A New Companion to Milton by Corns Thomas N.;

Author:Corns, Thomas N.; [Corns, Thomas N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated
Published: 2016-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

Deprivation increases desire by explaining the nature of desire to itself, thus making loneliness theoretically intelligible. It is not the Fall, however, that deprives us of the ideal marital scenario, according to this first appeal to Genesis. On the contrary, the Fall made it essential to us. It is Milton’s personal fall into the erratic choice of a mate that has taught him, too late, what he really ‘lookt for.’

Out of misery comes poetry in prose: ‘Who hath the power to struggle with an intelligible flame, not in Paradise to be resisted.’ One has only to compare this sentence with other English Protestant definitions of companionate marriage to perceive Milton’s originality and complexity. Thus, John Dod and Robert Cleaver, in their Godly Forme of Housholde Governement: For the Ordering of Private Families according to the directions of Gods word, which appeared in many editions from 1598 onwards, used scripture to assert a much plainer ideal – and with it, a warning against divorce:

Wedlocke or Matrimonie, is a lawfull knot, and unto God an acceptable yoking & joyning together of one man, and one woman, with the good consent of them both; to the end that they may dwell together in friendship and honesty, one helping & comforting the other, eschewing whoredome, and all uncleannesse, bringing up their children in the feare of God: or it is a coupling together of two persons into one flesh, according unto the ordinance of God; not to be broken, but so to continue during the life of either of them, Gen. 2.2, Malachi 2.14, Rom. 7.31.

(Dod and Cleaver 1612: F8r)

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