“Deep Dark Truthful Mirror”—The Logic of Petrus Ramus and the Tragedy of Samson Agonistes

Abstract

The sixteenth-century educational reformer Petrus Ramus was known for disrupting the traditional relationship between logic and rhetoric. He removed the first two of the traditional five canons of rhetoric—invention and arrangement—and assigned them to logic. Thus, to Ramus, invention became not a means of finding arguments but rather a process of uncovering truth and finding a means of inquiry into the essence of a subject. This intervention affected educators, scientists, playwrights, and poets, most notably John Milton, whose own version of Ramus’s logic was published only a year after Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. This chronological association suggests the possibility of a connection between Milton’s understanding of invention and the distinctive nature of the tragedy of Samson. Such a connection suggests that the tragedy represents a process of invention that goes wrong, and that the apparent victory of the Danites leads to the spiritual destruction of their hero.