“The Miltonic Narnian Hero”: John Milton’s Comus in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Abstract

John Milton epitomizes the seventeenth-century redefinition of epic heroism by rejecting the classical hero and turning towards the Christian heroic model. Similarly, C.S. Lewis, a Miltonist, infused into his Narnian heptalogy, what Monika B. Hilder calls the “feminine ethos,” Christian heroic figures and virtues which Lewis consciously knew were gendered feminine. Building from Hilder’s insights, I analyze links between Lewis and Milton regarding their engagement with heroism and gender. I specifically interrogate Miltonic intertextual echoes through Edmund’s masculine heroic ethos and Lucy’s feminine spiritual heroism within Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, a comparative reading informed by Milton’s A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle (Comus). This paper elucidates how classical masculine and feminine spiritual heroism within Comus inspires Edmund’s and Lucy’s characterizations in their juxtaposed temptation scenes by the White Witch and Mr. Tumnus respectively. Christian heroism is emphasized through Lewis’ child characters, as Edmond’s classical male heroic demonstrates waywardness while Lucy’s spiritual feminine heroism showcases her Christian faith and innocence. This scholarship invites a continued examination of the “intertextual echoes” between Lewis and his literary predecessors, specifically in the realm of gender and Christian heroism.

“That wicked band of villeins…in this place:” Spenser, Aristotle, and the Gothic Soul in Book II of The Faerie Queene

Abstract

Edmund Spenser’s late sixteenth-century epic poem The Faerie Queene has been considered within the Gothic mode since the eighteenth century. However, we must ask within what Gothic mode eighteenth-century critics conceptualized the poem. Romantic era critics like John Hughes and Richard Hurd conceptualized Spenser’s verse according to a medieval Gothic. However, these critics provoke us to consider a Spenserian Gothic within a framework largely indebted to Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), a work widely considered the first gothic novel. To date, Garrett Sullivan’s chapter “Vampirism in the Bower of Bliss,” in the edited collection, Gothic Renaissance: A Reassessment (2014), stands alone in its consideration of a post-Otranto Spenser. In this piece, I converse with Sullivan in my consideration of a Gothic Spenser within book II of The Faerie Queene. I specifically interrogate book II, cantos 9 and 11, episodes preceding the scenes Sullivan explores. I argue, when read through an Aristotelian framework, Maleger’s troops represent Alma’s sensitive elements which the castle defends against. But those sensitive, animalistic faculties are inherent to Alma as a rational soul. Alma is confronted with her repressed, or abjected, sensitive Aristotelian soul, which she seeks to overcome but can never cast off, for without that very soul, Alma is not Alma. Spenser represents a figure in the Renaissance proto-Gothic tradition, as the sensitive soul haunts not just the poem but humans ourselves, as we face those faculties of the soul which comprise us, yet simultaneously are not us.

“Happy Birthday, John—Should We Divorce?”: Margaret Atwater Mason’s The Binding of the Strong, the American Divorce Debate, and Milton’s Tercentenary”

Abstract

1908 marked John Milton’s three hundredth birthdate, an event early twentieth-century American culture celebrated. While there were numerous literary Miltonic dedications presented within periodicals, American novelist Caroline Atwater Mason stands distinctive, publishing The Binding of the Strong: A Love Story in 1908. Mason’s novel presents a historically fictional adaptive narrative depicting Milton’s rumored affair with Dr. Davis’ daughter during Mary Powell’s marital desertion, a suggestion presented in a late seventeenth-century Milton biography typically attributed to John Phillips, Milton’s nephew. Interestingly, since 1867, America’s divorce rate rose, causing it to be a popular topic of conversation in speech and print.

Thus, I argue Milton’s tercentenary American celebration in 1908 brought with it a venue for Margaret Atwater Mason to add to the ongoing American discourse on divorce, as her novel deals with Milton’s love life and divorce tracts. Binding can be read as Mason either advocating for or against divorce, with socio-religious implications for either reading. I provide analysis from both perspectives, illustrating how reading Binding from conflicting standpoints empathetically honors Mason’s cultural moment. Mason’s novel can be read both ways because it should be read both ways; oppositional readings demonstrate Binding as a reflection of the attitudinal dichotomies towards divorce in America during the Progressive Era, and how a female writer used Milton to add her voice to the divorce dialogue.