• In 1991 Casey Finch and Peter Bowen wrote that neither poems ‘can stop thinking and dreaming about its companion’

• In 1983, Gerard H. Cox wrote that ‘it is obvious that L'Allegro and Il Penseroso are companion poems, but precisely how

and why they are related remains an open question’

• In her book The Gendering of Melancholia, Juliana Schiesari writes that the very nature of the melancholic was to be that

of a ‘self split against itself’

L’Allegro & Il Penseroso

‘Plotting’ Episodes

L’ Allegro – The Cheerful Man

1. Banishment of Melancholy (1-10)2. Invitation to Mirth (11-24)3. Catalogue of Mirth’s companies (25-26)4. Pastoral depiction of the world (57-88)5. Concluding distich (151-152)

Il Penseroso –The Pensive Man

6. Banishment of ‘vain deluding joys’ (1-10)7. Invitation to melancholy (11-30)8. Catalogue of Melancholy’s companion (31-

64)9. Description of nocturnal stroll (65-76)10. Concluding distich (175-176)

End- rhyme – abbacddeec (line 11 onwards rhyming couplets)

Hence loathed MelancholyOf Cerebus , and blackest Midnight born,In Stygian cave forlorn‘Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights

unholy;Find some uncouth cell,Where brooding darkness spreads his jealous

wings,And the night raven sings;There under Ebon shades, and low-brow’d rocks,As ragged as thy locks,In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell

Hence vain deluding joys,The brooding folly without father bred,How little you bested,Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys;Dwell in some idle brain,And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,As thick and numberlessAs the gay motes that people the sunbeams,Or likest hovering dreams,The fickle pensioners of Mopheus’ train

Opening: Hence loathed Melancholy

Opening: Hence vain deluding joys

Line 4: Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy;

Line 5: idle

Lines 6-7: brooding darkness spreads his jealous wingsAnd the night raven sings

Similar Images

Lines 33-34: Come, and trip it as ye go On the light fantastic toe

Lines 31-32: Come pensive Nun devout and pure, Sober, steadfast, and demure

Lines 41-42: To hear the lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night

Lines 12-13: Hail divinest Melancholy! Saintly visage is too bright

Closing: Those delights if thou cans’t give Mirth, with thee I mean to live

Closing: These pleasures, Melancholy, give and with thee will choose to live

• The two poems typographical continuity, form and content clearly links L’Allegro and Il Penseroso

• However as Cox has argued there is much debate over what this link means

• Many critics such as Tillyard have seen the poems as combative or opposing

• A battle between Day and Night/Mirth and Melancholy

Intertextual MeaningIntertextual Meaning

• The two poems typographical continuity, form and content clearly links L’Allegro and Il Penseroso

• However as Cox has argued there is much debate over what this link means

• Many critics such as Tillyard have seen the poems as combative or opposing

• A battle between Day and Night/Mirth and Melancholy

Galenic vs. Aristotelian

• Works of critics Babb and Samuels has placed the poems in the genre of mediaeval debate or Renaissance disputation

• Two types of melancholy Black melancholy responsible for severe medical depression Aristotelian ‘gold tinged with purple’ melancholy, the concern

of the poet• This reading focuses on the latter as the ‘highest of mans

artistic achievements’ (Miller)• Evidence to support this lies in the choice of Penseroso rather

that Melancholio in the title

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

Prioritising Il Penseroso

Reading Milton through Milton?

• W Scott Howard has argued that this subordination of L’Allegro to Il Penseroso is a result of reading the poems progressively as records of Milton maturing

• Colin Burrows argues poems are not necessarily or explicitly autobiographical

• Musing on ‘undirected’ on different temperaments

Reading Milton through Milton?

• W Scott Howard has argued that this subordination of L’Allegro to Il Penseroso is a result of reading the poems progressively as records of Milton maturing

• Colin Burrows argues poems are not necessarily or explicitly autobiographical

• Musing on ‘undirected’ on different temperaments

Fluidity

• Fluidly associative syntax invites reader not to make firm choices

• No grammatical subject of many of the clauses• Though Greene has argued Il Penseroso has

less drifting parataxis, ‘whimsically free reading’ still creates meandering thoughts

• Poems refuse singular and simple meaning

Further thoughts

• Creation of a voice that has continuity with other poems in the collection, leads on both to the whimsical lovers in the sonnets and to the erotic visions of the elegies

• Perhaps not opposing parts of pleasure/wisdom but a warning of intemperance in either direction- forerunner to Milton’s examination of excess in Paradise Lost

Frontispiece to the 1645 edition of the Poems of

John Milton

International Music Score Library Project

1740

William Blake’s ‘Mirth’c.1816-20

Blakearchive.org

“goddess fair and free”“frolic wind”“fresh-blown roses washed in dew”“... buxom, blithe and debonair”

AllegoricalCelebration of the happyPastoralCheerful life

William Blake’s ‘Melancholy’c.1816-20

“goddess, sage and holy”“black staid wisdom’s hue”“come pensive nun, devout and pure,”“sober, steadfast and demure”“secret shades”

DigressiveGothic sceneMelancholic reverie

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