teerning bodies are typical of grotesque representations in
art. The grotesque body is often part of a throng in which there is no
organizing principle or focal point upon which the eye may rest.
This pattern of imagery anticipates Book 10 and the
mernorable scene in which Satan and his crew are transformed into a
mass of writhing serpents: "dreadful was the din / of hissing
through the Hall, thick swarming now / With complicated monsters
head and tale" ( 10.5 2 1-3 ). The devils' loss of the divine image
within corresponds to the their losing aii bodily integrity, to their
marginalized status as "cornplicated mons ters." Satan's own
transformation is evoked in terms which remind us of similar scenes
in Ovid's Mecamorphoses " His Visage drawn he felt so sharp and
spare, / His armes clung to his Ribs,his Leggs entwining / Each other.
till supplanted down he fell/ A rnonstrous Serpent on his Belly
prone" (1 0.5 1 1-1 4). Alastair Fowler has remarked upon the scene
that " just when the devils seern about to becorne heroes in Satan's
epic, . . . they turn out instead to be monsters in God's" (64).
Earlier, Satan had broken through the bounds of Heu, his
second transgression of limits, with apparent success. He then
asserted his demonic transformative power to don the guise of a
serpent and usurp the "sovran reason" of Eve. Yet Satan's breaking
of bounds, his freedom from Cod's restraint, is not actual freedom.
As Satan himself recognizes, so long as his will is bent on evil, he will
always be in hell, for "The mind is its own place, and in ifself / Can
make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n" (1.254-55). The "hard
liberty" (2.256) which the devils claim to prefer in resistance to God
is a sham. They are in bondage ro their own willed evil, which
deprives them of fkeedom of choice The devils' grotesque
metamorphoses into serpents is a visual analogue of what they have
willed themselves to become in their defmce of God: that is,
irrational, compted, suffering beasts at the furthest remove from
ideal created nature. The Bakhtinian sense in which the grotesque
represents a positive form of resistance to authority is inapplicable
to Paradise Lost, wherein resistance to God's au thority is
unjustifiable, and furthermore utterly futile. If the grotesque
promotes triumphant laughter, as Bakhtin suggests, the last laugh in
Milton's scheme belongs ro Cod.
Adam and Eve and the Grotesque
In recounting the story of the war in heaven, Gabriel uses
Satan's plight as a cautionary tale for Adam. He concludes: "let it
profit thee to have heard / By terrible Example the reward / Of
disobedience; first they might have stood, / Yet fell; remember. and
fear to transgress" (6.909-1 2): so concludes Book G and the first half
of Milton's epic. The second half consists of the anticipation of Man's
fall, the Fall itself, and its consequences throughou t human history;
boundaries are established, transgresseci, and the consequences of
that transgression are evaluated across time. In many important and
obvious respects, the Fa11 represents an axis of change; its
0 revolutionary character involves a turn away from the rationality,
order, and obedience demanded by God. As a consequence of their
revolt, Adam and Eve (and their offspring throughout history) are
alienated from God and from the divine image within, and are
thereafter subject to the irrationality and disorder which
accompanies that change. The f a e n world into which Adam and Eve
descend is of their own creating, and Milton's portrait of that world is
not a rosy one. It is largely with horror and disgust that Milton
contemplates a postlapsarian existence. In its fragmentation, its
confusion of hierarchy, and its putrefaction, the fallen world invites
numerous cornparisons to the grotesque.
Yet in order to understand Milton's basis for conceiving of a
grotesque fallen world, we need first to assess the limits irnposed
upon a prelapsarian, pre-revolutionary world. Eden, like di of Cod's
creations, is govemed by the rule of hierarchy. Superior reason
again determines ascendency. Adam and Eve are created, unlike the
animals of Eden, with "Sanctitie of Reason" and in the image of God
(7.508), and therefore may legitimately hold sway over the entire
earth. At the moment of creation, God proclaims:
Let us make now Man in our image, Man
In Our similitude, and let them rule
Over the Fish and Fowle of Sea and Aire,
Beast of the Field, and over al1 the k t h ,
And every creeping thing that creeps the ground.
(7.5 19-23)
Adam is placed above Eve for his superior reasoning ability,
artriburable to his creation direcrly by God, whereas Eve is created
out of Adam; thus Milton's controversial assessment of the pair's
relative status: "Hee for Cod only, shee for Cod in him" (4.299).
Adam therefore possesses "absolu te rule" (4.30 1) over ail the earth,
dependent only upon his obedience to God, which Milton defends as
the rationai position. Adam's turning away from God (literally, his
perversity) follows from the failure of his rational will.
Eden is Adam and Eve's rational empire. So long as they
remain within the boundaries of Eden, Adam and Eve maintain a
position of centrality in relation to Cod. Eden, as Satan observes,
bears close cornparison to heaven. I t is likewise a place w herein
limits are observed and the sanctity of order is upheld. Outside of
a Eden's " hallowed Limits" (4.964), however, Lies a disorderly prospect.
Eden is bordered by "a steep wilderness, whose hairie sides With
thicket overgrown, grottesque and wilde, / Access deni'd" (4.13 5-3 7) .
Milton's only use of the word "grotesque" in Paradise Lost vividly
depicts the contrast between the disorderliness of nature outside the
wall of Paradise and the perfect order within its boundaries. 15
Atternpting ro enter the Garden, Satan is repulsed (at least
momentarily) by the wilderness which serves as a naturai barrier to
the sanctuary within: "[He] further way found none, so thick
entwined, / As one continu'd brake, the undergrowth / Of shrubs and
tangling bushes had perplext / Al1 path of Man and Beast that past
that way" (4.174-77). The word "perplext" operates in this passage
in the same way as did "grotesque" in the earlier passage: both
words serve to set off the contrast between without and within -- the margin and the center - as well as to subtly represent the mind
of Satan in irs condition of abject confusion.~U~t is norably Satan's
perplexity, his grotesque confusion, which debars hîm from the
paradise he had known in heaven. Sirnilarly, Adam and Eve, in the
descent from rational preeminence rhat their revolution from God
15~he work which Adam and Eve perform in che Garden consists primarily of checking the "wanton growth" of its vegetation(4.629). While the abundance and luxuriance of nature in its purest form is often ernphasized, excess and overgrowsh are intolerable, and more suitably defmed by the fallen world.
16~he decorative style which was developed in Renaissance Europe, in imitation of grottesche cave art, showed an interesthg interplay between the center and margins of artistic space. A painting, for instance, would cornmonly consist of a central design which depicted sacred material in a recognizable, coherent, and ordered pattern; this centrai portion was bordered by fringe art consisting of rnonstrous shapes lacking order and proportion. Often these shapes were so painscakingly executed. and so absurd and decadent. that they rivalled the main panel for the viewer's attention. Milton's Paradise - his sacred centerpiece - is likewise bounded by a confused periphery, which does not, however, arrest our imagination. Yet Satan, who is aiso a marginalized moastrosity, achieves an extraordinary cons picuousness in our imaginative eye.
entails, find themselves cast from Eden into the disorderly outer
world.
Satan plays something like the role of facilitator in the fa11 of
humanity. In his encounters with Eve, he provokes her existing
desires and also instills new appetites and longings, dl with
characteristic subtlety and deception. He first approaches her with
seductive power through the irrational world of dream. Squatting
astride Eve, he is described evocatively as attempting to draw out
her lower nature:
Assaying by his Deviiish art to reach
The Organs of her Fancy, and with rhern forge
Illusions as he list, Phan tasms and Dreams,
Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint
Th 'animai Spirits that from pure blood arise
Like gentle breaths from Rivers pure, thence raise
At least distemper'd, discontented thoughts.
Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires
Blown up with high conceits engend'ring pride.
(4.80 1-09)
Satan's aim is to corrupt Adam and Eve by debasing [hem to his own
level. This involves encouragement of their sub-rational inner
powers to usurp their rational judgement. As Adam explains to Eve
upon hearing of her unsectling dream:
But know chat in the Soule
Are many lesser Faculties that serve
Reason as chief; among these Fansie next
Her office holds; of al1 external things,
Which the five watchful Senses represent,
She forms Imaginations, Aerie shapes,
Which Reason joyning or disjoyning, frames
Al1 what we affirm or what deny, and cal1
Our knowledge or opinion. (5.100-108)
Adam and Eve's rule on earth is reliant upon their keeping
imagination, or fancy, in subservience to reason. This is a forrn of
hierarchy which Satan atternpts to dismantle by planting in Eve's
imagination " misjoyning shapes" (5.1 1 1 ). Eve is as yet unacquainted
W h the maiformeci, incoherent images produced in a ciream srate.
Nonetheless, she is able, at this point, to withhold rational assent of
the dream and its demonic suggestion.
In their first encounter, Satan introduces Eve to the potential
challenges of her own lower nature, her passions and desires. In his
second approach of Eve, Satan buiids on what he has already
accomplished He recognizes that Eve will be on the defensive, wary
of direct appeals to her appetites, and so with masterful deceit, and
with backhanded subtlety, he appeals to her in the guise of reason.
Eve's warning to Satan that "Reason is Our Law" (9.G54) provides the
fodder which he needs to accomplish his ends. He daims to have
gone from being a dumb brute, an irrational being, to an articulate
a and fully rational creature by eating the forbidden fruit.
Accordingly, his status has risen a notch in the hierarchical chah of
being. His words, Eve must admit, seem "impregn'd / With reason"
(9.73 7-8), and she contemplates her own status elevated to the level
of the gods. She also rnomentarily revels in the thought of becoming
superior to Adam, and ponders the same question with which Satan
is self-deluded: "inferior who is free?" (9.825). Yet, in truth, like
Satan, she is at this point grasping for a pseudo-rational bais to
legitimate motivations grounded in such base desires as greed and
envy.
Eve's "fatal Trespass" (9.889) is properly viewed in the light of
her defeated faculty of reason, which she chooses to ignore and resis t
by eating of the fruit, and thus indulging her baser nature. Adam
had dready reminded Eve of the dangers to which reason is subject:
"Reason not impossibly may meet / Some specious object by the Foe
subornd, / and fa11 into deceprion unaware, / Not keeping strictest
watch, as she was warnd" (9.360453). As arch-deceiver, Satan dupes
Eve into abandoning her right reason, which recognizes the justice of
God-given limits. Ironically, Eve's revolutionary effort to raise
herself ùeyond her own human limits involves her lower nature
gaining preerninence over her higher nature, with a resultant loss of
freedom. After the Fall, both she and Adam are described "in
subjection now / To sensual Appetite, who frorn beneathe / Usurping
over sovran Reason claimd / Superior sway" (9.1128-30).17 There is
I7The blame which Adam receives for eating of the fruit is not identical to the blame foist upon Eve. As her "superior," Adam is blameworthy for fouowing her lead in eacing the forbidden fruit. By obeying her in a course of action he knows to be forbidden, he has effectively resigned his superior position in the hierarchy of nature; she has become his god, and in obeying her he worships ber like an idol. The Son rebukes Adam after the Fall, and rerninds hirn of his mle as chief sovereign of Eden:
enslaved by their own lower natures, a condition inimical to rule. and
they must consequently resign their sovereign control of Eden.
Milton indicates that, despite possessing rational forbearance,
Adam and Eve freely chose their own Fa11 by acting in accordance
with irrational impulses. Like Satan, they are cast from God's
rational kingdom, alienated from his benign order, with an attendant
loss of freedom and privilege. The sentence of "perpetual
banishment" ( 1 1.107) which falls upon Adam and Eve, as well as
their progeny, suggests not only a physical relocation, but a more
fundamental dislocation from God, from the center. The "lower
World . . . obscure / And wilde" (11.283-4) to which they are
condemned is a world of their own creating, one which is irrational
and temfyingly disordered. The usurpation of the forces of reason
by the forces of passion, upon which the Fall is predicated,
corresponds to a movement into the grotesque, which Harpham
pointedly describes as "a word for that dynamic state of low-
ascending and high-descending" (74). In the fallen world, the
"misjoyning shapes" which Eve experienced but as a dream have
become horribly real. The landscape "grotesque and wilde" at the
margins of Eden defines fallen existence in the absence of a
governing rational will.
Adornd Shee was indeed, and lovely to attract Thy Love. not thy Subjection, and her Gifts Were such as under Govenunent weii seem'd Unseemly to beare mie, which was thy part And person, had'st thou known thy self aright. ( 10.15 1-56)
Before moving on to a consideration of Milton's postlapsarian
world, however, let us briefly assess the Fa11 from Cod's perspective.
For, as 1 hope to show, it is in defining the precise conditions of the
Fa11 that we discover the logic of its consequences. God takes the
foiiowing view of even ts:
But longer in that Paradise to dwell,
The Law I gave ro Nature him forbids:
Those pure immortal Elements that know
No gross, no unharmoneous mixture foule,
Eject him tainted now, and purge him off
As a distemper, gross to aire as gross,
And mortal food, as may dispose him best
For dissolution wrought by Sin, that first
Distemperd al1 things, and of incorrupt
Compteci. ( 11.48-57)
Adam and Eve are despoiled and may no longer inhabit the pure soi1
of Eden. In a similar vein, l3elial had predicted the fallen angels
would be expelleci if they attempted to reascend to heaven:
"th'Ethereai mould / Incapable of stain would soon expel / Her
rnischief, and purge off the baser fire / Victorious" (2.131-42). 18 In
both these passages, the deiform universe seems imaged as a
physical body which flushes out, evacuates, al1 those baser elements
18~here is an implied meaning in both examples 1 have provided above of a political purge. In Miltonic usage, the word "purge" has a strong moral and religious ernphasis, but the commonly used political connotation ir equally applicable in both cases.
that tain t bodily purity and harmony. Humanity, with its " polluted
ways" ( 12.1 101, is expelled. and so thereafter alienated from the
source of its own creation. Humanity, the irnagery would suggest, is
distempered. The nature of the disease is sin, which is introduced
into the world through the Fall. Moral and spiritual dissolution are
here linked to a dissipated physicality, as was common in
seventeenth century medical theory (Flannagan 5 86). Humanity's
inner corruption is actualized in physical terms through decay,
deformity, and disease.
The elements of grotesque we find in the fallen outer world are
thus the outgrowth of an inner mental world constituted by disorder
and irrationality. (The Und of deformity that can result from a
warped and polluted rnind is, as we have seen, most rnanifest in the
characrer of Satan.) Imrnediately after eating the forbidden fruit,
Adam and Eve view each other from out of their own respective
feelings of degradation; the outside world is seen from a new vantage
point, and the alteration is experienced as strange and unsettling.
With the introduction of shame, Adam and Eve perceive their own
and their partner's genitals as "unseemliest seen" (9.1094). The lens
through which they view the world now contains a grotesque film.
Similarly, Sin does not manifest itself in the world until it has been
released by the mind of Man. The bondage of Adam and Eve
precipitates, and is coincidental with the keeing of Sin from her
significant position at the boundary between Hel1 and Chaos: the
relationship is expressed in terms of logical cause and effect. In this
light, God's punishment of Adam and Eve does not seem arbitrary,
but rather just. For not only does the punishment fit the crime. but
the crime brings the punishment into existence. Cod has been neatly
absolved of responsibility for not only the Fall, but also for its
consequences in human history.
I t is to those consequences that we now turn our attention.
Just as Adam had been privileged with knowledge of the past before
the Fall, so is he allowed to peer into the future, a future he has
determined by his own act of transgression. Adam is equipped with
increased vision to gaze into the beyond, given foresight, while this
flight into the future constantly refers hirn back to his own fateful
trespass, and thus also serves as hindsight. Michael shows Adam a
world as yet unfamiliar to his eyes. I t is Adam's familiar world
strangely inverted, contorted out of shape. Order and proportion are
no longer the rule in this new world. Michael's presentation of the
story of Cain and Abel, for instance. shows that "th'unjust the just
hath slain" ( 1 1.45 5). What human history demonstrates is that
Adam and Eve's crime is to be continuaily reenacted; al1 hierarchies
with a ba i s in reason and justice have collapsed, or been perversely
inverted.
Also unlike Eden, the new world is defined by excessive
behavior and intemperance of every sort. Michael emp hasizes that
these miseries were engendered by " th'inabstinence of Eve" ( 1 1.476).
The consequence of excess, relates Michael, is disease. Hurnanity is
rank with disease, just as postlapsarian Adam and Eve are
themselves "Distemperd." The "monstrous crew" (1 1.474) upon
which Adam gazes is a grotesque assembly of decaying, diseased
bodies: "Before his eyes appear'd, sad, noisorne, dark, / A Lazar-
house it seem'd, wherein were laid / Numbers of al1 diseas'd, al1
maladies / Of ghastly Spasm, or racking torture. . ." (1 1.478-81).
The passage continues with a litany of honific diseases and
harrowing descriptions of human suffering. This is Hel1 on earth, yet
it is also our world, depicted with brutal honesty and with an
unswerving grotesque eye. Adam, though, is devastated by the
vision, and cannot look upon it without weeping. These human
images, he recognizes, are "deformities" ( 1 1.5 1 3 ) , for they no longer
retain divine similitude in full. Michael informs Adam that this
deformation is due to "the sin of Eve" ( 1 1.5 19) and to Man's
subsequent perversion of " pure Nature's healthful rules / To
loathsome sickness" (11.523-4). It is perfectly consistent that
humanity should deviate physically from the image of God in
pursuing a disorderly, intemperate, irrational manner of life in open
defiance of God and his standards; it is hurnanity's perversity (or
literaily, its "tuming away from Cod") that precludes bodiiy order,
proportion, and health - consequences which Adam regards as "just"
(1 1.526)
The bleak future which Michael reveals to Adam does admit of
some rare exceptions. There are certain fleeting moments in history,
Michael explains, when speciai individuals are able to transcend the
"World perverse" (11.701) into which theyare bom. These
individuals, in the mould of Abdiel, are faithful to Cod and so retain
the divine image. Their purity is vividly contrasted with the
background of an " W h fill'd with violence, and al1 flesh /
Corrupting each their way" ( 1 1.888-3). The dominant grotesque
pattern of hurnan existence reaches its lowest ebb with the story of
the building of the Tower of Babel. In these scenes, the builders of
the Tower are likened to the fallen angels: like the devils they are
aspiring to reach Godhead, in this case by building a tower "whose
top rnay reach to Heav'n" ( 12.44); again like the devils, instead of
ultimately gaining fame and reputation, those who build the Tower
have their names blotted out. In order to punish the builders for
revoiting against hierarchical limits God sows confusion amongst
them Their building project is marred by disorder caused by a
failure to communicate, producing a grotesque scene. which Milton
describes vividly:
Forthwith a hideous gabble rises loud
Among the Builders; each to other calls
Not understood, till hoarse, and al1 in rage,
As mockt they storm; great laughter was in Heav'n
And looking down, to see the hubbub strange
And hear the din; thus was the building left
Ridiculous, and the work Confusion nam'd.
( 12.56-63)
As Roy Flannagan points out, the scene is strongly reminiscent of the
grotesque metamorphoses of the fallen angels attending Satan's
speech in Book 10 (633). The absurd product of the builders' labour,
the Tower named "Confusion," is Iikewise analogous to the creation of
Pandernonium in Hell; both are monuments which testiw to the
disordered and irrational minds of their builders.
Adam is quick to identiw the moral and political implications
of the building project. He recognizes Nimrod's (though he is
unnamed) treachery to be two-fold, for he has not only atternpted to
raise himself above his feiiow humans with an authority "from Cod
not giv'n" (1 2.66), but has also set his sights upon God himself: " to
God his Tower intends / Siege and defiance" ( 1 2.7 3) . Like Satan,
Nimrod lacks rational virtue and is a political tyran t He has
exceeded al1 human limits, and as a result, as Adam recognizes, is
reduced to a grotesque, life-denying existence "where thin Aire /
Above the Clouds wiil pine his entrails gross" ( 12.76-7). As Paradise
Lost has repeatedly emphasized, outside of God's ordained limits
there lies physical fragmentation, deformation, and disease. Nimrod,
like Satan, plies a transgressive, and whoiiy irrational course which
degrades and enslaves him and his followers.
The legacy of Adam and Eve's original trespass is shown
extending throug h Babel to the present age. Ey continually
perpetuating the Fdl , human beings remain a diseased and deformed
lot. SeKalienated from God, the source of rationality and order in
the universe, they are condemned to a grotesque world of their own
creation. This is a form of enslavement for which God provides a
remedy by sending his Son, the liberator of humanity. Adam
welcomes Michael's report of the Son's descent to earth with an
exultant: "So God with man unites" ( 12.3 8 2). It is through the
incarnate Son's mediation that the divine image is to be restored to
humanity. As Milton writes in De Docuina Christiana: "The effect and
end of the whole mediatorial administration is the satisfaction of
divine justice on behaif of di men, and the shaping of the faithful in
the image of Christ" (Yale 6: 3 20). There is in the Son's arriva1 the
hope of "disalienation," or a realignment of humanity within Godts
unpolluted, rational sphere, with an attendant restoration of moral,
spiritual, political, and consequently physical coherence, purity, and
wholeness. And yet it is with Adam and Eve's descent into the
strange wilderness beyond the gates of Eden, into the world of the
grotesque, that Paradise Lost concludes.
Examination of the epic's grotesque irnagery, then, reveals an
important, though previously unexplored, vantage point from which
Milton's revolutio nary views are clarified and amplified. Revolu tion
from Cod in Paradise Losr corresponds to a loss of the rebels' divine
image, which, both the Bible and Milton contend, al1 Cod's rational
creations possess by birth. The rebels' loss of the image derives from
the suppression of their rational judgernent, and results in separation
from their own deiform natures; the act of revolution, therefore,
marks a rnovement away from rationality, order, and fomal
coherence, al1 of which are associated with God and his kingdom, into
the domain of the grotesque, with its characteristic qualities of
irrationality, confusion, and defonnity. Through the grotesque in
Paradise Lost Milton's condemnation of the rebels is not only
evocatively expressed, but also more fully explained: rebellion in
Milton's scheme is unjustifiable when opposed to right reason and
meritocratic order, and thus the rebels' descent into the grotesque,
which finds them at the furthest remove from reason and order,
expresses the root cause of the& disobedience, and also indicates the
grounds justifjdng their punishments.
- I I -
Shelley and the Romantic Grotesque
In the interirn between the writing of Milton's Paradise Lost
and Shelley's lyric drama, Prometheus Unbound, the meanings and
valuations attached to the grotesque in literature had been radically
altered. Throughout much of the intervening neoclassical pend the
grotesque was considered a form of "low" comedy. According to John
Dryden's theory of comedy, the grotesque belonged to the least
sophisticated genres of comic art, such as burlesque and farce.19
Dryden, like most prominent critics of the "Age of Reason," vaiued
works of art created in the ciassical tradition which adhered to
accepteci standards of form, structure, and proportion. Grotesque art
represented a violation of these standards. Unlike comedy based
upon a naturalistic, Aristotelian model, grotesque comedy was
fantastic and rneaningless. It was not believed to consist of a moral
dimension.
I t became necessary, however, to account for the varied forms
of grotesque art found in the work of past masters like Homer,
Ariosto, Spenser, and Milton - artists whose creations were
considered profoundly moral. A distinction was therefore made
between sublime and ridiculous forms of grotesque art. The sublime
grotesque contained an allegorical disguise which hid moral meaning
within an alluringly fantastic outer shell. Thus John Hughes, writing
19see especially Dryden's 1G9S essay "A Paralle1 of Poew and Painting."
in 17 15, could admire Spenser's Faerie Queene as a "Grotesque
Invention" for its inventive and fabulous use of allegory (xliii). On
the other hand, ridiculous grotesque creations were those such as
found in the works of burlesque and farce, which featured
obscenities, odd rhymes, and bawdy jests. This division also
indicated a class split between the educated upper classes, who
cherished and upheld the Classics, and the lower classes, who
enjoyed ribald humor and clowning (Barasch &). These "low"
foms of comedy embraced by the peasantry would seem to evoke a
Rabelaisian spirit of carnival humor, which Bakhtin famously
considers "grotesque realism," and which serve, in his view, to
degrade authority and promote liberation. But, at least according to
some eighteenth century critics, humor of this sort had rather the
opposite effect of diverting the masses frorn a consideration of their
oppressed condition; for instance, though Dryden held burlesque and
farce in low esteem, he defended these forms as appropriate outlets
for the lower classes, who must be entertained if they are to "carry
their burthens cheerfully" ( 13 3 ) . Despite the opinions of its prominent detractors, this lowest
category of comedy gained increased popular favour throughout the
eighteenth century. Yet it was not until rnid-century that avant-
garde critics in Europe came to regard the grotesque as a legitimate
aesthetic category. At the same time that the social hierarchy was in
jeopardy of king overturned, there was a movement to include
"low" comic genres, with their characteristic elements of distortion
and incongniity, as rightful foms of art; as age-old class boundaries
were increasingly challenged, so were strict aesthetic divisions
collapsed. Elernents of the grotesque were aiso commonly used in
Gothic novels, the "pop fiction" of the period. Walter Scott, who
popularized the historical novel at the outset of the nineteenth
centory, is celebrated by William Hazlitt as an artist whose imagery
is "Gothic and grotesque" (63 8). Cervantes, Swift, and Fielding, al1 of
whom employed absurd and grotesque forms of distortion, gained
increased po pularity and were furthermore regarded by critics as
artists of high moral seriousness. These changes in aesthetic
standards and taste coincide with the beginning of what is now
considered the Romantic Period in art and literature.
Rornanticisrn may be seen to begin with the French Revolution,
an event which symbolized for many the dissolution of social and
class barriers. To its sympathizers the revolu tion represen ted
nothing less than the regeneration of humanity. Wordsworth recalls
the fall of the Bastille: "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. . . And
human nature seeming born again" (25 2). Wordsworth, like many of
his Romantic contemporaries, recognized that the revolution at the
social and poiitical level offered an avenue of intellectual and artistic
liberation. In The Prelude, which records his development as a poet,
Wordsworth reveals how the revolution pertains to the artist as an
individual:
How glorious! in self-knowledge and self-rule,
To look through al1 the frallties of the world,
And, with a resolute mastery shaking off
Infirmities of nature, time, and place,
Build social upon personal Liberty,
Which, to the blind restraints of general laws
Superior, magisterially adopts
One guide, the light of circumstances, flashed
Upon an independent intellect. (25 3)
Wordsworth's mood in this passage is celebratory; the shackles which
had held society were broken, its oppressive codes discredited.
There was in this change the awakening of a sense of freedom in
which to discover the world anew. This rediscovery took an inward
tum, as the Romantic artists rendered things not as they appeared
" in themselves," but as they were modified in perception by the
thoughts and feelings of the artist: such was the power of the
imagination to apprehend and shape ou tward realit~.~o
The meanings associateci with "imagination" in the Romantic
Period are extensive and diverse. The constant shifting of aesthetic
categories in Romanticism mean t that imagination was a Ruid
concept which could be variously linked to related terms Like the
"grotesque" and the "sublime." In Critique of Judgemen t, for
instance, Kant theorizes that it is on the outer lirnits of imagination
that we discover the grotesque:
. . . the English taste in gardens, the baroque taste in
furniture, rather urges the power of imagination to
20~or a thorough discussion of die "inward turn" in Romantic art see M.H. Abrams' The Mü~or and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and me Critical Tradition (New York: Odord UP, 1953). Also, Nancy Moore Gosleers Urie/*s Eye (University City: U of Alabama P, 1985) examines Shelley's method of interiorïzation in Prometheus Un baud in contrast to Miltonic objectivity.
something approaching the grotesque, and supposes that
it is in this very separation from all constraint of rules
that tasre can reveal its greatest perfection in the
projection of the imagination. (377)
It is worth noting that in this passage the grotesque is viewed
affirmatively, indeed, as a measure of aesthetic perfection. In the
Romantic Period, with its delimitation of art from classical strictures
and its pervasive esteem of the imaginative faculty, the grotesque
loses its pejorative coloration. Kant's views upon the sublime - another important aesthetic category in Romanticism - offer a
further critical point of entry into the grotesque. According to Kant,
the sublime may be contrasted with the beautiful as follows:
The beautiful in nature is connected with the fom of the
object, which consists in having definite boundaries. The
sublime, on the other hand, is to be found in a formless
object, so far as in it or by occasion of it boundlessness is
represented, and yet its totality is also present to
thought. (391 )
The sublime is not identical ro the grotesque, and yet there is a
significant overlap insofar as both the sublime and the grotesque
appear, in Kant's words, " to be unsuited to our presentative faculty"
(391); both assault our preconceptions of proper lirnits and thus
a canna t be readily accornmodated by our sensory faculties.
O A similar line of aesthetic inquiry is pursued by Hegel, whose
views upon artistic representation in The Philosophy of Fine Art bear
directly upon Shelley's work and artistic sensibility. Hegel describes
romantic art (as distinct from classical art and symbolic art) in these
terms:
The aspect of eternal is cornmitted to contingency, and
left at the mercy of freaks of the imagination, whose
caprice is no more likely to mirror what is given as it is
given, than to throw the shapes of the outer world into
chance rnedley, or distort them into grotesqueness. (479)
In Hegel's view, distortion is the only means by which the artist may
give expression to what is beyond the power of language to
adequately represent. The grotesque, as it were, fills in the space
between language and communication. In the twentieth century,
there is a tendency to view the grotesque in a Hegelian manner.
Geoffrey Galt Harpham, for instance, suggests that the grotesque
"accommodates the things left over when the categories of language
are exhausted" (3 ) . The artist's attempt to "CLothe it in words," as
Shelley's Mercury says in Prometheus Unbound, only shadows forth
the ineffable " Idea" which is the fount of inspiration ( 1.375).2L Hegel
writes:
21~his and aii subsequent quotations drawn from Shelley's peu). refer to line numbers (also preceded by act numbers in the case of Prometheus Un bound) . AU poetx-y selections are from English Romantic Poetry (New York: Harcoun. 1967).
Having no other reality to express it, [the Idea] expatiates
in all these shapes, seeks itself in them in al1 their unrest
and proportion, but nevertheless does not fmd them
adequate to itself. Then it proceeds to exaggerate the
natural shapes and the phenornenon of reality into
indefiniteness and disproportion . . . to distort and
explode them into unnatural shapes. (476)
In this passage, Kayser's comment on Hegel's view of the grotesque
seems especially pertinent: "Always there belongs to the grotesque
the characteristic of reaching beyond itself into a sphere of the
higher powers" ( 1 10). As we shall see, Shelley similarly uses the
grotesque ro express the human potential to overcorne tyranny and
injustice and to achieve regeneration.
We have already noted the similarities existing between the
sublime -- as described by Kant - and the grotesque. Hegel makes
this cornparison yet more explicit in his assessment of the
monstrosities he finds in Indian art, containing "an echo of the
sublime":
The sublime in art is the attempt to express the infinite
without fmding in the realm of phenornena any o bject
which proves itself fitting for this representation. As a
case of inadequate expression it is akin to the ugly or at
leas to the deformed and monstrous of the symbolic . . . phase of art . . . But yet these monstrosities have only an
"echo of the sublime," because they half satisw, or are
taken to satisw, the need of expression by the very
distortion, or magnitude. . . which makes them
monstrous. (3 56)
The contrat Hegel develops in this passage between the sublime and
the grotesque is crucial to our discussion of Shelley. In the sublime.
according to Hegel, there is a tension between subject matter and
manner of expression. In the poem "Mont Blanc," which provides a
revealing introduction to the later Prometheus Unbound, Shelley
explores this tension without arriving at a definitive resolution. The
awesome size and power of the mountain overwhelms the poet's
imagination; he gives an impression of the scene not by describing its
details-formeredescriptionisinadequafe--butbypointingtoits
sublimity. The vista which confronts the poet defies aii boundaries
of sense, as there is "ceaseless motion" and "unresting sound" (32-3).
The poet is filled with excitement, awe, and perturbation, as he
affvms the presence of a power which remains inaccessible to the
human mind: "Dizzy ravine! and when I gaze on thee / 1 seem as in a
trance sublime and strange" (34-5). The poet finds himself in a
quandw attempting to express in language that which is ineffable.
His poetic imagination goes
Seeking among the shadows that pass by,
Ghosts of al1 things that are, some shade of thee.
Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast
From which they fleâ recalls them, thou art there!
He persists, searching in this nightmarish space, this " awful scene,"
(15) to explain the desolation with which he is faced. But his
questions go unanswered, for "The wilderness has a mysterious
tonguet' (76). And yet he holds out hope that this "mysterious
tongue" contains "a voice. . . to repeai / Large codes of fraud and
woe" (80-1).
As the poem's conclusion reveals, however. the poet's ability to
interpret nature's hidden language is anything but certain:
And what were thou, and earth. and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind's imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy? ( 142-4)
The final question leaves open the possibility that the power of the
sublime has k e n recognized and ac tualized; "Vacancy" in this
reading is a creative space which bridges the human mind and the
sublime, as weli as language and imagination. But Shelley
furthermore allows us to read into these lines the voice of the
despairhg poet, who finds that the mounrain reveals not
revolutionax-y power, but utter emptiness.
"Mont Blanc" provides the most compelling instance in Shelley's
work of a sublime aesthetic which may well be voiceless,
incommunicable, a void of "Silence and solitude." In Prometheus
Llnbound, on the other hand, though Shelley is still working within an
aesthetic of silence, space, and emptiness, the play is a drarnatization
of the ultirnate transcendenre of an inhibitory subiimity. The
ineffable power of the sublime is given poetic expression among the
"shadows" and "shades" which had remained elusive in "Mont Blanc."
In Prometheus Unbound, Shelley is operating in an imaginative space
which accommodates, in Hegel's term, "an echo of the sublime." I t is
a work, therefore, which finds a voice of affirmation and
regeneration on the boundaries of sense and non-sense, form and
formlessness, shape and shapelessness. And i t is while straddling
these boundaries that we apprehend the grotesque. Harpham, we
rnay recall, defines grotesque forms as those which "stand at a
rnargin of consciousness between the known and the unknown, the
perceived and the unperceived" (3 ) . It is within this imaginative
space, the domain of the grotesque, that Shelley develops
Prometheus Lin bound.
Shelley's manipulation of a grotesque aesr hetic is, as we have
seen, part of a larger Romantic movement to delimit art from
classical strictures. And yet Shelley's grotesquerie - with its
characteristic distortion of language and textual patterns -- is quite
distinctive, if not unique, in the Romantic Period. Also, in
Prometheus ün bound especially, the grotesque informs to a large
degree the structure and meaning of the work as a whole. My next
chapter explores Shelley's reasons for foregrounding the grotesque in
Promecheus Unbound by exarnining the important connection in
Shelleian though t between poetry and revolutionary change.
- I I I -
Prometheos Un bound The Grotesque as Revolutionary Code
Central to both Shelley's life and a n is the dream, from which
he never wavers, to renovate society. The creation of poetry, in
Shelley's mind, constitutes a political act, a forum within which to
transform consciousness, and ultimately, the nature of social reality.
As we shall see, Shelley regards poetry as having the rare power to
rend "the veil of familiarity from the world," (1085) or to stimulate
people to imagine novel forms of reality, without which human
progress is unattainable. Prometheus Unbound is Shelley's most
cornpiete and accomplished exposition in poetry of the revolutionary
power of poetry and imagination to transcend tyranny and injustice.
In this text, it is specifically a grotesque aesthetic which provides
means to conceptuaüze imaginative transcendence, as weLl as moral
and political renewal. No tably, Prometheus Unbound is no t
commonly considered either bizarre, or obscene, or sinis ter, or
ridiculous - ail of which are saiient components of grotesque art.
Yet on account of its distinctively ambiguous characterization, its
defamiliarization of style and form, and its dismption of narrative
structure and coherence, the play is nonetheless profoundly
grotesque. Shelley intends these sarne features of the work,
meanwhile, to break down the boundaries which inhibit imagination,
and to prornote a revolutionary impulse in the mind of the individual
reader and in the greater society.
Shelley's Art and Human Emancipation
In order to understand and appreciate Shelley's artistic
purpose and method in Prometheus Un bound, for it can seem a
b u g work, it will be helpful first to examine in greater depch the
p e t ' s commitment to advancing human liberation, and the ways in
which that commitment was fulfilled through his poetry. This
approach will also allow us to make a preliminary assessrnent of how
Shelley's political, and related artistic vision differs from Milton's - a
cornparison which is to be rounded out in the light of my subsequent
discussion of the grotesque in Promecheus Unbound.
In his public üfe, Shelley was an agitator for freedom, human
rights, and social reform. As a young man, he was expelled from
Oxfkud for his refusal to disclose his role in distriburing the pamphlet
On the Necessis. of Artieism. He Wied direcrly to refom the socid
and poîitical evils he detected in Ireland, England and Wales, as well
as later trying to reform international politics through his writing.
He was also a voracious reader of political theory and was
exceedingly well versed in the works of such thinkers as Plato,
Rousseau, Paine, and Godwin. As Timothy Webb succinctly no tes:
"Politics were probably the dominating concern in Shelley's
intellectual Me" (75).
Much of Shelley's early poetry addresses politicai subjects wi t h
a kind of soap-box candor. In the poem "Song to the Men of
England," for instance, which had a wide circulation in radical
movements even after his own lifetime, Shelley exposes the
injustices of the class systern. It is a propaganda piece, written in a
mood of scorn and indignation, and begins:
Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toi1 and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear? (1019)
Clearly this is not Shelley the great Romantic lyric poet, but Shelley
the pamphleteer, prodding the working classes to awaken from their
doldmms and cake action against oppression.
As a literary artist, of course, Shelley is rnuch better known for
such lyrically haunting works as "Mont Blanc" and the lyrical drama,
Prometheus Llnbound. Yet in the eyes of sorne critics. even in the
post-Eliotic critical age, Shelley becomes in his mature artistic phase
a political escapist or idealist. F.W. Bateson writes: "The retreat from
politics . . . had been implicit in Shelley's poetry almost from the
beginning . . . The political facade that Shelley's poems retain was a
form of unconscious hypocrisy -- the uibute of the escapist to the
social conscience" ( 15 1-2). Jerome J. McGann has argued along
sirnilar lines that the Romantics disengaged from the political, and
that Shelley in particular retreated into idealisrn.22 Yet it is a
distorted reading of "Mt Blanc," or The Triumph of Life, or
22.Jerome J. McGann, The Romantic Ideology: A Critical Investigation (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983). For a similar iine of argument consult Marjorie Levinson's Wordsworth 'r Grear Period Pwms: Fo w Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge W. 1986).
Prometheus Unbound, for that matter, which fails to recognize its
political relevance. In such works, Shelley has not removed himself
from political concerns, but rather developed a subtler view of the
function of poetry. As Webb rightly urges, "a shift in emphasis
should not be confused with a change of view" (87).
Gone from the best of Shelley's later poems is the shrillness
and didactic tone of much of his earlier verse. Shelley was quite
aware of this change, as suggested by the image of the p e t as
nightingale in the Defence of Poetry: "A Poet is a nightingale, who
sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet
sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an
unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet
know not whence orwhy" (1076). Though Shelley's later poems
generallydemonstrateamoresubtlearristicapproachtosocialand
political reality, they are fundamentally reformulations of a familiar
question: how may humanity experience regeneration? The poetry
of overt political protest had offered one solution, but the tone of
rancor it brought out in Shelley did not suit his soaring lyrical
powers. The writing of Promeîheus Llnbound in particular heralds a
significant advance in Shelley's development as an artist, for it is in
this work that that the poet fmds a towering voice of affirmation and
regenerative force.
The Defence oPPoevy provides valuable insight into Shelley's
artistic method in Prometheus Unbound, and so it is worth
considering in some detail. I t is in the Mence that Shelley discusses
at length his view, ailuded to earlier. that poetry is the highest social
gwdandintrgrdmreformingtheworld. Poetry.hesays.isa
pmduct of the imagination and imagination is the obverse of reason:
"Reason is ro imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the body
to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance" ( 1072). Shelley's
Deface is a formai response to Thomas Love Peacock's The Four
Ages of Poetry, in which the claim is made that poetry is useless for
failing to make any difference whatsoever in the real world. Yet the
Mence is also a document which at another level takes aim at
revolutionary thinkers who had posited reason (often expressed as
"calculation" ) as the linch pin of revolution. Thomas Paine, for
instance, saw science and rational knowledge as weapons w hich
could be used to counter the nobility (or as he says, the "no-ability" ).
The tools of reason which make possible the calculus of the world's
rotation (or "revolution") should likewise propel the bourgeoisie
revolution.
In the Mmce, Shelley offers an opposing argument for the
ascendancy of imagination as a revolutionary lever. In Sheliey's
view, it is through the perceptual powers of imagination, and thus
through poetry, that progress and change are attainable: "The most
unfailing herald, cornpanion, and follower of the awakening of a great
people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is
poetry" (1086). The pet functions as a legislator and as a prophet,
and thus has the power to transform existing society for the better.
as well as to awaken the people to their own future. On the other
hand, the result of seeing the world exclusively in terms of
calculating reason is social injustice. Shelley argues in the Defence
that reason has made modern England a miserable and compt place
where "the rich have become richer, and the poor have become
poorer," ( 1083) whereas imagination, by contrast, is described as " the
great instrument of moral good" ( 1076).
It is helpful to read Shelley's defence of imagination in light of
Milton's Second Defence, especially as these texts illuminate some of
the centrai political differences between the poets. Shelley, we find,
regards imagination as an access to freedom and reason as a source
of oppression. For Milton, on the contrary, reason is the ultimate
human trait. Shelley recognizes that to embrace reason as the basis
of social organization, as does Milton, is to accept a structure which
places individuals within a hierarchy. This kind of social
organization is odious to Shelley, who regards imagination as a
vehicle to destroy al1 social barriers which stand in the way of
complete human equality. Cornparing the Defence of Poetry to the
Second Defince, Michael Chappdi observes: "When Shelley argues for
a more democratic structure and for the increased imaginative
involvement of the people, he is arguing against the Miltonic class
structure which would keep the people in order" (147).23 In the
in terest of maintaining proper perspective, however, we should
recall that in the preface to Prometheus Un bound, Shelley refers to
the "sacred Ml1tonn as a "repubiican, and a bold inquirer into mords
and religion" (98 2). Shelley, it should be emphasized, considers
23~hough Chappeiits cornparison of Milton and Shelley fruitfuîiy explores some of the poets' principal political differences, i t assumes throughout that Shelley engages Milton's Second Defence direccly in his Def ice of Poetry. Yet though Sheiiey does refer to Milton in the Defence. and though Milton is always a dominant influence in his artistic and political thought, there is no evidence to suggest that Shelley is specifica-üy referencing the Second Defence. In k t . as I mention, the Ddmce of Poeaywas compased as a reply to Thomas Love Peacock's The Four Ages of Poetry.
Milton not only as the greatest of the English poets, but also as a
liberal thinker of the first rank Milton's influence upon Shelley is
present in virtually al1 of the Romantic poet's work Indeed, Ross
Woodman suggests that Milton was the greatest single influence on
Shelley for the writing of Promecheus Llnbound.24
And yet, despite the profound influence which Milton exerts
upon Shelley, there are marked areas of difference between the
poets. As we have seen, for example, Shelley rejects Miltonic reason
in favor of imagination. Shelley's revision of Milton in this respect
suggests not only an artistic and philosophicai difference of opinion.
but a politicai one as well. Likewise, in Prometheus Unbound,
Shelley is writing in the shadow of an ancient and deep mythological
tradition and his adaptation of the Promethean myth is a reworking
of not only Milton, but also of Aeschylus, Dante, Blake, and others.
Shelley's approach to myth is well summarized by Earl R.
Wasserman: conceives of the poet as not merely an
assimilator of beautiful mythic forms: inasmuch as he is creative, he
is a mythopoeist, not by inventing myths, but by reconstituting the
imperfect ones that already exist" (68). Shelley transforms the
Promethean myth to illusvate his conception of moral and political
justice and to defend the efficacy of revolution both within the
human mind and in the political sphere.
Shelley's dialogue with Milton in Prometheus Unbound is not
systematically developed. Prometheus Un bound is no t on& a
2 4 ~ 0 s ~ Grieg W ~ d . m . a n , The Apocdyptic Vision in &be P o e 0 of Shelley (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1964).
rewriting of Paradise Lost, it is also much else. However we are
surely right in thinking that in Prome theus Un bound Shelley is
consciously modiwing Miltonic notions of authority, servitude, and
revolu tion, especially as found in Paradise Lost. Shelley's
modulations of Milton in Promerheus (Inbound have been explored
from a number of perspectives. Nancy Moore Goslee sees Shelley's
reworking of Milton in terms of a movement from objectivity to
subjectivity in art: "Shelley's development of the lyrical forms of
Aeschylean drama in order to rival Milton's objective epic manifests
the power of the classical Greek world to engender a liberating,
imaginative subjectivity" ( 195). Ailan Hoagwood argues in a similar
vein that part of Shelley's project in Promerheus Unbound is to
internaiize and humanize the regenerative process. Hoagwood
asserts that Shelley "inverts the religions of Aeschylus, Dante, and
Milton only to conven theology to the metaphysics of mind" ( 133).25
Indeed, in Shelley's estimation, humanity needs to liberate itself
from the control of supposed deities by the exercise of human
faculties, foremost of which is love. Shelley reverses the Miltonic
hierarchy which places Cod above man by claiming that man is
potentially a god in his own right. As Webb puts it, Shelley "sees
Promethean man as his own god and his own ruler" (153).
Shelley claims in the preface to Prometheus LInbound that his
Prometheus is most like Milton's Satan, though "more poetical" and
2SAlso see Lucy Newlyn, Paradise Lost and rhe Romantic Reader(0xford: Clarendon, 1 993 ) . Newlyn argues tha t Promerheus Un bound is Shelley's 'kttempt to reviae Milton's inadquate conception of the redemptive process. dong lines that are considerably more favorable to human potential" (148).
"exempt from the raint of ambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for
personal aggrandizement" (98 1 ). Prometheus is not Satan though he
possesses some of the same quaiities as the fallen archangel. Linda
M. Lewis remarks that Shelley's Prometheus is rather a combination
figure who incorporates "not only the grandeur of Satan, but the
remorse of fallen Adam and, especially, the sublimeness of perfect
self-knowledge of the crucified Christ enduring pain for the welfare
of humanity." Lewis furthemore notes that Shelley's Jupiter " speaks
with the authority of Cod and the fallen Lucifer, the power of heaven
and hell" ( 157-8). In Prometheus Unbound, therefore, Shelley
collapses Miltonic boundaries between authority and servility, good
and evil, as well as inverting Miltonic hierarchies between reason
and imagination, god and man. What 1 hope to show in the section
that Follows is chat Shelley's breaking of boundaries and disrnantling
of hierarchies in the poem forms part of a larger grotesque aesthetic
in tended to construct revolutionary new rneanings from inherited
texts, and principally from Paradise Lost.
Prometheus Un bound, the Grotesque, and Revol ution
The Defence of Poeiry again provides insigh t in to Shelley's
artistic method in Prometheus Unbound by offering an account of the
poet as an emancipator of the human senses. Poetic liberation,
according to Shelley, requires a defamiliarization of conditioned
sensory responses: "Poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be
subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions" ( 108 5 1.
(Notably, in Prometheus Unbound, it is Prometheus' own curse to
Jupiter which holds hirn in thrall and it is his reclamation of the
curse that sets in motion the progress of revolution). Shelley further
remarks in the Defence that poetry "purges from our inward sight
the film of farniliarity" ( 1085). As Prometheus ü'nbound vividly
dramatizes, freedorn and renewal require a radical alteration of sight;
the eye, in other words, which is confused and disoriented at the
sight of "the half-fomed, the perplexed, and the suggestively
monstroustl (2S8), in Santayana's version of the grotesque, is k ing
reconditioned so as to allow for the activation of a revolutionary
impulse: a poetics which "creates anew the universe," as Shelley says
in his Defence, must appeal to the senses as they are defamiliarized
(1085).
Shelley's commingiing of generic forms in Prometheus Unbound
is an important aspect of this rnethod of defamiliarization. Described
by Shelley as "A Lyrical Drama," the work is a hybrid of artistic
forms. The denornination locates a tension between the demands of
dramatic representation, in w hich charac ter and event are
externaiized, and the demands of lyricism, in which character and
event are intemalized within the pet 's imagination. On the one
hand, Prometheus Un bound features visible and autonomous
characters, while on the other hand, its events are set in motion by
mere shadows and voices (Leighton 76). The text is furthermore
interfused with elements of epic (the descent into the undenvorld),
tragedy (Jupiter's fall from power), romance (the love benveen
Prometheus and Asia), pastoral (the celebration of a natural order in
Act 4), and numerous other genres. This method of sampling
effectively collapses boundaries of artistic expression. To the extent
that artistic categories are familiar, the text is a rnonstrosity for its
confusion and distortion of form.
Shelley's exposition of "character" in Prometheus Unbound
furthermore undermines the dramatic conventions with which his
audience would be familiar. The tex's Dramatis Personae (what does
one cal1 them?) teeter precariously between States of form and
forrnlessness, being and non-being. In this respect they de@ sense
perception. Demagorgon, for example, is describeci as "shapeless;
neither limb, / Nor form, nor outline" (2.4.6-7), and the Phantasm of
Jupiter is "A shape" (1.226), a "frai1 and empty phantorn" ( 1.241),
and a "Tremendous Image" (1.24G); Jupiter's messenger, Mercury. is
inmduced to the reader as follows:
Trampling the slant winds on high
With golden-sandalled feet, that glow
Under plumes of purple dye,
Like rose-ensanguined ivory,
A Shape cornes now,
Stretching on high From his right hand
A serpent-cinctured wand. ( 1.3 1 8-24)
Mercury's being is amorphous, and so the imagination must bring
order to bear, and so appeals to Homer. to Aeschylus, to Milton
perhaps, as possible avenues of reference. Yet as we make this
necessary cross-germination with other texts, Shelley is subtly
exposing our conditioned responses to art. The reader, in effect,
@ compensatesforwhatislacking,attemptstofilltheimaginativevoid
with precisely the cultural artifacts that Shelley is trying to rework
Other figures in the text, however, leave the mind floundering
helplessly for a point of reference. There is no means by which the
mind may conceptualize "The Earth" and "The Ocean" as dramatic
characters: they simply exceed the boundaries of sense. Likewise,
the jwtaposition of a character of human dimensions, like Hercules,
with a figure of undefinable limits, like the Earth, creates a sense of
grotesque disproportion. Philip Thomson's formulation of the
grotesque as "the unresolved clash of incompatibles" (27) is
particuiarly fitting. Again, Prometheus Un bound proves to be a work
which is constantly operating on the margins of dramatic possibility.
Sheliey also deviates radicaily from dramatic convention in
@ Prometheus llnbound in his manipulation of character autonorny, in
which distinctions between characters become blurred. Most
obviously, Jupiter may be seen as a component of hometheus'
character. As Prometheus pronounces in his opening speech "1 hate
no more," Jupiter, that hateful part of himself, loses hold of al1 power.
While no longer a part of Prometheus, Jupiter ceases to exist, and
" becornesu a "void annihilation" (4.3 54). Jupiter's immateriality again
underlines the tension in the poem between extemal and interna1
representation. Also, that Prometheus, the apparent revolutionary
hero of the poem, and Jupiter, the supposed tyrannical villain, are
each components of the other, emphasizes one important respect in
which Shelley is reworking his source material. As Newlyn argues,
"Redemption is made possible in Prometheus Unbound. . . by a
cancelling of the binary systern of moral polarities which has k e n
authorized by the Bible and perpetuated in Paradise Losr' ( 150). Our
understanding of character in Prometheus Unbound, therefore, is
never stable, but rather stranded in what Harpham has generally
called the "liminal" phase of the grotesque, wherein "images appear
to have an impossible split reference, and multiple forms inhabit a
single image" ( 1 3 ) . Let us explore the play's pervasive ambiguity from yet another
angle. We are at times led to believe that the play takes place solely
within the mind of Prometheus, the great creator; the play's
characters, from this perspective, are mere shadows which flit across
the creator's imagination. Thus at the outset, Prometheus larnents
that while he is bound to the mountain "shapeless sights corne
wandering by, / The ghastly people of the realm of dream, / Mocking
me" (1.36-8). Yer, at other moments, the world at large threatens to
leave its mark upon Prometheus, to have its way in shaping his
maiieable form. As the Furies approach in Act 1, Prometheus says:
Never yet there came
Phantasms so fou1 through monster-teeming Hel1
From the di-miscreative brain of Jove;
Whilst I behold such execrable shapes,
Methinks I grow like what I contemplate,
And laugh and stare in loathsome sympathy. ( 1.446-5 1 )
In this scene it is the mind o f Jove which seems capable of
O imprinting its image upon Prometheus. Where exactly creative
agency resides seems an open question in the play.
I t is Demagorgon who turns the tide of battle for the
revolutionary cause, and who has the climactic speech in the play,
yet he is mediated through the imagination of A s i a She must, in
effect, create him out of vacancy, or see within his " mighty darkness"
the "living spirit" invisible to the naked eye (2.4.3-7). In going in
search of the mysterious spell of Demagorgon, Asia is in search of her
own lang uage and imaginative powers. The " voice unspoken"
assigned to Demagorgon is in fact her own (2.1 13 1; kighton 9G).
Dernagorgon is a projection of Asia's creative capacity to imagine
with hope the possibility of revolutionary change.
It would seem, then, that it is Asia who exerts the creative
impetus in the play. Yet at the close of Act 1, Panthea reminds
Prometheus of exiled Asia and of " her transforming presence, which
would fade / If it were rningled nor with chine" (1.83 2-31. Asia's
very materiality seems in this passage to be contingent upon her
interfusion with Prometheus. The two figures are inseparable
aspects of each other. The insubstantiality of "character," in the
dramatic sense of the word, is again emphasized in Act 2, when
Panthea visits Asia and describes the change she has undergone with
Prometheus:
I saw not, heard not, moved not, only felt
His presence flow and mingle through my blood
Till it became his life, and his grew mine,
And 1 was thus absorbed, until it passed,
And like the vapours when the Sun sinks down,
My being was condensed. (2.79-86)
Asia, too, ultimately sees the presence of Prometheus in Panthea's
eyes (2.1.1 20). Is Panthea an autonomous character or rather a
manifestation, or component, of Prometheus? The play is cons tantly
demanding that we ask such a question, without ever providing an
answer. The forms which characters assume, and their relative
autonomy within chose forms, are always provisional; characters
interact within a state of constant flux - they fuse, bifurcate, are
created and dissolved -- at the discretion of no one clearly defined
governing creative agent. In Prome theus Un bo und, characters and
their forms are imperfectly perceived because the boundaries which
are required for differentiation, and thus orientation, are obscured or
aitogetherlacking. Thiskindofindeferrninacyis,aswehaveseen,a
defming feature of grotesque art, wherein nothing may be grasped as
a coherent whole. The use of a grotesque aesthetic is g e q n to
Shelley's main purpose in the work, which is to challenge the
reader's comfonable assumptions about art, and thus to stimulate
new imaginative possibilities necessary for redemptive change.
S patiaiity and temporality are likewise affectecl by
indeterrninacy in the play. As in "Mont Blanc," Prometheus Unbound
reveals an aesthetic of undefmed, incalculable space and time.
Hegel's perspective upon syrnbolic art as it assumes grotesque
proportions is again pertinent:
The particular form of sense, which is taken to express
not itself and its own characteristic meaning as a fact of
external existence, but a universal significance which lies
outside it, fails to satisQ the imagination until it has been
torn out of itself into vastness which knows no measure
or limit. This is the cause of al1 that extravagant
exaggeration of sue, not merely in the case of spatial
dimension, but also of measurelessness of time-du rations
. . . . (53-4)
Prometheus Unbound is clearly a play which strives toward
universafity through a dislocation of space and time. The mountain
to which Prometheus is bound is described as "Black, wintry, dead,
unmeasured; without herb, / Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of
life" ( 1.2 1-3). There is nothing here to which the senses may grab
hold. Sirnilarly, the action of the play would seem to defy constraints
of time. Prometheus sees his term of punishment as the passage of
"wingless, crawling hours," ( 1.48) and Asia cornplains: "How like
death-worms the wingless moments crawl!" (2.1.1 G ) . Time, like
space, impresses itself upon the imagination of the reader for the
very reason that it is lacking; just as it is the invisible peak of Mont
Blanc where one may tap into the mountainrs revolutionary power.
As a drarna, however, Prometheus Un bound may no t express
an aesthetics of negation without a mitigating presence. Drama
requires at least a minimalist plane of referentiality, otherwise it
ceases to be drama and becomes something altogether differen t. such
as lyricism. Prometheus Un bound may not. as a drama, escape
entirely what Hegel calls the " fact of external existence." I t is a work.
rather, which plays in the margins of externaiity and interndity,
referentiality and su blimity. For instance, while Prometheus'
mountain is imponderable for i ts desolation and boundlessness, it is
yet, in the stage directions to Act 1, located with geographical
precision in the "Indian Caucasus." Shelley well knows that it is
necessary to orient the reader before disorientation rnay follow. In
Shelley's view, however, as expressed in the Defence, poetry serves
ultimately, and at its highest level, to reorient sensibility and
consciousness: "It mates anew the universe, after it has been
annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted
by reiteration" (1085).
It is useful to consider the relevance of this statement to
Prometheus Unbound in terms of Shelley's use of language, and
especially dialog ical language. Throug h its corn plex and O ften
confusing interplay of dramatic voices, the play forges its own
unique method of communication on two leveis: between characters
in the play, and between poet and reader (while there is furthermore
an implied relationship between the reader and society). At each
level, the challenge lies in finding a suitably revolutionary voice.
And just as Sheliey found the renovated world to depend upon a
defamiliarization of form and shape, so does it depend upon an
overall scheme of h g uistic des tabilization. Shelley appears
especially modern to us as a writer who deviously challenges the
readerrs comfonable relationship with language - which is also the
kind of disruption and confusion we properly associate with the
grotesque in Literature. Importantly, an incomprehensible babbie of
voices would accornplish no thing. Shelley mus t find a regenerative
voice on the boundaries of sense and communication, on the "margins
of consciousness." It is only by successfully performing this
balancing act that new imaginative (and by extension social) spaces
may be accessed.
Throughout Prometheus Unbound the great difficulty of
communication and linguistic coherence is emphasized. In fact, the
play's two pivotal episodes - Prometheus' reclamation of his curse
and Asia's conference with Demagorgon - are fundamentally related
to the problem of finding a communicable voice. Prometheus needs
to recall his curse - his own misspoken voice - in order to be free
and to liberate the world. Yet he is unable to commune with the
non-sentient powers with which he is surrounded. Prometheus as ks
that his curse be repeated by the Mountains, Springs, Air, and
Whirlwinds of Earth, and she responds: a The tongueless caverns of the craggy hills
Cried, "Misery!" then; the hoUow Heaven replied,
" Misery!" And the Ocean's purple waves,
Climbing the land, howled to the lashing winds,
And the pale nations heard it, " Misery!" ( 1.108- 1 1 )
Sheliey has nature capable of thought and feeling, yet its manner of
expression is "tongueless," mute and senseless to the ears of
Prometheus. This breach of language and communication is indicated
by Prometheus' response to what he has heard: "1 heard a sound of
voices: not the voice / Which 1 gave forth" ( 1.1 12- 13 ). The voices
carry no meanhg for Prometheus, but are hollow and inarticulate.
Yet Prometheus persists with his questions, until the earth
responds "How can thou hear / Who knowest not the language of the
dead?" (1.136-7). Promerheus may not be answered in any language
he will understand. What we have is a distortion of dramatic
dialogue in which the principal actors are uninteiligible to one
another.26 As in "Mont Blanc" the question is raised whether nature
has a voice communicable to hurnanity. it is a question, in fact,
which confronts one of the central tenets of Romantic philosophy -
humanity's organic union with nature. The answer lies in shifting
the onus of inteliigibility from the external voice to the lisrener's
interna1 imaginative receptivity (Leighton 80). Prometheus' own
auditory perception is dislocated from its surrounding impressions so
it may be relocated internally. Prometheus hears a whisper, which is
describeci evocatively as "scarce like sound: it tingles through the
frame / As lightning tingles, hovering ere it strike" ( 1.133-4). The
breach of language is bridged by Prometheus himself, who attends to
the voice of his own inspiration (Leighton 81). He is then capable of
hearing his own curse, which once revoked, activates a revolutionary
impulse.
Yet there remain further linguistic barriers to be overcome
before revolu tion may be fuily realized. Asia's intercourse with
Demagorgon again involves a reformulation of language. Like the
curse in Act 1, Demagorgon hoards a treasured spell which needs to
2 G ~ u c h of mentieth century theater is preoccupied with explorîng the problems of communication which Shelley's play foregrounds. This is one reason that Prometheus Linbound, despite itr clasrical source and high Romantic lyrical style, seems to us today such a "modern" play.
be reclaimed. Asia and Demagorgon engage in a dialogical duel
which creates a lacunae of meaning. The dialogue amounts to a
turning back of every interrogation on the asker. Demagorgon, as we
have already noted, is given form only by virtue of Asiars questions.
Isabel Armstrong, in her essay "Shelley's Perplexity," astutely
observes, however, that by "being given form by the questions, he
gives them fonn, returning them upon themselves, externalizing
them and enabling a recognition which is the growing point of al1
thought" ( 100). Language in this instance, in direct contrast to the
exchange between Prometheus and W h , is repossessed through its
externalization: the revolutionary voice requires bo th lyricism and
drama. In order to obtain the anmers she requires, Asia must probe
the mystery of Demagorgon's imagelessness. This is a process of self- @ discovery through which verbalking gives form to imagelessness and
creates the possibility of further form which in turn depends upon
the opening up of new spaces (Armstrong 102). Asia's earlier
statement that "speech created thoughttt (2.4.72) is therefore
poignantly exemplified.
S hefley's manipulation and "de- formation" of ianguage is
furthemore demonstrated in Prome theus Un bound through the use
of paradox Paradox, as Armstrong no tes, "enables negation, and
ammation, creation and deniai, to be experienced simultaneouslyt'
(104). I t is a language construct which plays on the margins of
meaning. Paradox is closely aligned with our understanding of that
which is grotesque, as it accommodates a shift of vision. The
a language of paradox flickers between negation and assertion, yet in
its oscillation, as Armstrong points out, new meanings are discovered.
With each entry into "vacancy," as it were, paradox re-emerges in a
new form as a means of constructing experience ( 104). What
Harpham has said of the grotesque in general is especially true of the
grotesque as it approaches paradox: "The ambivalent presence of
rneaning within an ostensibly meaningless fom cons titu tes the real
threat, and the real revolution, of grottesche" (3 1).
Prometheus Unbound is a work governed by paradox
Demagorgon, of course, is essentially a paradoxical figure as he
coexists as a presence and as an absence. Asia, too, is represented in
Song by the "Voice in the Air" in paradoxical terms:
Life of Life: thy lips enkindle
With their love the breath between them;
And thy smiles before they dwindle
Make the cold air fire.
. * . . * . . . . . * f . . . . . . . .
Lamp of Earth! whereter thou movest
Its dim shapes are clad with brightness . . . . (2.5.58-67)
Paradox, like the grotesque, designates a condition of being just out
of focus, just beyond the reach of language or full comprehension.
Perception is never Rxed or sure, and so begins the process of
discovery through which an emergent reality may be forged.
Prometheus Unbound represencs Shelley's most comprehensive
and powerful assertion of humanity's capacity to achieve freedom
and regeneration, which, we find, the play promotes by engaging the
revolutionary power of a grotesque aesthetic. The grotesque is
integral to Shelley's purpose in the challenge it poses to notions of
rationalism and hierarchical order that, in the pet's view, are
inseparable from tyranny and hurnan bondage. The grotesque also
ailows Shelley to explode narrative expectations and ordinary
sensory cues, to destabilize and defamiliarize conventions of
language, shape, and fom; it was Shelley's hope in Prometheus
llnbound that through the transformation of categories of thought
and sense, new categories would be accessible. In this way, the
deliberate deforming of the world becomes an essential step in the
process of reforming it.
Conclusion
Milton, as we have seen, views revolution as a necessary step
to end tyrannical rule. The tyrant is guided by base passions and so
is unsuited to hold power. The legitimate ruler, on the other hand,
govems according to the dictates of right reason. In Paradise Lost,
Milton argues that God' s sovereignty is just because Cod rules in
accordance with divine reason and order. Cod's hierarchy is perfect
and inviolable, his kingdom a domain of rationality and order. In
this light, Milton shows Satan's and Adam and Eve's revolutions
against God to be unjust, the outcome of the passionate will
overcoming the divine rational will. Revolution in Paradise Los&
therefore, springs from the relinquishment (for with reason cornes
choice) of the divine image, which is the rational and the virtuous
part of God's highest mations. The loss of the divine image in fallen
angel and faen humanity is given visual and symbolic resonance
through the grotesque, which serves as an analogue of irrationality,
spiritual corruption, and alienation from God in the wake of
revolution. Examination of the grotesque in Paradise Lost clarifies
the grounds of Milton's political, as well as religious, points of view;
the Miltonic grotesque is unmistakably pejorative because the
revolutionary impulse with which the grotesque is so often
associated derives from a disregard for justice and proper limits.
Comparing Shelley's use of the grotesque with Milton's. we
more fully understand the extent to which the Romantic poet is
revising his predecessor, and the ways in which that revision is
conceptualized in art. The grotesque, we End, is the dominant mode
of artistic expression in Prometheus Unboond, and in its pervasive
opposition to rationality and order, effectively breaks down the
boundaries and overturns the hierarchies upon which Milton's
political and religious world view is grounded. Since Milton had been
the artistic and moral standard by which poets had measured
themselves for a century and a half, Shelley's reworking of the great
poet in Prometheus llnbound is a bold and radical poetic act. Shelley
seizes the fire of revolution in Promethean style by defamiliarizing
the known world and by calling into question standards of
normativity. His project will not allow of Limits, Miltonic or
otherwise, for what Shelley sets out to accomplish in Prometheus
llnbound is nothing less than the reinvention of the world.
What is often striking to the modern reader is the extent to
which the Romantics - and perhaps most of aU Shelley - believe in
the feasibility of revolution and the attainability of human
perfection. The great hopes initiated by Romanticism had by the
middle of the nineteenth century turned to dejection and
disillusionment. The experience of the brutish and unprecedented
savagery of world wars and political revolutions in this century has
further resulted in the demise of the idea of progress itself. In his
essay ""The Poe try of Barbarism," San tayana disconsolately remarks
that the twentieth century has witnessed a "long comedy of modem
social revolutions, so illusory in their aims and so productive in their
aimlessness" ( 149). It is not surprising, therefore, that modern art
should be so preoccupied with plumbing the depths of human
despondency, desperation, and impotence. Indeed, rnany of the most
powerful works of this century have explored increasingly bizarre
and immoderate topics of exorbitancy, violence. insanity, and
gro tesquerie.
What modern art so often responds to is the pervasive feeling
that life in the twentieth century may not be grasped coherently or
as a meaningful totality of experience; that instead modern life is
terrifyingly fragmented, or that the distinctions which had hitherto
provided Life with order, structure, and meaning have disappeared.
Within the theater of the absurd and the novels of black humor, for
instance, there is an attemp t to make sense of the modern
predicarnent by collapsing the boundary between laughter and tears.
Thomas Mann has remarked: "1 feel that, broadly and essentially, the
suiking feature of modern art is that it has ceased to recognize the
categorks of tragic and cornic, or the dramatic classifications, tragedy
and comedy. I t sees life as tragicomedy, with the result that the
grotesque is i ts mos t genuine style" (24 1 ) . Is there then any sense in which we may view the modern
grotesque in Sheiieian terms as an access to human emancipation?
Most observers do not think so. John R Clark writes: "Like the
romantics, we still caU for revolution, imagination, extremity, but
unlike them our manner is no longer exalted, earnest, serious, holy;
instead, we provoke the paroxysm of hopeless laughter and
desperate, unnaturai comedy" ( 1 3 ). The modem sensibility -- perhaps most poignantly captured by Kafka -- views the world at
large as unfathomable and forbidding. The world is too big and
a complicated even to understand, let aione to budge. The modern
grotesque, therefore, is characteris tically turned inward, exploring
the fears, guilts, and aberrations of tortureci psychic lives. As
Bernard Mc Elroy notes: "Not supernatural demons or devouring
chimeras, but exterml powerlessness and psychic dissoktiop are the
fears with which the modern grotesque plays, and that is the most
modern thing about it" (22).
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