Milton’s Poetical Thought by Maggie Kilgour (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Milton’s Poetical Thought by Maggie Kilgour Brandon Taylor Maggie Kilgour, Milton’s Poetical Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 129 pp. Maggie Kilgour’s Milton’s Poetical Thought is part of a larger series of texts that belong to Oxford’s The Literary Agenda, which, according to series editor Philip Davis, seeks to address “the importance of literature and of reading in the wider world” from the position that the literary is increasingly “dismissed or is unrecognized as a way of thinking or an arena for thought” (xi). The series aims to foster a “renewal, to start reinvigorated work into the meaning and value of literary reading for the sake of the future” (xi). Kilgour’s slim and insightful text takes up this pedagogical mission through the capacious and contentious vessel of John Milton and his poetic work, which she chronologically traces from his early poetry to his later masterpieces, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. The book is aimed at students and first introduces Milton as a student himself, young and ambitious and conflicted with his desire to satisfy his family’s, and especially his father’s, aspirations for his gifted son while also pursuing his interest in poetry. Kilgour’s foregrounding of Milton-the-student has the effect of humanizing Milton for students and also, importantly, signals the ways in which The Literary Agenda’s pedagogical program are best served by highlighting the human within the humanities. Having taught Shakespeare, Milton, Herbert, and other early modern authors and poets to undergraduate students in introductory courses, I can understand why students feel like professors are hefting an ancient leather-bound tome upon the lectern, blowing centuries-old dust off of its cover, and intoning about the wisdom of long-dead white men whose world and worldview are so alien from our own that their opinions could never have foretold of memes, TikTok dances, or the vicissitudes of ChatGPT-generated response papers. Kilgour’s work is therefore a welcome early modern intervention in the discourse on the importance of the literary and helps point toward a way of encouraging student familiarity with the literary by understanding the people—poets, artists, and authors—who create the works of literature and art that we have come to so enjoy reading and discussing. Kilgour argues that what makes poetry unique is that it is not simply a rigid system intended to deliver data; it is instead capacious and ultimately “excessive, beyond the author’s full control,” and that this latitude is liberating for readers, since Milton “allows us to have free will” (8) as active participants in his work. We are not bound by strict borders but are instead encouraged to explore and find joy in those complexities that the author, himself, may not have intended. The early portrait that Kilgour paints of Milton in the introduction is that of a lively human being inviting us to a poetic hearth, one where readers are asked to engage with ideas in a genre of writing that is filled with abundance and delight. Kilgour’s approach to poetry is cast in opposition to the wider world’s present-day utilitarianism, which “makes many think poetry is both too much hard work and a sheer luxury” (10). Having taught poetry numerous times in the last few years, I am still amazed at how often students believe that poetry is either a loose collection of fusty, moldering, and indecipherable words or a florid hymn to love that wouldn’t pass muster in a high school creative writing competition. What the study of Milton’s poetics offers, according to Kilgour, is “a world in which everything is overflowing and intertwined” (14). Milton’s poetic world is alive, [End Page 243] brimming with energy and humor and brought to life by an idiosyncratic and engaging point of view. It is why it is no small feat to humanize Milton, given the typical scale of his subject matter and the self-conscious way in which he constructed his poetic personae. Kilgour manages to do this admirably in the early stages of the book through a robust analysis of “Lycidas,” “Comus,” and Milton’s defense of his poetics...