How Milton Works

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by Stanley Fish

Harvard University Press

Due/Published September 2003, 640 pages, paper

ISBN 067401233X

New in paper (F03)

Fish's lifelong engagement begun with John Milton that began with his Surprised by Sin, culminates in this book.

How Milton works "from the inside out" is the foremost concern here, with Fish exploring the radical effect of Milton's theological convictions on his poetry and prose. For Milton the value of a poem or of any other production derives from the inner worth of its author and not from any external measure of excellence or heroism. Milton's aesthetic, says Fish, is an "aesthetic of testimony": every action, whether verbal or physical, is or should be the action of holding fast to a single saving commitment against the allure of plot, narrative, representation, signs, drama--anything that might be construed as an illegitimate supplement to divine truth. Much of the energy of Milton's writing, according to Fish, comes from the effort to maintain his faith against these temptations, temptations which in any other aesthetic would be seen as the very essence of poetic value.