Milton, Materialism, and the Sound

of Paradise Lost
BEVERLEY SHERRY

Essays in Criticism Vol. 60 No. 3

# The Author [2010]. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
doi: 10.1093/escrit/cgq013

220

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BY THE TIME he composed Paradise Lost, Milton had developed a mature philosophy of materialism which he incorporated
into the poem: in the cosmos which he represents all things exist
in a dynamic continuum and all are at once material and
animate. They all come out of the same stuff, the primordial
formless Mass, / This worlds material mould, which includes
unformed sound (a universal hubbub); and they are brought
to life, or spirited, by means of various forms (3.708-9;
2.951; 3.717).1 In addition, all things vary in degrees / Of substance (5.473-4), and are less bodily or corporeal the closer they
are placed or move towards God, their source. No matter how
refind . . . spiritous, and pure (5.475), though, all remain
material, the human mind and its products as well as rocks.
The archangel Raphael provides a discursive account of this
materialist monism to Adam and Eve (5.404-26, 469-503)
and, throughout the poem, Miltons representation of both
abstract and sensory phenomena endorses his materialism
one has only to think of Eve eating Death (9.792) or the
angels Quaff[ing] immortalitie and joy (5.638). Much
research has been expended on this philosophy,2 but we have
not considered that Paradise Lost itself is a created thing that
exists within the cosmos which Milton is depicting and which
exemplifies his animist materialism.
When God looks down on the cosmos and surveys His own
works and their works (3.59), the latter encompass everything
that Gods creatures do, including things fashioned by them,

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such as the palace of Pandemonium, the dances of the angels, or

Galileos telescope. Miltons poem itself is pre-eminent among
these works in so far as it is an immediate and continuing
presence and because he presents it so self-consciously in
relation to himself making it; and, like every other thing in the
cosmos, the poem is physical and alive, instinct with Spirit
(6.752).
Physical or corporeal matter is explained by Raphael in terms
of the five senses, what we hear, see, smell, touch, taste (5.411);
together with things that we see, smell, touch, and taste, sound is
corporeal. The corporeal matter of Paradise Lost is what we take
in through our senses. The words on the page their lexical, syntactic, and linear properties are taken in visually.3 The aural
substance is the sound of the poem, whether we are reading
aloud or hearing the poem silently in our minds ear or listening
to someone else reading. If we are reading aloud, the sounds are
tactile as well, as Diane McColley observes, felt with our lips
and breath and vocal cords.4 The corporeality of Paradise Lost
insists that it be read, heard, and spoken.
This visual, aural, and oral substance is animate, or instinct
with Spirit, through human agency, seminally through the
creating poet and variously through readers. In composing the
words spoken, heard, written Milton evokes significations
which include images or mental sense impressions, ideas,
argument, characters with their thoughts and feelings, the
shaping of the plot, allusions, down to the minutest associations
of individual words. This vast abstract matter of the poem is
conveyed to the mind of the reader through, and never loses
contact with, the corporeal matter taken in via the senses. The
poem is thus manifestly attached to a human being, in
Miltons theology an extension of Gods works yet paradoxically
differing from them. Gods own works exist in their own right,
whereas the poem, like all man-made things, exists through
human agency. Although Milton insists that his epic is the
work of his heavnly Muse, he also regularly refers to it as
my song or my voice (proems to Books 1, 3, 4, 7, and 9),
and its reception is likewise a personal experience for the
reader. It was created by a human being and lives, time and
again, through successive readers. This view accords with

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Miltons own ideas, expressed especially in Areopagitica, on

how books exist, how they achieve a life beyond life.5
In Miltons cosmos, then, what kind of thing is Paradise Lost?
Other phenomena perhaps offer a clue. Among Gods own
works, there is for example the plant described by Raphael:

From the solid root the plant becomes progressively less corporeal, culminating in its perfume, but these Spirits odorous never
lose contact with the flower, leaves, stalk, and root; and it is the
plants form, the shaping of its matter, that animates it, from the
root spring[ing] lightly upwards to the flower breath[ing] out
perfume. The poem exists in a very different form or active
Sphear[s] (5.477) but, as with the flower, there is no fissure
between its corporeal and less corporeal substance the
former grows into or evokes the latter. The plant is an
analogue of the poem, as is also the angel body, suggested by
William Kerrigan as The metaphor deep-rooted in Paradise
Lost for the poem itself. Angels are Vital in every part . . . /
All Heart they live, all Head, all Eye, all Eare, / All Intellect,
all Sense (6.345-51); the poem, Resting on a substratum of
one first matter, . . . limbs itself as we please and shares the
graces of angelic corporeality fineness, substantiality, plasticity, flight.6
However, closest to the poem ontologically is something
made by Gods creatures, hymns. Adam and Eves intricately
beautiful morning hymn (5.153-208) exemplifies the poems
particular kind of aurality (metrical verse), its claimed unpremeditated flow (9.24), its temporal mode of existence, and its
attachment to human beings. Above all, it is vocal, fit strains
pronounct or sung / Unmeditated, such prompt eloquence /
Flowd from thir lips (5.148-50). Meanwhile, the poem draws
attention to itself as vocal through the numerous speaking characters and, typically, by the narrating bard May I express thee

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So from the root

Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves
More aerie, last the bright consummate floure
Spirits odorous breathes:
(5.479-82)

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flours and thir fruit

Mans nourishment, by gradual scale sublimd
To vital Spirits aspire, to animal,
To intellectual, give both life and sense,
Fansie and understanding, whence the Soule

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. . . Or hearst thou rather . . .? (3.3-8), O For that warning voice

(4.1), No more of talk (9.1).7 Towards the end of the morning
hymn, the blind bard joins his voice with those of Adam and Eve
(5.202-4).
Where, then, would Paradise Lost find a place in Miltons
graded cosmos? Clearly where human beings are, and in
Miltons fluid material continuum their place is moveable, as
Raphael explains to Adam and Eve (5.493-537; 8.640-1) and
as the action of the poem makes manifest. Its place is uniquely
high as it issues from the creating poet. As it is received by
readers, the priority that Milton gives to suitable or able listeners
is of the highest relevance. Drawing on the Latin audire (to
hear), he hopes for fit audience . . . though few (7.31)
(readers would fit metrically but Milton chooses audience).
Such auditors will hear and respect the poem, and Milton distinguishes them from the barbarous rabble who would not
hear Orpheuss song but killed him (7.32-8). Similarly, in his
note on The Verse, he distinguishes readers with judicious
ears from vulgar Readers,8 demanding of the reader what
Angela Leighton has termed that difficult, double attention of
reading with the ears.9 Experienced by such readers, Paradise
Lost will exist high on Miltons continuum of creation; his
belief that divinely inspired poetry can plant and nourish the
seeds of vertu10 meant that such readers would grow in virtue
and approach nearer to God. Those who do not read sensitively
with ears and mind will experience an impoverished version of
the poem lower on the scale of creation.
Human agency is fundamental to where and how the poem
exists. When Raphael explains to Adam and Eve about fancy
(imagination), understanding, and reason faculties used in
the creating and the reading of a poem he insists on the
seamless connection of body and mind:

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Reason receives, and reason is her being,

Discursive, or Intuitive;
(5.482-8)

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The physical and the spiritual are thus inseparably connected in

a human being and must be so too in the poem, which issues
from a human being. Milton suggests this powerfully when,
lamenting his blindness, he feed[s] on thoughts, that voluntarie
move / Harmonious numbers (3.37-8), the audible material of
sound and rhythm.11 There is a direct intercourse between the
bards mind, ear, and dictating lips. Milton describes how the
spoken word, in turn, infuses its substance via the ears into
the spirit or heart or mind of the listener (3.135-7; 4.799-809;
5.694-6; 8.1-3, 210-16; 9.549-51, 733-8). The word spoken
and heard is corporeal matter. Through synaesthesia, the
angels can even smell it (3.135-7); Adam experiences
Raphaels voice physically, like food and drink (7.66-8;
8.210-16); and Satans words Into [Eves] heart too easie
entrance won and still ring in her ears as she gazes at the fruit
(9.733-8). Francis Bacon held that sound is one of the subtilest
pieces of nature, a virtue which may be called incorporeal and
immateriate, but for Milton it is unmistakably corporeal, and
his poem is shaped with it.12
Vocal and aural substance is thus fundamental to Paradise
Losts existence. This is true of all good poems, but the inbuilt
philosophy of Miltons epic prompts the questions, of what
mould, / Or substance is the poem itself and how endud
(2.355-6)? In the cosmos which he depicts, Milton emphasises
the corporeality of sound and thus implicitly encourages us to
hear and speak the poem. In heaven, sound is copious: God is
pre-eminently a voice, heaven rings with the sound of the
angels blest voices, and Gods own ear / Listens delighted
(3.347; 5.626-7); the gates of heaven open with Harmonious
sound (7.206). In paradise, the angels are heard day and night
Singing thir great Creator (4.684); Adam and Eves prayers
and hymns follow their example, and the natural world is
Made vocal by their song, sound[ing] and resound[ing] the
creators praise (5.204, 172, 178). The garden is alive with conversation, between Adam and God, Adam and Eve, and Adam

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and Raphael. On first hearing human speech, Satan became all

eare to hear new utterance flow (4.410). Book 7 shows the
universe created through the spoken Word of God and celebrated each day by the angels in song, especially on the
seventh day, not in silence holy kept (7.594). Hell, and
heaven during Satans rebellion, are full of Infernal and unsufferable noise (6.667, 867), and Satan, despite his annual
humbling to wordless hissing (10.576), is supremely and victoriously voluble in the human world. In hell, besides powerful
voices and horrendous noise, music is heard, the seductive
sound Of Dulcet Symphonies and voices sweet and choral
singing so beautiful that it Suspended Hell (1.711-12; 2.554).
Chaos, the source of uncreated sound, is a universal hubbub
wilde that assaults the ear and roar[s] (2.951-3; 6.871).
After the Fall, the human world is resonant with sound. There
is music (11.558-63, 583-4), but more notably human voices
in factious opposition (11.664), strident argument inaugurated
by Adam and Eve (9.1143-89), while the ultimate cacophony,
the hideous gabble of Babel (12.56), is reminiscent of the
hissing scene in hell (10.504-47) and the stunning sounds and
voices all confusd of chaos (2.952). Milton emphasises too
his oral mode of composition. We know that he dictated in
the mornings and that, if an amanuensis was late, would
complain, Saying hee wanted to bee milkd.13 In the invocation
to Book 7 he asserts that, although half the epic yet remaines
unsung, his voice is, mirabile dictu, unchangd / To hoarce or
mute (7.21-5), and concludes the proem to Book 9 by
claiming that he hears the poem through his heavenly muse,
who brings it nightly to my Ear (9.47).
Joining his voice with the angels voices at the conclusion of
their hymn in Book 3, Milton rejoices in the copious matter
of my Song (3.413). Although we cannot smell or touch or
see the poem in the way we perceive a springing plant,
Paradise Lost shares with all things in the one first matter
(5.472) and is copiously material. What is special is how it is
Indud with . . . form[s] (5.473). As Kerrigan, Rumrich, and
Fallon note, The endowment of form triggers the animation of
matter.14 The making or forming is what animates or spirits

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Paradise Lost, and it shares with the angels song in being made
with words sounded vocally.
Since the 1970s scholars have lost touch with the oral
and aural substance of Paradise Lost, focusing more and
more upon Miltons theological, philosophical, and political
thought. A move away from the study of formal elements has
led to the imbalance in Milton studies noted by Stanley Fish.15
Very few scholars have explored the sound of the poem in
relation to meaning, and none have connected its sound with
the animist materialism that informs Paradise Lost.
The major exception in the largely deaf company of Miltonists
is John Creaser, notably through his study Service is perfect
freedom: Paradox and Prosodic Style in Paradise Lost.16
Basing his work on the prosodic theories of Derek Attridge,
Creaser frees Milton from traditional foot prosody and
reveals the continuing rhythmic variation for expressive
purposes that Milton achieves while still adhering to the five
beats of the blank verse line. As well as inverted stress,
frequent in Paradise Lost at the beginning of a line, there are
three other possible deviations from the basic duple alternation,
termed demotion, promotion, and pairing. Creasers
notation for scanning, employed below, is as follows. Capitals
indicate full stresses. Demotion is a stress falling on an off-beat
and is indicated by italicised capitals, for example, SER-vant
of GOD, WELL DONE (6.29); demotions make for a slow,
weighty rhythm because they add an extra stress to the
five-beat line. A promoted syllable is a syllable naturally given
light emphasis but which, because of its place in the line, is
felt as a metrical beat; it is indicated by small capitals, for
example, the third syllable of solitarie in: Through E-den
TOOK thir SO-li-TAR-rie WAY (12.649). Pairing, a favourite
deviation with Milton, is two consecutive stresses, both of
which are beats; to retain balance, they are either preceded or
followed by two unstressed syllables; pairing is indicated by
capitals for the adjacent stresses and by underlining, for
example, MILL-ions of SPIR-its for HIS FAULT a-MERCT
(1.609).
The editor and critic Gordon Teskey also has ears to hear, and
emphasises the need to experience the poem as physical effort

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Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit

Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing Heavnly Muse,
(1.1-6)
become, in Haaks translation,
Des ersten Menschen Abfall und die Frucht
Ihm hochverbottnen Baums, dass ihr Versuch
Den Todt und all Unheyl hat auf die Welt
Gebracht, und uns auss Eden biss Gott-Mensch
Uns voll erlos und alles wiederbring,
Sin,19
Singend, O
Haak knew Milton personally and strove for fidelity, which is
evident in his use of blank verse, his placing of Frucht,

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and physical sound. He is deeply interested in the ontology of

Paradise Lost, stressing repeatedly its createdness as poiema,
a thing made, and imagining it as an emergent structure, something that feels, even as we read it, still in the process of being
created, of excitedly breaking forth from the poets imagination
and passing, even now, through the poets lips to our ears.17
Even Teskey, however, never really explores what Paradise
Lost is made of, and, for all his admiration of the material
force of the poem as an artifact in sound,18 how the sonic
matter embodies meaning does not excite his scrutiny. Yet
Miltons shaping of the sound of words to help carry meaning
is fundamental to Paradise Lost as a thing made.
A rudimentary way to hear this is to compare Miltons text
with translations. Prose translations, such as Chateaubriands
in 1836, lose an important visual component, the arrangement
of the words in lines and the expressive purposes of that arrangement, but all translations lose the aural power of Milton.
Consider Theodore Haaks German translation of 1681.
Miltons first six lines

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Versuch, and Gott-Mensch at the end of lines, and in his

retaining Miltons suspended syntax which finally resolves in
Sin, but the unique sound and rhythm of Milton
Singend, O
are lost. Haaks lines do not capture the heavy monosyllabic
intensity of BROUGHT DEATH in-TO the WORLD, and
ALL OUR WOE, and his lines follow the plodding iambic of
Des ER-sten MEN-schen AB-fall UND die FRUCHT. Miltons
opening lines would have startled his contemporary readers,
not only because they are unrhymed and surge forward in a
long suspended clause, but also because the first line is wildly
aberrant, with six instead of five beats, three of which fall on
consecutive syllables: Of MANS FIRST DIS-o-BED-ience AND
the FRUIT. Yet this weird, arresting rhythm is right, in its
sublime weightiness, for the astonishing announcement the
bard is making. As appropriate rhythm, what Milton calls apt
Numbers, it is part of the animate body of Paradise Lost,
aural substance combining with semantic components to help
body forth the sense of the momentous, primal fault.
Even more useful than Haaks translation, in opening ones
ears to the sound of Paradise Lost, is Dennis Danielsons prose
translation/paraphrase.20 Danielsons stated purpose is to lead
readers back to Miltons text, which is printed on the
left-hand page facing the prose version on the right. The
majestic power of Miltons narrative and imagery is not
entirely lost by Danielson, but his translation continually
prompts one to return to the left-hand page to hear the sound
of Milton. Danielsons of all the happiness he had lost, and
now of endless suffering (p. 15) enables one to hear, with
renewed clarity, Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
(1.55). The power of Miltons line here is carried by its stark
compression, its weighty rhythm, with a demotion (stress
falling on an off-beat) on lost, and by the antithesis made
more powerful by closeness of sounds (l, st, p) on stressed syllables: LOST HAP-pi-NESS and LAST-ing PAIN. The preceding
lines work with similar expressive purpose: BUT his DOOM /
Re-SERVD him to MORE WRATH; for NOW the
THOUGHT (1.53-4). Milton pronounced wrath with the
same vowel as more,21 and the heavy rhythm, with assonance
on the long, low vowels MORE WRATH . . . THOUGHT

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Yet NOT the MORE

Cease I to WAN-der WHERE the MU-ses HAUNT
Cleer SPRING, or SHA-die GROVE,
(3.26-8)
Stephen Fallon believes that the confidence of this assertion is
undercut by the tortuous syntax. Yet I still wander would
be more direct. Yet no less do I wander would at least be idiomatic.24 But the sound of the lines modifies such a reading: the
flowing, undislocated iambic movement and the assonance of
not and wan, more and haunt, all on down-beats, help to
convey a tone of confidence, not anxiety.

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intensifies the sense of inexorable wrath. There is similar assonance in the other two instances of wrath in Book 1
(1.110-11 and 220-1), and in the manuscript, in each case, a
u caret is inserted to indicate wrauth, which was Miltons preferred spelling.22
Rhythm shapes or inspirits Paradise Lost everywhere; as John
Creaser puts it, the rhythm of the verse is the lifeblood of the
poem.23 The rich aural corporeality of the poem, however, is
more than a question of rhythm. Miltons auditory imagination
typically shapes patterns of sound assonance, alliteration,
vowel length, consonantal and syllabic quality with rhythm
for expressive purposes, and is a pervasive shaping or animating
principle in the making of the poem. To take just one line
Greedily she ingorgd without restraint (9.791) both alliteration and assonance fall on the first three beats, which fall on long
vowels, and the first beat is emphasised by inverted stress:
GREED-i-ly SHE in-GORGD with-OUT re-STRAINT. The
result is a powerful driving line in which sound, particularly the
velar voiced plosive g, combines with rhythm to help enforce
the grossness which the lexical components signify. This power
would be lost if we were to substitute, for example, JOY-ous-ly
SHE de-VOURD with-OUT re-STRAINT, a rhythmically
identical line but which lacks Miltons expressive combining of
rhythm with sound. The characteristic shaping of sound with
rhythm works across lines as well, as in:

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Miltons minute care to convey meaning through

sound-with-rhythm is evident even in single words, such as
clang, which is used only twice in Paradise Lost. When the
solemn and sublime archangel Michael (11.236) foretells the
fate of paradise at the Flood, he concludes with clang:

The surging onward movement of these lines is an example of

mimetic prosody, where aural effects suggest what is being
described. Onomatopoeia is rarely used by Milton, but clang
is distinctly onomatopoeic That wonderful word clang,
writes Gordon Teskey, is an acoustic chaos that reverberates
for us from the noise of chaos itself.25 It is given harsh
acoustic weight by being the last of three monosyllables placed
at the end of a heavily monosyllabic line, with a possible
demotion on mews, and by being followed by a stop: The
HAUNT of SEALES and ORCS, and SEA-MEWS CLANG.
The only other use of clang in Paradise Lost has a different
context, and the word has accordingly a different acoustic
weight. Raphael, the affable Arch-Angel (7.41), is describing
the creation of the birds:
Mean while the tepid Caves, and Fens and shoares
Thir Brood as numerous hatch, from the Egg that soon
Bursting with kindly rupture forth disclosd
Thir callow young, but featherd soon and fledge
They summd thir Penns, and soaring th air sublime
With clang despisd the ground,
(7.417-22)

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then shall this Mount

Of Paradise by might of Waves be moovd
Out of his place, pushd by the horned floud,
With all his verdure spoild, and Trees adrift
Down the great River to the opning Gulf,
And there take root an Iland salt and bare,
The haunt of Seales and Orcs, and Sea-mews clang.
(11.829-35)

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231

he stood and calld

His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intranst
Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th Etrurian shades
High overarcht imbowr;
(1.300-4)
Charles A. Huttar believes that these lines have a melodic
sound, unlike the harsher lines that follow [1.304-13], and
have thereby a pastoral quality; Milton is hinting at a
pleasant rural scene, a locus amoenus, which is achieved
partly by sheer melody, the liquid consonants and open back
vowels.28 The idea that a melodic sound can create a
pastoral quality is specious since the sheer sound of words
means nothing. Huttar, however, at least attempts to listen to
the lines, unlike Peter Herman, who focuses on Miltons
politics, ignores the sound of the poem, and treats Paradise
Lost not unlike a document in prose. By a long and circuitous

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There is no pause after clang here. The word does not stand out
with audible harshness, as in Sea-mews clang, but has a lighter
or shorter acoustic weight because part of a flowing iambic
movement: and SOAR-ing THAIR su-BLIME / With
CLANG de-SPISD the GROUND. This accords with the
sense of joy in the lines: the birds despise the ground because
they are given wings and can fly. As Helen Darbishire
observed more than fifty years ago, with Milton every sound
and syllable counted, every pause or silence between sounds.
Never has poet known better than he that sound expresses
sense, and that the minutest details of his art must be cared for
if he is to render the fullness of his meaning.26
A passage in which rhythm, linear arrangement, and,
especially, patterns of sound help to create meaning in terms
of Miltons animist materialism, help to inspirit the matter out
of which Paradise Lost is made comes at the point where
Satan calls up his followers in hell. The lines were cited by
Leigh Hunt in 1825 as exemplifying Miltons harmonious
sound effects,27 although Hunt made no attempt to explain
how these effects work:

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route, he argues that the Vallombrosa passage is about both

republicanism and monarchy and therefore betrays Miltons
incertitude about the seventeenth century revolution.29 By comparison with all previous readings, this is egregiously far-fetched.
The lines are about loss and devastation, and if Herman had
listened to them he might have heard the sound of sense.30
The angels are stunned, intranst, and there is an appropriate sense of stillness in the lines, which move fairly slowly
because of a predominance of long vowels and a number of
pauses, two in line 301, one each in lines 303 and 304. There
is an extra, unavoidable pause at the end of line 301, on
intranst, because of the long vowel and also because the
cluster of unvoiced consonants at the end of the line and the
beginning of the next intranst / Thick together with the
plosive ts, require careful articulation, making it impossible
to slide over easily from intranst to Thick. The pause on
intranst is the only end-line pause in the five lines and helps
to carry the sense of the word. The long vowels of the lines, in
addition to slowing the pace, produce Miltons characteristic
fullness of sound. Sonority is increased by consonance:
Legions/Angels; by liquid, voiced, and nasal consonants:
Legions/Angels . . . intranst . . . Autumnal . . .. Vallombrosa . . .
Etrurian . . . imbowr; and by assonance: stood . . . calld . . .
Forms . . . Autumnal . . . Brooks . . . strow . . . Vallombrosa . . .
overarcht. Milton scorned the use of rhyme for his epic and rarely
uses onomatopoeia, but creates, as here, more subtle interlinking
of sounds for expressive purpose, a sound of sense. Assonance is
a strong factor, so that Milton uses strow here to reverberate
with brosa, but strews elsewhere (5.348). Vallombrosa
resonates especially, phonetically and semantically, with
Autumnal Leaves, and is a key word, with its even rhythm,
vowels, and liquid and voiced consonants; Milton loved Italian
and would have sounded the double l and the voiced s. A
place outside Florence, Vallombrosa means literally valley
enshaded but in this context hints at the valley of the shadow
of death. Shaded valley would fit metrically, but Milton
prefers the sighing, sonorous Italian word which resonates with
other words in the context; for the same reason, he does not
say October leaves, which would also fit metrically, but

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Autumnal Leaves. Derek Attridge, writing of aural effects in

James Joyces Ulysses, speaks of a reciprocal relationship . . .
between phonetic and semantic properties and of the materiality
of language as it does its work of bringing meaning into
being (Attridges italics).31 This is what is happening in the
Vallombrosa passage. The mutual reverberation of sounds has
an expressive effect: as the words resonate with one another,
the sense of each is intensified stood . . . calld . . . Forms . . .
Autumnal . . . Brooks . . . strow . . . Vallombrosa . . . overarcht
imbowr. This reverberating assonance, reciprocating with
lexical meanings, the linear arrangement, and the subdued
pace, mobilises meaning, helping to create the overall sense
of loss and devastation.
In this way, Miltons enduing his poem with sonic matter
helps to carry the abstract matter of connotations, images, and
allusions. The materialist monism of Paradise Lost, which
allows no division between corporeal and incorporeal matter,
is a continuing guide to reading the poem. Just as the springing
plant described by Raphael is corporeal with less corporeal
matter, so with the uniquely endud poem, physical and
abstract matter are seamlessly connected as expressive
sounding words. In the process of Milton creating that
direct intercourse of mind, ear, and voice and the reader listening while reading, the poem becomes animate, a living thing
within the continuum of creation.
The passages analysed so far are descriptive. Speeches,
however, are crucial to the oral and aural existence of Paradise
Lost. I have attempted to show elsewhere that Milton creates
an evolution of speech rhythms and patterns of converse
across the epic which relates to seventeenth century ideas
about the deterioration of mankinds speech with the Fall.32
That evolution is part of Miltons theodicy: the wayes of God
with Man (8.226) are justified because Adam and Eve freely
give up their closeness to God in a departure which is uttered
and heard in their alterd stile (9.1132). Before the Fall, the
speeches of Adam and Eve move in the measured rhythms of
celestial speech, but with the Fall their speech takes on the dislocated, passionate accents of Satan. Readers with ears attuned to
the contrasting rhythms of infernal and celestial speech, will hear

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Adam and Eve letting Satan into their mouths as they let him
into their minds. The Satanising of their speech, most marked
in their soliloquies (9.795-833 and 10.720-844), is part of
Miltons poetic theodicy, which is in striking contrast to prose
works such as Thomas Pierces The Divine Philanthropie
Defended (1657), Anthony Burgesss The Doctrine of Original
Sin, asserted and vindicated (1658), or Richard Baxters Gods
Goodness, Vindicated (1671). Milton distinguishes poetry as
more . . . sensuous than works of this kind;33 thus auditory
effects become part of his argument.
While the evolution of speech rhythms across the epic is strikingly audible, the dialogue in heaven in Book 3 dramatically
the core of Miltons defence of God works in a more
nuanced fashion. The prodigious scholarship on this dialogue
has taken little account of sound. Dennis Danielson acknowledges that Miltons justification of God is all the more impressive for its being literary, but in the literary dynamics of
Miltons free will defence he does not hear auditory effects.34
Similarly, in analysing this dialogue Irene Samuel traces a progressive change in the Fathers tone from coldly logical to
warmly loving, but does not consider sound as part of this progression.35 Isabel MacCaffrey reminds us that, with the dialogue
in heaven, there is a shift to a highly aural mode of apprehension where ideas are more or less nakedly presented. She
points to the traditional belief that certain kinds of truths may
be audible but invisible; spiritual verities may be understood
only through our ears, the avenue of concepts, the path to
understanding; Miltons argument is heard by our inner
ears, not seen in imagination.36
The dialogue in heaven is the most abstract section of the
poem but it is not nakedly presented. MacCaffrey rightly
observes that the language of God is stripped of sensuous implication.37 Almost image-free, the heavenly dialogue is nevertheless sensuous, orally and aurally sensuous. It was milkd out of
Miltons body in his voice and is taken in through the readers
sense of hearing, heard at one and the same time by inner
and outer ears as we listen to Milton orchestrating two
voices, the Fathers and the Sons. Gods dealings with
mankind are defended here as the hard justice of the Fathers

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speeches is subsequently softened by and incorporated with love

in the speeches of the Son. The voice of the Son is a comparatively still small voice which gradually softens the dominating
sound and rhythm of the Fathers voice. The sonic progression
is inseparable from the progression of ideas as mercy tames
justice, compassion tames wrath, and humility tames hard selfrighteousness, so that, by the end of the dialogue, the two
voices harmonise.
Miltons poetic orchestration is heralded in the rhythms of the
opening lines of the Fathers and the Sons speeches. The Fathers
powerful voice begins with reversed stress and strong pairing:
ON-ly be-GOT-ten SON, SEEST thou what RAGE (3.80),
while the Sons first words follow the gentle iambic rhythm of:
O FA-ther, GRA-cious WAS that WORD (3.144). Opening
his second speech, the Father adopts a similar soft, even
lulling, rhythm: O SON, in WHOM my SOUL hath CHIEF
de-LIGHT / SON of my BO-som, SON who ART a-LONE /
My WORD, my WIS-dom, AND ef-FEC-tual MIGHT (3.16870). The Sons second speech begins with: FA-ther, thy
WORD is PAST (3.227), and the Fathers final speech opens
like an exhaled sigh of joy and gratitude in a smooth iambic
line unbroken by a caesura and flowing easily into the next
line: O THOU in HEAVN and EARTH the ON-ly PEACE /
Found OUT for MAN-kind UN-der WRAUTH (3.274-5).
The body of the five speeches of the dialogue follows this progressive softening. The Fathers first speech (3.80-134) is defined
by the Son himself in his immediate acknowledgement of his
Father as Judg / Of all things made who judgest onely right
(3.154-5). Absolute justice, righteousness, characterises the
Fathers first speech. It is declarative, confidently, sternly, and
repetitively laying out justice which is hard but true, odious
Truth perhaps, such as will be uttered by the single just men
(11.704), and which, when read aloud, sounds inescapably
caustic.38 The voice has immense power and authority, carried
in emphatic repetitions which frequently include alliteration
and assonance for added weight: no bounds . . . no bars . . . nor
all the chains . . . nor yet, So were created, nor can justly accuse
/ Thir maker, or thir making, or thir Fate (3.81-3, 112-13).
Balanced effects make for still more weight: Sufficient to have

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ESSAYS IN CRITICISM

THIS my LONG SUF-ferance AND my DAY of GRACE

THEY who ne-GLECT and SCORN, shall NEV-er TASTE;
But HARD be HARD-nd, BLIND be BLIND-ed MORE,
That THEY may STUM-ble ON, and DEEP-er FALL;
(3.198-201)
William Empson accuses God of speaking here in rocking-horse
couplets, using the off-rhymes which were re-invented by
Wilfred Owen to describe the First World War, with the same
purpose of setting a readers teeth on edge.39 The tough voice
of justice reaches a peak with the draconian rhythm, repetition,
balance, assonance, and alliteration of: HE with his WHOLE
po-STER-i-tie MUST DYE, / DYE HEE or JU-stice MUST
(3.209-10). The Sons speech in response, while remaining relatively still and small, somewhat approaches the Fathers voice. It
begins again with the soft fa sound, Father, thy word is past
(3.227), but gradually some reversed stresses, assonance, alliteration, and demotion are heard: on ME let DEATH wreck ALL
his RAGE, DEATH his DEATHS WOUND shall THEN
re-CEIVE, I through the AM-ple AIR in TRI-umph HIGH,

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stood, though free to fall, Freely they stood who stood, and fell
who fell, I formd them free, and free they must remain, / Till they
enthrall themselves (3.99, 102, 124-5). In addition, the speech is
marked by a deliberate, slow, weighty movement, the result of
stress reversals, pairing, demotions, and frequent caesuras:
ON-ly be-GOT-ten SON, SEEST thou what RAGE, the
SOLE com-MAND, / SOLE PLEDGE of HIS o-BE-dience: SO
will FALL / HEE and his FAITH-less PRO-gen-ie: WHOSE
FAULT? / WHOSE but his OWN? (3.80, 94-7). The Son
responds to this speech in more flowing syntax and soothing
tones, the latter epitomised in the voiceless consonant and open
back vowel of fa. Joined with the lexical meaning of father,
the sound fa has a softness: O Father and that be from thee
farr, / That farr be from thee, Father (3.144,153-4). Responding
to his Son, the Father begins his second speech with the smooth
iambic of O SON, in WHOM my SOUL hath CHIEF
de-LIGHT (3.168), but gradually the hard, assertive voice of
the incensed Deitie (3.187) is heard again:

THE SOUND OF PARADISE LOST

237

Mean while
The World shall burn, and from her ashes spring
New Heavn and Earth, wherein the just shall dwell,
And after all thir tribulations long
See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds,
With Joy and Love triumphing, and fair Truth.
(3.333-8)
These lines are in harmony with those of the Son in the preceding
speech Thou at the sight / Pleasd, out of Heaven shalt look
down and smile, / . . . wrauth shall be no more / Thenceforth,
but in thy presence Joy entire (3.256-65) so that now the
Father seems to be Substantially expressd (3.140) in the Son.
In these closing words of the Father, enjambment accommodates
verbs with ease (3.334-5, 336-7) and the liquid ls take away the
hard edge from his voice, as in the joyful release of the enjambed
lines, And after all thir tribulations long / See golden days,
fruitful of golden deeds (3.336-7). The sound and movement
of the Fathers voice, especially in the triumphant, lilting repetition of golden days . . . golden deeds, reciprocate with the
semantic component of the words to evoke, more eloquently
than anywhere else in Paradise Lost, the final bliss of the
Apocalypse.
At the beginning of the dialogue there is a gulf between the
voices of Father and Son; by its end, through Miltons
nuanced treatment of auditory effects, the Father and the Son

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DEATH LAST, and WITH his CAR-cass GLUT the GRAVE

(3.241, 252, 254, 259).
With the following, final, speech of the dialogue, there is a
lasting change in the Fathers voice, heard even by Empson:
the rhythm around the word humiliation [3.313] is like taking
off in an aeroplane. I had long felt that this is much the best
moment of god in the poem.40 The Father has moved from
wrath and harsh justice to loving celebration, heard in the
sustained, swelling lines, Because thou hast . . . quitted all to
save / A World from utter loss . . . because in thee / Love hath
abounded more then Glory abounds / Therefore thy Humiliation . . . (3.305-14), and in the visionary rapture of:

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ESSAYS IN CRITICISM

have approached each other and are at one. This vocal orchestration helps to carry the defence of Gods ways, so that the abstract
matter of theodicy is embodied partly in sensuous sound. Read
with the ears, the dialogue in heaven is apprehended, like everything else in the epic, as at once corporeal and incorporeal
matter, given life and meaning, animated, by Miltons shaping
of it.

NOTES
1

Citations from Paradise Lost are from John Milton, Paradise

Lost, ed. Barbara K. Lewalski (Oxford, 2007).
2
Principally Stephen M. Fallon, Milton Among the Philosophers: Poetry and Materialism in Seventeenth-Century
England (1991).
3
The appearance of the words on the page has received considerable attention, notably from Richard Bradford. See his
Miltons Graphic Poetics, in Mary Nyquist and Margaret
W. Ferguson (eds.), Re-membering Milton (1987), pp. 179-96;
Silence and Sound: Theories of Poetics from the Eighteenth
Century (1992), The Look of It: A Theory of Visual Form in
English Poetry (Cork, 1993); and Augustan Measures: Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Writings on Prosody and Metre
(Aldershot, 2002). John Hollander is aware of both the visual
and acoustic modes of Miltons verse as the eye reads the lines
on the page and the ear listens. See Vision and Resonance:
Two Senses of Poetic Form (1985), p. 96. See also Archie
Burnett, Sense variously drawn out: The Line in Paradise
Lost, Literary Imagination, 5 (2003), 69-92.
4
Diane Kelsey McColley, Poetry and Ecology in the Age of
Milton and Marvell (Aldershot, 2007), p. 119.
5
Areopagitica (1644), in The Complete Prose Works of John
Milton, ed. Don M. Wolfe et al., 8 vols. (New Haven,
1953-82), ii. 493. Quotations from Miltons prose are from
this edition, abbreviated as CPW, followed by volume and
page number.

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University of Sydney

239
William Kerrigan, The Sacred Complex: On the Psychogenesis
of Paradise Lost (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), p. 260.
7
Voice, voices, and vocal are summarised by John K. Hale as
they appear in each book of the epic. See Miltons Languages:
The Impact of Multilingualism on Style (Cambridge, 1997),
pp. 133-4.
8
The Verse, Paradise Lost, ed. Lewalski, p. 10.
9
Angela Leighton, Poetry and the Imagining Ear,
F. W. Bateson Memorial Lecture, E in C, 59 (2009), 99-113:
100.
10
The Reason of Church Government, CPW, i. 816.
11
On these lines, Donald Davie observes that the numbers
arent really something else but are the very thoughts themselves, seen under a new aspect; the placing of move, which
produces the momentary uncertainty about its grammar, ties
together thoughts and numbers in a relation far closer
than cause and effect. Syntax and Music in Paradise Lost, in
Frank Kermode (ed.), The Living Milton: Essays by Various
Hands (1960), p. 73.
12
Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum: Or a Natural History in Ten
Centuries, in The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James
Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglass Denon Heath, 14
vols. (1858-74), ii. 390, 436. Bacon writes at length on the
subject of sound in Centuries II and III of his Sylva Sylvarum
(1627); he believes that the Sense of Hearing striketh the
Spirits more immediately, than the other Senses; And more
incorporeally than the Smelling (ibid., p. 390).
13
Helen Darbishire, The Early Lives of Milton (1932), p. 33.
14
The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, ed.
William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon
(New York, 2007), p. 383.
15
Stanley Fish, Why Milton Matters; or, Against Historicism,
Milton Studies, 44 (2005), 1-12.
16
Review of English Studies, 58 (2007), 268-315.
17
Paradise Lost (2005), ed. Gordon Teskey, p. xii; Gordon
Teskey, Delirious Milton: the Fate of the Poet in Modernity
(Cambridge, Mass., 2006), pp. 49, 19; for Teskeys emphasis
on Paradise Lost as a thing made, see particularly ch. 3.
18
Teskey, Delirious Milton, p. 28.
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240
Reproduced from Pamela R. Barnett, Theodore Haak, F.R.S.
(1605-1690): The First German Translator of Paradise Lost
(The Hague, 1962), p. 189. Haak translated the first three
books of Paradise Lost under the title Das verlustigte Paradeis;
they are reproduced in Barnetts book as appendix 3.
20
Dennis Danielson, Paradise Lost by John Milton: Parallel
Prose Edition (Vancouver, 2008).
21
E. J. Dobson, Miltons Pronunciation, in Ronald David
Emma and John T. Shawcross (eds.), Language and Style in
Milton: A Symposium in Honor of the Tercentenary of
Paradise Lost (New York, 1967), p. 170.
22
The Manuscript of Miltons Paradise Lost Book 1, ed. Helen
Darbishire (Oxford, 1931), pp. 55 (note to 1.54), xxi, xxvi,
xxix, xxxvi.
23
John Creaser, A mind of most exceptional energy: Verse
Rhythm in Paradise Lost, in Nicholas McDowell and Nigel
Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Milton (Oxford,
2009), p. 463.
24
Stephen Fallon, Why Milton Is Not a Religious Writer,
public lecture, University of Queensland, 13 August 2008.
25
Teskey, Delirious Milton, p. 83.
26
The Poetical Works of John Milton, ed. Helen Darbishire, 2
vols. (Oxford, 1952), i. 5. During the same period F. T. Prince
observed that Milton shared Tassos aim of the interdependence
of sense and sound: The Italian Element in Miltons Verse
(Oxford, 1954), p. 131.
27
Leigh Hunt, The Originality of Miltons Harmonious Use of
Proper Names, in Joseph Anthony Wittreich, Jr., The Romantics on Milton (1970), p. 438.
28
Charles A. Huttar, Vallombrosa Revisited, in Mario A. Di
Cesare (ed.), Milton in Italy: Contexts, Images, Contradictions
(Binghamton, NY, 1991), pp. 96, 105-6.
29
Peter C. Herman, Destabilizing Milton: Paradise Lost and
the Poetics of Incertitude (New York, 2005), pp. 31-2.
30
The poet Robert Frost used the phrase the sound of sense to
emphasise the importance of sound in poetry. See Leighton,
Poetry and the Imagining Ear, pp. 104-6.
31
Derek Attridge, Peculiar Language: Literature as Difference
from the Renaissance to James Joyce (1988), pp. 151, 154;
19

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Attridge develops these ideas further in The Singularity of Literature (2004). Compare Diane Kelsey McColley on how words
concent together in sound and meaning: Poetry and Music in
Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1997), p. 3.
32
Beverley Sherry, Speech in Paradise Lost, Milton Studies, 8
(1975), 247-66.
33
Of Education, CPW, ii. 403. Milton coined the word
sensuous to mean working through the senses (OED 1).
34
Dennis Danielson, Miltons Good God: A Study in Literary
Theodicy (Cambridge, 1982), pp. ix, 104-19.
35
Irene Samuel, The Dialogue in Heaven: A Reconsideration of
Paradise Lost, III, 1-417, Publications of the Modern Language
Association of America, 72 (1957), 601-11; repr. in Arthur
E. Barker (ed.), Milton: Modern Essays in Criticism (1965),
pp. 233-45.
36
Isabel MacCaffrey, The Theme of Paradise Lost, Book III, in
Thomas Kranidas (ed.), New Essays on Paradise Lost (1971),
pp. 62-9.
37
Ibid., p. 71.
38
Voicing Miltons God, in John K. Hale, Milton as Multilingual: Selected Essays (Dunedin, 2005), p. 212.
39
William Empson, Miltons God (Cambridge, 1961),
pp. 119-20.
40
Ibid., p. 137.