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The Orpheus Image in Lycidas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Caroline W. Mayerson
Caroline W. Mayerson*
Affiliation:
Tulane University
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Extract

Tillyard's interpretation of Lycidas as a tragic conflict between man's ego and his sense of finitude, resolved through a sublimation of the individual's fears and hopes in the aspirations of his group, has gained wide acceptance. Yet Tillyard, in focusing attention on the theme and its relationship to biographical data, has tended to minimize the pastoral and occasional aspects of the poem. On the other hand, the traditional over-emphasis on these aspects has long resulted in an evaluation of Lycidas as largely an allegory of college life and friendship or as a a supremely skillful exercise in a now archaic genre. Neither approach has included more than cursory consideration of Milton's imagery. This essay proposes that our understanding of Lycidas may be enriched by combining an historical and æsthetic point of view in a study of the relationship of the imagery of the poem to its other constituents. The essay will be particularly concerned with testing the hypothesis that the allusion to Orpheus in lines 56–63 is an important functional image through which Milton defined and developed his theme.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 64 , Issue 1: Issue 1 part 1 , March 1949 , pp. 189 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1949

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References

1 E. M. W. Tillyard, Milton (New York: Dial Press, 1930), pp. 80–85; The Miltonic Setting (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1938), pp. 29–42.

2 Cf. John E. Hardy, “Reconsiderations i: Lycidas”, Kenyan Review, vii (Winter, 1945), 106–107, 112.

3 I am indebted to Leonard F. Dean, both for his initial suggestion that the importance of the Orpheus image could be reinforced by reconstruction, and for his guidance and criticism of the subsequent study.

4 See W. K. C. Guthrie, Orpheus and the Greek Religion: A Study of the Orphic Movement (London: Methuen, 1935).

5 See Julius Wirl, “Orpheus in der englischen Literatur”, Wiener Beiträge zur englischen Philologie (Vienna-Leipzig, 1913), pp. 1–99.

6 The surviving writings attributed to Orpheus were an account of the Argonautic expedition and a book of hymns, both of which probably date from the second to the fourth century a.d. See Guthrie, p. 15. C. G. Osgood, in The Classical Mythology of Milton's English Poems (New York, 1900), cites the hymns as one of Milton's classic sources.

7 Ovid, Metamorphoses, x, 78–105, 143–144; xi, 1–88, trans. Frank J. Miller, Loeb Classical Library (London, 1926); Virgil, Georgics, iv, 504–527, trans. H. R. Fairclough, Loeb Classical Library (London, 1930); George Sandys, “Upon the Eleventh Booke of Ovid's Metamorphosis”, Ovid's Metamorphosis. Englished, Mythologiz'd and Represented in Figures (Oxford, 1632), pp. 387–388. The details of Orpheus' death given both in Lycidas and P.L., vii, show Milton following Ovid's account most closely.

8 Moschus, “The Lament for Bion” 18, 116–126, The Greek Bucolic Poets, trans. J. M. Edmonds, Loeb Classical Library (London, 1919), and Virgil, Eclogues, iii, 46; iv, 55–57; vi, 29–30; viii, 55–56, trans. H. R. Fairclough, Loeb Classical Library (London, 1930).

9 The Pastoral Elegy: An Anthology, ed. T. P. Harrison, Jr. (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1939), pp. 65–71 (“Eclogue, ii”).

10 Ibid., p. 83 (“Eclogue, xiv”, 11. 114–123).

11 Ibid., pp. 101–102 (“Eclogue, xi”, 11. 64–68, 73–75).

12 Ibid., pp. 128, 133 (“Eclogue, ii”, 11. 19, 129–131).

13 See W. W. Greg, Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama (London, 1906), pp. 156–163.

14 Lines 323–336, 603–616.

15 Pastoral Elegy, pp. 1–3.

16 Frazer, Golden Bough, 3d ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1935), vi, 96–99.

17 See Jessie L. Weston, Prom Ritual to Romance (Cambridge, 1920), p. 44.

18 History of the World [1614], 11th ed. (London, 1736), I, 4.

19 Notes to Song I, “Polyolbion” (1612, 1622), Works of Drayton, ed. J. W. Hebel (Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1931–41), iv, 17.

20 “Urania or the Heauenly Muse” (adapted from Du Bartas' “Uranie” [1574]), Stanza 54, Du Bartas His Diuine Weekes and Workes (London, 1621), p. 530.

21 Ovid's Metamorphosis, pp. 357, 370.

22 “Mythomystes” (1633), in Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ed. J. E. Spingarn (Oxford, 1908), i, 140–179.

23 Orpheus' first association with primitive Christianity was made because of these likenesses. See Guthrie, p. 267.

24 Described by Austin Warren in Richard Crashaw: A Study in Baroque Sensibility (Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1939), p. 72.

25 “Christ's Triumph over Death”, Stanzas 7–8, Poetical Works of Giles and Phineas Fletcher, ed. F. S. Boas (Cambridge, 1908), I, 59–60.

26 See C. W. Lemmi, The Classic Deities in Bacon: A Study in Mythological Symbolism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1933), pp. 46–47, and D. P. Harding, “Milton and the Renaissance Ovid”, Illinois Studies in Language and Literature (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1946), xxx, No. 4, pp. 31–34.

27 Scholars accept Milton's familiarity with Bacon's work and ideas. For evidence that Milton knew Sandys' Ovid intimately, see Douglas Bush, Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition in English Poetry (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1932), Ch. 14, and Harding, pp. 49–99.

28 See Works of Bacon, ed. J. Spedding et al. (New York, 1863–64) xiii, 110–113, and Ovid's Metamorphosis, pp. 354–357, 387–388.

29 Parallels between “October” and Lycidas have been recognized, but the Orpheus passage (II. 19–30) has not been specifically noted. Piers reminds Cuddye, who complains of meagre rewards, that the work of a poet is important and honorable. He restrains youthful energies and directs them to worthy ends; as a result, the “rurall routes … cleaue” to Cuddye, who enchants them as did the shepherd whose “musicks might the hellish hound did tame.” E. K.'s “Glosse” refers the allusion to Orpheus. In The Faerie Queene, iv, Canto ii, Stanza 1, Spenser cites Orpheus as one possessing the god-like powers needed to control discord.

30 Poems of Chapman, ed. P. B. Bartlett (New York: Modern Language Association, 1941), pp. 20–21, 23–24.

31 Works, iv, 74, 170, 179–180, 206.

32 Ibid., pp. 2, 116–117, 192–197.

33 Ibid., p. 17

34 Ibid., pp. 3–4, 469.

35 See Poetical Works of Milton, ed. H. J. Todd (London, 1842), iii, 339–341, 351–352, for Thomas Warton's comments on Milton's indebtedness to Drayton. No editions consulted in preparation for this essay have included mention of Drayton's allusions to Orpheus or of the fact that Orpheus is referred to by the personified Cam, who, of course, also appears in Lycidas.

36 Works, iv, 421–422, 571.

37 “Whether Day or Night is the More Excellent”, Milton's Private Correspondence and Academic Exercises, trans, and ed. P. B. and E. M. W. Tillyard (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1932), p. 60; “Of Education”, Works of Milton, ed. F. A. Patterson et al., Columbia Edition (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1931–38), iv, 284; marginal note, “Pindar's Pythian Ode, iv”, Works, xviii, 294; “Defensio Prima”, Works, vii, 167.

38 “Sixth Academic Exercise”, Private Correspondence, pp. 87–88; “Of Education”, Works, iv, 280; “L'Allegro”, ll. 145–150; “Il Penseroso”, ll. 103–108.

39 The dates for the early works are taken from Tillyard's Milton.

40 Translated by Charles Knapp, Works, i, Part I, 231.

41 Works, i, Part I, 271–273.

42 Years later, in P.L., iii, 16–21, Milton repudiated the “Orphean lyre”, proclaiming the higher inspiration of Urania. But he nevertheless described his own spiritual journey in terms of Orpheus' descent into Hades. See Bush, Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition, p. 279, for comment on Milton's attitude toward mythology in this passage.

43 Private Correspondence, p. xxxix.

44 Ibid., pp. 114, 119.

45 Gilbert Murray comments that this reworking of traditional material by poets is the “essential part of the whole process .... That is where realism comes in, and literary skill, and imagination”—Hamlet and Orestes: A Study in Traditional Types (New York, 1914), p. 26.

46 Some Versions of Pastoral (London: Chatto & Windus, 1935), pp. 11–12, 80–81.

47 The explication which follows is of course derivative to some extent and may be compared especially to Tillyard's and Hardy's analyses.

48 T. O. Mabbott, “Milton's Lycidas, ll. 164 and 183–185”, Explicator, v (Feb. 1947), No. 26, presents a convincing argument that the dolphin allusion is to Palæmon rather than to Arion. An altar-tomb was erected to Palæmon on the beach, and he was believed to have become the patron saint of mariners.