Lanyer, Milton, and Finch
Lanyer's "Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum" "re-envisioned" the events of Genesis to defend Eve's actions as well-intentioned and no worse than Adam's, or even more to be excused because of Adam's presumed greater powers. John Milton (1608-74), who was only an infant when Lanyer published, might have acquired a copy of "SDRJ" while studying at Cambridge. His grand intentions in re-writing Genesis, and his specific focus on gender re: the Fall, certainly make it tempting to read the invocation of the Muse (PL Book I) as a response to Lanyer's poem. In any event, the poem's publication in 1667 constituted a revolutionary challenge to the light entertaining verse and bawdy comedies of the Restoration. To be fair, Milton's achievement is enormous: in thousands of lines, he has turned the blank verse of Shakespeare's tragedies into a majestic vehicle with which to speculate upon the core narrative of his religious belief, and this poem has given Anglo-American culture its most popular vision of Hell, a far more familiar vision than that in Dante's Inferno. For an interesting discussion of this from my English 211 class, click here.
All serious poets after Milton have had to ask themselves whether they could match his work's scope and vision, or whether they had the power to become a poet-prophet. Read the invocation below and compare it with the concluding ten lines of the manuscript "Introduction" to Finch's collection (ll. 55-64), available from her English 222 web page.
What is happening to the authors' creative inspiration in these two poems?
Paradise Lost, Book 1:
1 Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
2 Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
3 Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
4 With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
5 Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
6 Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top
7 Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
8 That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
9 In the beginning how the heavens and earth
10 Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill
11 Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed
12 Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
13 Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
14 That with no middle flight intends to soar
15 Above th' Aonian mount, while it pursues
16 Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
17 And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
18 Before all temples th' upright heart and pure,
19 Instruct me, for thou know'st; thou from the first
20 Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread,
21 Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast Abyss,
22 And mad'st it pregnant: what in me is dark
23 Illumine, what is low raise and support;
24 That, to the height of this great argument,
25 I may assert Eternal Providence,
26 And justify the ways of God to men.
If you're interested in exploring Milton's views of women as reflected in his prose pamphlets and poetry, you might do well to start with a nicely planned, student-designed site associated with Dene' Scoggins' 1996 English 316 course at U. Texas, Austin. Students Charles Quinn and John Powell have gather together some short but fairly representative annotated extracts of "Milton on women." Keep in mind that, though Scoggins has overseen the construction of the site, the ideas therein belong to the web page creators. It's good practice to be in the habit of logging on a piece of paper or a Word file who has created the ideas you're browsing through.