Light Denied: A Dark Miltonic Metaphor

Authors

Keywords:

John Milton, metaphor, English language, literature, light, blindness

Abstract

When he wrote perhaps his most famous sonnet, “When I consider how my light is spent,” numbered 16 or 19 depending on the edition of his published works, John Milton was blind. The poem begins with a lament, a cry of pain by an artist who can no longer see the fruits of his labor, but resolves in favor of a pious Puritan, convinced that salvation lies not in works but in faith. Before the resolution, however, the speaker accuses someone – arguably, God! – of taking away his eyesight, of “light denied.” In this study, we mined the fourteen lines of the sonnet to discover in his metaphors deeper meaning beyond the literal surface. We draw on others of Milton’s work in that process and find connections that reinforce both the technique and the beauty of the sonnet, resolving, as Milton does, the twin questions of why the calamity was delivered and “then what”? That question is emphatically answered in the last line of the sonnet, the Puritan answer, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Author Biography

Edward R. Raupp, Center for Foreign Languages, Gori State Teaching University

Edward Robert Raupp was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, and attended public schools there, graduating as valedictorian from high school and earned his Bachelor of Science degree at Carnegie Mellon University in business management and economics. He earned his Master of Business Administration at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Master of Arts in English Language and Literature at the University of Minnesota.  He served in the United States Army for twenty years, retiring as a full colonel for a career as a business executive and then as a university professor.  He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer at Gori State University in Georgia for 3½ years and co-founded The University of Georgia in Tbilisi.  He and his wife, Danna, taught for a year at a college on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, East Africa, for a year.  He is a full professor in the Faculty of Humanities at Gori State Teaching University, where he taches, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton, among others, and adjunct professor at Great Bay Community College in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  He is author of many  books and professional journal articles. Professor Raupp is founder of the Milton Society of Georgia.

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Published

2022-03-16

How to Cite

Edward R. Raupp. (2022). Light Denied: A Dark Miltonic Metaphor. Caucasus Journal of Milton Studies, 1(1), 5–11. Retrieved from https://cjojms.com/index.php/research/article/view/7

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Articles