To All Extreme Parts which now lie Numb and Neglected
Though Milton's The Ready and Easy Way contains many fascinating threads, there were a few moments that made me pause and entertain the notion of Milton's possible influence on contemporary American conceptualizations of liberty, industry, self-reliance, education, and biblical exegesis and application. Now, I wish to note here that I am in no way seeking to find a kind of origin story, a place and time solely responsible for birthing, say, the notion of pulling one up by one's own bootstraps or some such thing. I find it erroneous and just plain tacky to use historical texts as means only to help understand or provide "background" for contemporary thought, as historical boundaries, though indeed somewhat arbitrary in their construction, are tools employed in the engagement of difference; they are valuable ways to approach change over time.
"Relevancy" is a term I've often heard used to justify this type of shallow and irresponsible relationship to history. As I hate the word (as well as the concept, of course), I must say that I do not offer this reflection as an attempt to make Milton's Way relevant (unfortunately, read "important"); rather, I wish to highlight some similarities and potential sites of influence while avoiding a causal narrative. As influence occurs both overtly and covertly, consciously and not, and is not restricted to chronology (for example, reading Milton could have influenced American revolutionaries while reading American revolutionaries influences how we read Milton), it is, I think, valuable to consider this relationship between American nationalism and British/Milton's nationalism.
The passage that springs immediately to mind concerns Milton's call for self-fashioning and independence, two concepts for me so intimately linked with American identity and rhetoric that it was a bit difficult to separate the different historical moments: "[I]f we were ought else but sluggards or babies," Milton writes, "we need depend on none but God and our own counsels, our own active virtue and industry!" (886). Activity, independence, manliness and masculinity (886), and of course, industry seem keywords in the ideals of American democracy, indeed, key aspects of American conceptualizations of the self as the "rugged individual". They are also, clearly, central to Milton's human, British ideal.
Another slightly divergent yet related train of thought I want to briefly pursue is that of the "watery situation" (890). As the footnote elucidates, Milton is responding to the idea that climate breeds character: that where one lives is, in fact, who one is. It's a fascinating concept that brought to mind J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur's 18th century work, Letters from an American Farmer. In the text, de Crevecoeur devotes much of his time to describing the different kinds of people/climates he encounters in America. The hyphen placed between "people" and "climates" is meant to convey a mingling of the concepts, for de Crevecoeur proclaims that land determines identity. Americans, he argues, are from all around the globe, called forth to their true home; climate then creates and distributes these various temperaments over the nation.
Milton, however, proposes an interesting solution to what I am calling geographical determinism. Though acknowledging the presence of his and the nation's watery situation, he claims that "good education and acquisite wisdom ought to correct the fluxible fault" of "fickleness" (890). The accumulation of knowledge, the gaining of education, can change a kind of destiny decreed by location. Rather than being subject to nature's molding of the self in a strange reversal of the pathetic fallacy---the self, both body and mind, sympathize with and reflect nature rather than nature sympathizing with and reflecting human emotion---Milton offers education as a tool in attaining autonomous authorship, the freedom to craft oneself apart from the tyrannies of king and demarcated space.
A quick note before ending: I am really interested in the ways in which Milton melds biblical history/text with his present political conditions (and, in the Way, his own text). This, I think, is a bold and amazing occurrence, something that opens up a space for us to think about the complex identities of texts as both constantly fluid and fixed historical products.
"Relevancy" is a term I've often heard used to justify this type of shallow and irresponsible relationship to history. As I hate the word (as well as the concept, of course), I must say that I do not offer this reflection as an attempt to make Milton's Way relevant (unfortunately, read "important"); rather, I wish to highlight some similarities and potential sites of influence while avoiding a causal narrative. As influence occurs both overtly and covertly, consciously and not, and is not restricted to chronology (for example, reading Milton could have influenced American revolutionaries while reading American revolutionaries influences how we read Milton), it is, I think, valuable to consider this relationship between American nationalism and British/Milton's nationalism.
The passage that springs immediately to mind concerns Milton's call for self-fashioning and independence, two concepts for me so intimately linked with American identity and rhetoric that it was a bit difficult to separate the different historical moments: "[I]f we were ought else but sluggards or babies," Milton writes, "we need depend on none but God and our own counsels, our own active virtue and industry!" (886). Activity, independence, manliness and masculinity (886), and of course, industry seem keywords in the ideals of American democracy, indeed, key aspects of American conceptualizations of the self as the "rugged individual". They are also, clearly, central to Milton's human, British ideal.
Another slightly divergent yet related train of thought I want to briefly pursue is that of the "watery situation" (890). As the footnote elucidates, Milton is responding to the idea that climate breeds character: that where one lives is, in fact, who one is. It's a fascinating concept that brought to mind J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur's 18th century work, Letters from an American Farmer. In the text, de Crevecoeur devotes much of his time to describing the different kinds of people/climates he encounters in America. The hyphen placed between "people" and "climates" is meant to convey a mingling of the concepts, for de Crevecoeur proclaims that land determines identity. Americans, he argues, are from all around the globe, called forth to their true home; climate then creates and distributes these various temperaments over the nation.
Milton, however, proposes an interesting solution to what I am calling geographical determinism. Though acknowledging the presence of his and the nation's watery situation, he claims that "good education and acquisite wisdom ought to correct the fluxible fault" of "fickleness" (890). The accumulation of knowledge, the gaining of education, can change a kind of destiny decreed by location. Rather than being subject to nature's molding of the self in a strange reversal of the pathetic fallacy---the self, both body and mind, sympathize with and reflect nature rather than nature sympathizing with and reflecting human emotion---Milton offers education as a tool in attaining autonomous authorship, the freedom to craft oneself apart from the tyrannies of king and demarcated space.
A quick note before ending: I am really interested in the ways in which Milton melds biblical history/text with his present political conditions (and, in the Way, his own text). This, I think, is a bold and amazing occurrence, something that opens up a space for us to think about the complex identities of texts as both constantly fluid and fixed historical products.
posted by alh at 11:44 PM
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