The Miltonic moment

by J. Martin Evans

This new study focuses primarily on three of Milton's best known early poems: On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle (Comus), and Lycidas. These texts share a distinctive perceptual and cognitive structure, which Evans defines as characteristically Miltonic, embracing a single moment that is both ending and beginning. The poems communicate a profound sense of intermediacy because they seem to take place between the boundaries that separate events. The works illuminated here, which also include Samson Agonistes and Paradise Regained, are all about transition from one form to another: from paganism to Christianity, from youthful inexperience to moral maturity, and from pastoral retirement to heroic engagement.