Milton’s Comus: A Case of Temptation and the Resistance to it by (a combination of) Virtue and Grace

 

Milton’s Comus: A Case of Temptation and the Resistance to it by (a combination of) Virtue and Grace

 

 

Of all Milton’s literary works, Comus which was originally titled A Mask presented at Ludlow Castle (1634), is considered to be the most variously designated piece in terms of genre. Milton, as can be inferred from the title given by him, obviously wanted it to be primarily treated as a masque. However, it has been criticised and discerned to be a lyrical drama, a drama in the epic style, a lyric poem in the form of a drama, an allegory etc. by scholars and critics alike. For example, Dr Johnson described it as a drama (while simultaneously judging it quite harshly) and E. M. W. Tillyard in his work Milton calls it the author’s “private experiment in dramatic style”. However it is obvious that the poem lacks the characteristic traits of an ordinary drama viz. the development of character, conflict between characters and a series of constituent actions facilitating the building and resolution of suspense. On the other hand, although Comus employs the standard construction of the court masque i.e. poetic induction, two anti-masques, main masque and epilogue, it very evidently deviates in some important respects – the chief of which being the fact that the essential moment of the narrative sequence is “not the solution of a riddle, not a sudden metamorphosis or a revelation, but an act of free choice”(as said by Enid Welsford in The Court Masque). Guilherme Ferraz and Thomas H. Luxon commented that the one element that distinguishes Comus as “a complex and fascinating piece of dramatic literature” is the author’s subversion of the conventions of the genre where he formulates a Puritan reordering of the classically-rooted idea of self-governance and temperance. Indeed, Milton’s choice of setting the opening sequence out-of-doors (and in the middle of a dense and enchanted forest no less) and not at the banquet hall, along with the absence of the usual tone of flattery and complimentary subservience, substantiate the exceptional nature of the masque. Also, the overarching tendency of moralising can be seen to be a bit excessive considering that the composition was commissioned to celebrate the first visit of John Egerton, the first Earl of Bridgewater to his still quite new administrative seat at the Ludlow Castle in Shropshire, and as such was expected to most certainly include the Jonsonian “revels” which marked a kind of breaking of the fourth wall resulting in presenters and spectators alike celebrating the occasion at hand (in this case that being the much awaited visit of the rightful master of the estate). For this very reason, Herford and Simpson – both editors of Ben Jonson – have commented that although Comus is in conception “a genuine and unmistakable Masque”, “it is one in which the spirit of drama has broken free” and subsequently retains “a few unimportant traces of nominal allegiance.”

    The chief respect in which Comus differs from earlier Jonsonian models is that it gives precedence to a sense of self-governance via temperance and continence (a notion that is distinctly classical and yet qualified by a puritan treatment given by a Renaissance poet steeped deep into what E. R. Dodds called a “guilt culture”), over kingly authority which was extolled to be the seat of any and all virtue. In fact, Comus, like Milton’s three major works viz. Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, deals with the central theme of temptation and the resistance to it. In the words of Edward Dowden, Milton’s poetical works as well as his artistic contemplations centred around the “one dominant idea that the struggle for mastery between good and evil is the prime fact of life; and that a final victory of the righteous cause is assured by the existence of a divine order of the universe, which Milton knew by the name of ‘Providence.’” Indeed, Milton chose to focus solely on spiritual education in Comus and consciously abstained from paying the requisite homage to the state and other political apparatus. Whatever the reason for that be, Milton seems curiously concerned with the notion of chastity in this poem. So much so that he almost claims the Lady to be invincible in the face of the most dire of temptations – in this case, Comus who is the embodiment of debauched sensuality – solely by virtue of her chastity which seems to operate autonomously. Apart from virtue of mind and heavenly assistance, the third element that champions and ensures the Lady’s unassailability is, as the elder brother puts it, her chastity. It seems as if in this context Milton refrains from distinguishing between the heavenly virtue of chastity and the earthly state of virginity. So, the simple fact of the Lady being a virgin – untouched of mind and body – protects her from most evils in the universe of Comus. This, of course, raises the question of the particular evil that the Lady faces while wandering, haplessly lost and separated from her brothers, in the midst of a dark wood. The evil disguised as a helpful shepherd is revealed to be Comus – the dark sorcerer of the woods who, along with his motley crew “that are of purer fire”, embodies incontinence and material as well as sexual temptations. In this context, his familial connection with Circe becomes relevant as he, just like his mother, is armed with a cup and a wand to seduce hapless travellers in the woods. Like Circe, he offers his parched and famished victims refreshment, revelry and eventually, sexual enjoyment. This is the temptation that the Lady faces which constitutes the central episode of the story along with the kind of resources that enable the Lady to withstand such allurements. However, it is interesting to note, as suggested by Robert Martin Adams, that in this case, Milton inverts the gender structure of the traditional Circe story by making a male assume the role of the fatal temptress and giving the part of the ship-wrecked mariners to a lady lost in the woods. In my mind, here is where the trouble with the treatment of the story begins. Though indisputably an allegory of temptation and the virtues of temperance that are invoked against it (which Comus refers to deridingly as “lean abstinence”), it is evident that the story itself lacks in the credibility of the seduction involved. Comus, for his part, uses remarkably insignificant tactics in his attempts to “convert” the Lady as part of his realm. In fact, he doesn’t even make explicit use of the enchanting devices he has in hand – namely, the cup and the wand. Instead of offering the damning drink to the Lady when she was the least suspicious i.e. when he was in the garb of the shepherd and the Lady was already thirsty and pliable, he brings her into his palace, lets her see his troop of victims turned “ugly headed monsters” and only then, when she is fully aware of the dangers that surround her, does he try to convince her to drink from the cup. Also, he chooses not to “chain up [the Lady’s] nerves in Alabaster” by wielding his wand and instead, resorts to befuddling her vision and making her sit immobile on an anointed chair. There is, in effect, no evidence of actual and active compulsion exerted on the part of Comus over the Lady and thereby, the seduction, though hinted at as a possibility, never really comes through. There is no way that the Lady is even provided with actual  materials of temptation to fall off the wagon of chastity and temperance as such to actually make Comus’s efforts a real threat or even, to really establish the absolute virtuosity of the Lady.

   This may be due to the fact that in this case, Milton was navigating the treacherous grounds of female autonomy coupled with the expected need to keep the Lady subservient to a larger superstructure of chiefly male-driven authority. While making a point about the Lady’s self-governed chastity, Milton also makes sure not to place her in a real danger of seduction so as to avoid the implicit complexities that come with making the femme fatale a man and the hapless victim a woman – possibly because changing the dynamic doesn’t keep the piece of fiction purely a product of imagination, but rather makes it undeniably translatable in reality. And obviously, Milton had to keep it in mind that the role of the Lady would be played by the 15 year old daughter of the very Lord Egerton whose assuming of the position of administrator at the Ludlow Castle the masque was actually celebrating. He couldn’t very well go about making deliberate sexual allusions about the Lady when she was being played by teenage nobility. On a rather similar note, we might recall the modus operandi of Stoker’s Count Dracula who intended to expand his political “empire” by seducing the female partners of the men of England. In his words, he had declared, “Your girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine.” This sentiment is echoed in Comus's efforts of winning the Lady over which would have, in turn, led to greater power and influence on his part (in fact, possession of the woman's body and mind as part of a larger exercise of gaining social validation characterised most marriages of Milton's period). As has been already analysed extensively, it is evident that Stoker’s Dracula is a meticulous exercise in overthrowing the threat of the “new women” who were emerging during the late 19^th century. The female characters who displayed examples of “unbridled” sexuality that could almost jeopardize the established sexual hierarchy were presented as infected with the vampiris curse viz. Lucy and the three vampire brides of Dracula. Indeed the only woman who survived the entire narrative is Mina who was never, even for a moment, sexualised by Stoker. Ever the paragon of Victorian modesty and upholder of the “angel of the house” philosophy, she, once targeted by Dracula, even advised her husband to kill her if need be so as to prevent the Count from conquering her body and soul - “Think, dear, that there have been times when brave men have killed their wives and their womenkind, to keep them from falling into the hands of the enemy”. This is a classic example of female indoctrination where they themselves support the link between male supremacy and violence against women. However, Stoker sugarcoats this suggestion by prizing the child-like innocence and gentleness of Mina’s countenance – thereby presenting her as only useful as a calming and motivating factor for the band of men fighting the good fight of eliminating the Count. Milton, of course, does not seem to have a similar agenda – he merely wants to sidestep the dangers of presenting a female character possessing complete control of her sexuality as well as placing her in a situation of being subject to a credible seduction while writing during the 17^th century for a bunch of notoriously conservative nobility (particularly a family who was intent on clearing their name from certain unpleasant past occurrences viz. the incident with the Earl of Castlehaven). Again, the masque serves as a heavy reminder of a cultural counterpart – namely, the story of Kiranmala as presented in Thakurmar Jhuli by Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumder. The story, like the masque, also consists of one sister and two brothers and can also be potentially classified as a tale of temptation and the resistance to it. In the story, while the two brothers are tempted by the wiles and charms of the demon-folk while on a quest to bring back certain invaluable treasures back home, Kiranmala – the sister – succeeds in earning the treasures as well as rescuing her brothers simply due to the fact that she resists the allure of the call of the demons. In fact, from amongst the vast compendium of Bengali folktales, Kiranmala can be presented as one of the very few champions of female autonomy and even, superiority over the male counterparts. Such tales of resistance towards temptation leading to wisdom are abounding in Indian myths and legends – one other prominent example is the “Banaparba” of the Mahabharat where all the Pandavas except Yudhishtir fall victim to the allure of an enchanted lake and become lifeless only to be saved by Yudhishtir’s temperance and presence of mind.

   Again, this instance of reversing the gender dynamic becomes significant as it is very easy for the men to quash the threat of a deadly vixen by killing her off or neutralising her effectively otherwise. It is considered heroic even in most cultures viz. the mutilation of Surpanakha in the Ramayana. But, due to the inversion of the power structure, such action won’t be deemed acceptable when done by a woman. So, Milton had to present the lady as powerful enough to resist the (frankly feeble) temptation but not as powerful so as to effectively take charge of the situation without heavenly assistance. She is, in effect, placed between personal autonomy and heavenly authority (as proposed by A. S. P. Woodhouse’s “The Argument of Milton’s Comus” where he examined the relationship in the masque between “virtue” and “grace”). Though she rejects Comus’s advances, she has to wait to be rescued by her brothers who, in turn, are protected by the heavenly herb – haemony. Then also, the rescue remains incomplete as the brothers act without complete knowledge of Comus’s magical abilities. Finally, the situation is resolved by not a human agent – male or female – but by a water nymph bestowed with heavenly authority to assist virtuous maidens in need. So, in other words, though the Lady’s virginity protects her to some extent, her rescue is only effected by heavenly intervention – but also, such intervention is conditional on the basis of the virginity in the first place. This is indeed, a unique position to find one’s self in, and this can be linked back to Milton’s personal (and constantly evolving) idea of divinity. Influenced heavily by the Dutch theologian Arminius about the Reform canon, Milton had adopted a synergistic theory where he believed or at least wanted to believe that God endowed us with certain abilities to perform positive actions in increments based on our own virtue and faith without any mediation from the Church. While the Lutheran and Calvinist philosophies of his time had maintained the externality of the Reform canon by taking away human agency more or less altogether and attributing grace and salvation to God’s own discretion, Milton had been enough of a humanist to take into account human restorative abilities and a desire for salvation. This might be the reason that he presented the Lady as capable of determining the direction of her destiny, at least at the onset, owing to her personal abilities, while also making sure that the fulfillment of that destiny remains impossible without express sponsoring on the part of heavenly authorities.

   In conclusion, I would like to point out, as all other critics have, that Comus presents a clear distinction between Apollonian control and Dionysian rebellion making the non-Calvinist question of choice on the part of the Lady (if we take into account her own nature and the circumstances) ridiculously easy. Making the right choice and thereby effecting a positive ethical action by rejecting a certain kind of morally dubious pleasure, in this case, appear to be too absolute and undifferentiated to be satisfiable. It certainly anticipates the far more fleshed out exercise in temptation and the resistance to it in Paradise Regained. One explanation for this can be traced to the fact that in Paradise Regained, both the contending parties transcend the physical world and are, more importantly, male. That is why Milton could take the liberty of showing the hero in an unfair light. The moment you introduce a female character in the equation, she has to be presented unequivocally as a figure of moral integrity (specifically when the equation consists of a man and a woman - things happen to get much more interestingly ambiguous when two women are involved, for example - Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla and Coleridge's Christabel). Otherwise, she tends to be automatically relegated to the role of the deadly vixen or the fallen woman – at least in the established literary canon of contemporary times. This can be further illustrated by the bad press that the figure of Eve gets in the Bible canon for falling victim to Lucifer’s persuasive charm and by popular consensus, bringing Adam down with her. Milton, in Paradise Lost, had to work hard to portray Eve as giving in to Satan’s suggestion not because of a pre-existing lack or flaw in her character but because of a different kind of intelligence instigating a natural desire for knowledge (which Stanley Fish calls the principal motivator of temptation), with subtle hints towards a divine foreknowledge, if not predestination. Whatever the case may be, Comus remains an enduring work of Miltonic imagination which while tracing the author’s personal literary and spiritual journey, simultaneously challenged the erstwhile conventions of the established Jonsonian masques.

Bibliography:

·         Milton, John. Complete Shorter Poems. Ed. Revard P., Stella. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2009.

·         https://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/comus/intro/text.shtml. "Comus: Introduction", October 16, 2014.

·         Adams, Martin Robert. "Reading Comus". Modern Philology (JSTOR article). Vol. 51, No. 1, (Aug, 1953): pp. 18-32. The University of Chicago Press: http://www.jstor.org/stable/434894.

·         Major M., John. "Comus and the Tempest". Shakespeare Quarterly (JSTOR article). Vol. 10, No. 21, (Spring, 1959): pp. 177-183. Folger Shakespeare Library: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2866924.

·         Orgel, Stephen. "The Case for Comus". Representations (JSTOR article). Vol. 81, No. 1, (Winter, 2003): pp. 31-45. University of California Press:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/rep.2003.81.1.31.

·         Stoker, Bram. Dracula. London: Penguin Group, 1994.

Mayurakshi Sen

PG II

Roll No. : 33

Representation of death in Milton's death poems

Representation of death in Milton’s death poems

SANGNA MANDAL

PG I    ROLL-28

 Death was a long tradition of memorialising through poetry, which became a form of remembrance.  One of the main causes for the spread of the theme of death was the effect of the Black Death. The dance of death known as Danse Macabre in French was an artistic genre of late medieval allegory on the universality of death.  The dance of death unites all people from different strata of life. Dance of death consist personified death summoning representatives from all walks of life to dance along the grave, typically pope, king, child and labourer. They were produced to remind people about the fragility of life. The omnipresent possibility of death increased the religious desire for penitence but it also evoked a hysterical desire for amusement while still possible the last dance for cold comfort. The Danse Macabre combines both desires: in many ways similar to the medieval mystery plays, the dance-with-death allegory was originally a didactic dialogue poem to remind people of the inevitability of death and to advise them strongly to be prepared at all times for death.

A Danse Macabre painting may show a round dance headed by Death or a chain of alternating dead and live dancers. From the highest ranks of the mediaeval hierarchy (usually pope and emperor) descending to its lowest (beggar, peasant, and child), each mortal's hand is taken by a skeleton or an extremely decayed body. The painting presented the dead dancers as very lively and agile, making the impression that they were actually dancing, whereas their living dancing partners looked clumsy and passive. The apparent class distinction in almost all of these paintings is completely neutralized by Death as the ultimate equalizer, so that a socio critical element is subtly inherent to the whole genre Milton’s death poems had many similarities with the dance of death. Milton had witnessed the death of many family members. Therefore young Milton took up the theme of death at the initial stage of his life. Here in this following discussion I intend to discuss how death has been personified and represented through various symbols in his poetry.

An epitaph on the marchioness of Winchester

This poem exploits the paradoxes of birth and death, flowering and untimely plucking. Death offers a scope for poetic lamentation. The marchioness of noble birth died at the age of 23 years. The poem opens with formal dignity, pointing with something like quiet pride to the “rich” tomb and emphasizing the lady’s rank. Her “high birth” could not save her from death. Indeed her “graces sweet” actually hastened her death.  For her “high birth” and her own “graces” and love brought with it death: she died in childbirth. The god of marriage was summoned too hastily, it is suggested, to have well lighted his torch, for in the very garland which he brought-

“Ye might discern a Cipress bud” - the emblem of death. The hymen therefore dressed in the gown of death, came to their marriage to curse the newly wedded couple.  During childbirth, Atropos came instead of Lucina, the Roman goddess of childbirth and cut the threads of lives of both the mother and her child. The young mother, so soon to enter the tomb herself, became a living tomb for her child.  Death is personified   as “unheedy swain”, intending to crop the blossom, has “pluck’t up” the plant itself. But the drooping of the uprooted plant is compared to the languishing of a human being. She became a tender and beautifully doomed flower. The “pearls of dews” that she wore, symbols of youth and morning freshness, become tears which presage her death. The last lines of the poem turn from the womb to the realms of light where the lady now is. She sits next to Rachael, the mother of joseph, who like her died in childbed. In this region of celestial glory, the lady was no longer a marchioness, but a queen. Thus the lady is linked with the “fair Syrian shepherdess” by the manner of their deaths, and is seated next to her in the ranks of the saints. Therefore Milton developed for himself a kind of poem in which wit is not absent but is kept submerged and implicit, rather than dominant. 

On the death of a fair infant

There was good authority among classical poets Milton knew for letting earth rest gently upon the fragile dust beneath a mood reflected by Ben Johnson in his lines on his dead daughter –

“This grave partakes the fleshy birth

Which cover lightly, gentle earth”

“On the death of a fair infant” also exhibits the metaphysical qualities of death. According to Milton’s nephew Edward Philips, the poem was occasioned by the death of Milton‘s niece, the infant daughter of his sister Anne Philips. Milton here employs a metaphysical paradox and simultaneously depicts child beauty and its decay, corruption and immortality. Milton here poses to demonstrate the dual nature of death. He mainly focuses on the enigmatic power of death. In Milton’s elegy, the power proves more effective as it eases the pain which inevitably results from the knowledge that the innocent child’s body is decomposing in the grave. Death here becomes cohesive, harmonising force. The ceremonious formality of the elaborate mythology is lightened somewhat by the conceit Milton employed in the 1st four stanzas: the little flower was so lovely that winter was tempted to kiss her rosy cheeks, a conceit which might have been charming if the young versifier had not felt it necessary to develop it at too much length through the legends of Aquilo and Orythia, Apollo and Hyacinth. Death is personified as the Bleak Winters which cease the life of the infant and dry the fairest flower into a lifeless one. The death loses its paradoxical image and is depicted as an instrument of beatitude. The ceremonial, trapping, framing and staging of death was important in renaissance culture. Death is an inevitable and inseparable part of truth and mortal life. Milton vitiates the effect where he says that the child’s life is imagined as an impact of cosmic disorder and her death is considered as an act of god where he is able to restore her position which is appropriate to her nature. The images of womb and tomb are juxtaposed in this poem. The womb was a grave in which the child had its prenatal sleep and the tomb symbolises that the child had been laid to an eternal sleep. Therefore death is also personified as sleep which fell upon the infant and drew away the physical soul from it. The poem ends with a hope where the poet advices the young mother to curb her sorrows as the offspring was a mistake but she can be blessed with another child. Milton depicts the cycle of life which will ‘flie back with speed’ and ‘set the hearts of men on fire’.

Louis Schwartz examines a much neglected aspect of Milton’s authorial and biographical persona, his unusual attention to female suffering in childbirth and its disastrous consequences. In “Milton and Maternal Mortality”, Schwartz shows Milton’s responses to pregnancy and maternal death in his early and late poems. Death has been given a still birth imagery in “On the death of a fair infant”. His chapter on “An epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester” places an apparently unsustainable burden of blame on her husband. That approach is especially unsettling since Milton is not blamed despite of sharing the same husbandly fate. Similarly strained assumptions prove problematic in the next section discussion of sonnet 23, which gives a little resumed ‘romance’ makes it primary referent  Mary Powell.

On the Hobson poems

Milton in the two poems turns most of the jests on the fact that Hobson died while his weekly trips to London had been temporarily stopped by the plague. In the first poem, which is the form of an epitaph, death has broken his girth and thrown him off his horse or else mired him in a slough. Hobson has kept upon the road so continuously that, had it not been for the enforced vacation, death would hardly have caught him at all. Finding him so long at home, death concludes that he has come to the end of his journey, and like the servant at an inn, pulls off his boots and takes away the light.

The second poem, “another on the same” abandons the mock epitaph in favour of a succession of paradoxes and puns. The constant movement of the humble carrier is compared to the celestial bodies of the spheres, the substance of which, according to Aristotle, is indestructible so long as their movement continues. Death is modelled as time which gave long vacation i.e. cessation to the life of Hobson. Milton constantly puns on time. Death has also been presented as ‘carrier’ carried away the ‘leisure’ of Hobson. Leisure which is health giving to others brings death to him- the death who apparently takes the charge of leisure carried away the life of him. Thus, there is a constant image of reversal and paradoxes in this poem. In the Hobson poems he gives his wit a more pointed, epigrammatic form than it takes in such a poem as “On Shakespeare”.

On time

The poem begins in an almost taunting tone: time, the slow, the inexorable, is urged to hurry. Its hours are “leaden stepping” and their speed is but that of the clock weights. With line 4, the image shifts from that of a race to that of feeding. Time is urged to glut itself, for he can stuff into his maw only what is valueless. Time is destroying itself. Time’s maw is in reality its tomb and time, in its greed and envy, is actually devouring itself. “Mortal dross” suggests that time is really a scavenger, removing the corruption of death. Milton came to write in “Paradise Lost”, he represented death and sin as scavengers.

The poem closes, as it began, by addressing time directly. From the vantage point of eternity, “attired with stars”, time is looked down to triumph over death. Death’s association with time has been implied in the phrase “mortal dross” and in reference to eternity. Chance must shut out from the world of eternity because eternity is a realm of perfectly harmonious order. The mention of stars gives a concrete image for this conception. The celestial bodies were unchanged and their movements were perfectly regulated. By them, mortal men measured time, but the planets and stars themselves were above the realm of time.

On Shakespeare

Ben Jonson’s “to the memory of my beloved, the author, Mr William Shakespeare’ is an epigram in heroic couplets. Milton’s basic figure is used by Jonson: thou art a monument without a tomb, but Milton did not necessarily borrow it from Jonson. Both were using one of the most familiar commonplaces of literary tribute, never more succinctly phrased than by Horace: “exegi monumentum aere perennius” (I have built a monument more lasting than bronze)

Shakespeare, says Milton, needs no monument of stone, no pyramid, to preserve his “reliques”. His works are his monument. The sepulchre he had raised himself so transcends any of marble “that kings for such a tomb would wish to die”.

Milton speaks of Shakespeare as a poet by “nature” whose “easy numbers flow” “to the shame of slow endeavouring art”. The “sepulchre”, “monument”, “marble” invoked the ceremony of death. In L’Allegro too Milton’s passing tribute is to “sweetest Shakespeare, fancy’s child” who marbles his native woodnotes wild. Here he is obviously thinking of the romantic comedies and of Jonson’s “learned sock”. Again in paradise lost Shakespearean lines echo in ears and spring to his lips in paraphrase. Despite of his tribute to the romances the lines he paraphrased were from the tragedies by which he had been deeply moved.

Lycidas

The elegy is a “mournful, melancholic” poem especially a funeral song of the lament for dead. It was a specific genre for lament and commemoration.

Milton’s pastoral  monody ‘Lycidas’ records a moment in history--- 1637 – when a young pastor poet and learned college friend, Edward king, met an untimely death by drowning, and when archbishop laud was imposing an oppressive programme of censorship and ecclesiastical reform on England. Lycidas begins with a shaking, the shattering of the poet’s laurel crown, as well as shaking of the religious and national hopes of England: ‘yet once more, o ye laurels and once more/ ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere’. Included within the personal crisis, the necessity of a young poet taking on a poetic task that he feels unready to shoulder, to compose a song to lament Lycidas, ‘dead ere his prime’ is also the shadow of national crisis. .

At the beginning of the introduction to Milton’s monody on the death by drowning imagery foreshadows the poet‘s thematic concerns in the three major sections of the poem. In the first major section of the elegy, Milton laments the loss of king in his capacity as a budding poet who but for his untimely death might one day have earned the “laurels” symbolic of poetic success. The second section mourns the young man’s death because he had been a promising Christian pastor, as theologically learned as he was virtuous and hence potentially worthy of an “ivy” chaplet – an ancient symbol of great learning. In the 3rd segment, Milton laments that death has prevented king from achieving fulfilment in human love, a theme prefigured in the poet’s intention to crush the dark leaves of “myrtles” – the shrub sacred to Venus. All these flowers mentioned have a long tradition of literary usage- either in the celebrations of love especially during the springtime or in the lamentation over the death one who had been greatly loved.

Death is represented as an animate being who plucked the untimely “berries” with its forced fingers thereby resulting in the shattering of “leaves before the mellowing year”. This image evokes a sense of strain and awkwardness that poet does something against his better judgement. The whole nature mourns at the sudden death of the young poet. The death has resulted in untimely plucking of the young poet’s talents.

The image of death is also presented through the figure of Atropos. In Greek mythology, Atropos was one of the three Moirae, the fates, the female deities who supervised fate rather than determine it. Atropos was known as inevitable and cut the thread of life with the “abhorred shears”. She worked along with Clotho, who spun the thread and Lacheis, who measured the length. They were the daughters of Zeus and Themis (the goddess of order). The fury and fate are blended into the composite image of death-

 Fame is the spur that the clear° spirit doth raise

(That last infirmity of Noble mind)

To scorn delights, and live laborious days;

But the fair Guerdon° when we hope to find, reward

And think to burst out into sudden blaze,

Comes the blind Fury with th’abhorred shears,

And slits° the thin-spun life

Therefore death here is found in the figures of fate and fury and it is the death that spun the lifespan of man through its spear.

Finally the image of hyacinth described in the line “like to that sanguine flower inscribed with woe” is also related to death and resurrection. Hyacinth was a tutelary deity of one of the principal Spartan festivals- the Hyacinthia- held in every summer. It is comprised of three days- mourning for the death of the divine hero on first day and celebrating his rebirth on the next two days as Apollo Hyakinthios. Hyacinth flower is also red with the blood of Adonis, who was gored to death by a wild boar. Also Apollo’s discus was responsible for slaying Hyacinth. A twist in the tale makes the wind god Zephyrus responsible in the death of Hyacinth. Her beauty caused a feud between Apollo and Zephyrus. Zephyrus blew Apollo‘s discuss off course so as to injure and kill Hyacinth.The premature death of Hyacinth is equated with untimely death of Lycidas.

Milton in Lycidas is not lamenting king as a person; he is lamenting the young poet; and the young poet is, because of the very roots of the tradition of the pastoral elegy, the dying gods and the dying gods has conquered death. It is important for instance that Orpheus comes in at a key point of the poem. Orpheus is the type of all poets. But he is also a kind of pre figuration of Christ. Like Christ he descends into hell and comes out again; but where Christ harrows hell, Orpheus loses Eurydice at the last moment. Like Christ as the Logos, Orpheus harmonises natural world with his music. Like Christ, he is cruelly sacrificed, but unlike Christ, he has n resurrection. The muse who bore him cannot bring him back to life again, and the muse is not only ‘golden haired calliope’, she is ‘universal nature’. Nature gives life but cannot conquer death.

Lycidas, being a pastoral elegy, is an attempt to deal with the oblivion faced by man through death. It is all about the duty of the apollonian poet (Milton) to make a stand against the Dionysian disorder of human life and experience. Memory dwells in the dark recesses of the mind, and experience itself is chaotic in nature. The poetic expression of these entities involves imposing order and decorum on them, which is essentially, an Apollonian act. Yet, a poet could never be bereft of poetic madness, de furore poeticus – so felt the great literary proponents of antiquity, such as Homer and Theocritus. This ‘madness’ was a divine frenzy, a state of transcendent ecstasy. Ancient Greek thought equated the creation of art with ritual, religion and substance induced ecstasy; the ritual or Dionysian madness was undifferentiated from its poetic counterpart.

The poet is torn between Apollonian and Dionysian elements, and such is undoubtedly the case with life too. This created a great anxiety in Milton, which found expression in his treatment of the poet as an Orphic figure, in constant danger of being torn apart by Maenads- practitioners of the Bacchic orgy. In Lycidas, Milton mentions Orpheus, son of the muse calliope, the archetype of the inspired poet. He had founded cults to both Apollo and Dionysus, honouring the two inevitable patrons of the poet. Though he had founded the Dionysian mysteries, he used to venerate Apollo, the sun god as the greatest among gods. Eratosthenes, in a variant account of Orpheus‘s death, says that when he was worshipping the sun on Mount Pangaeum ,one morning, the offended Dionysus unleashed his “rout that made the hideous roar” and had him dismembered.

Milton thus noticed that in this world, action is precarious, the good die young, and the wicked often prosper. This capricious programme of fate becomes the menace of Dionysian disorder and dissolution to the poet. Through poetry, and its Apollonian brilliance then, Milton tries to keep alive memory of the virtuous Edward King, both in man’s mind, and in a deified afterlife.

Therefore Milton employs various metaphysical elements through his representation of death. He also justifies his use of paradoxes in his other death poems. Lycidas was the last poem where Milton was able to fuse Christian and pagan imagery. The flower catalogues that are used in his death poems, are associated with ideas of surviving fame, memorial tribute and the possibility of resurrection. Thus Milton uses the imagery of the “dance of death” in his death poems to represent and personalise death.

“Darkness Visible”: The Metamorphosis of Light and Darkness in Milton’s Comus

An unnatural light: engraving by John Baptist de Medina, 1688.

"Om Asato Maa Sad-Gamaya |
Tamaso Maa Jyotir-Gamaya |
Mrtyor-Maa Amrtam Gamaya |
Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih ||"

(Lead us from Unreality to the Reality
Lead us from the Darkness to the Light
Lead us from the Fear of Death to the Knowledge of Immortality.
Om Peace, Peace, Peace.)

The Shanti mantra or peace hymn from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (1.3.28) illustrates the Miltonic quest for illumination as essential for a spiritual and constructive metamorphosis – an image that is carried on right from his only masque Comus to his penning of Paradise Lost. Book III of Paradise Lost begins with an invocation to the Muse as “Hail, holy light, offspring of Heaven firstborn”, something that Michael Fixler notes as “that attribute of the divine power actually communicated as illuminative understanding”. This deviation from the traditional use of the Light and Darkness imagery only as that of the ancient and eternal divide between Good and Evil however is not pertinent to Paradise Lost alone, and can be traced right back to Comus where Milton refuses to let Darkness represent just the evil and Light just the good.

Thus when he invokes the Muse in Book I of Paradise Lost (What in me is dark/ Illumine… [22 – 23]), it is evident without a shred of doubt that what the poet claims for is absolute mental clarity from the darkness of ignorance obscuring his soul, and not necessarily a deliverance from evil. Both the evil and the worship or reverence of everything evil and its dichotomy with the good is on an apparent level placed in terms of the light and darkness symbology however. The “tell-tale Sun”, the “nice morn”, the malicious deprecation in the ‘babbling Eastern Scout’, all demote Light, the “first of things” (as Milton calls it in Paradise Lost [7.244]) to the only role Comus sees divinity as playing – that of a censor (“ ‘Tis only daylight that makes sin” [126]).

Rosemond Tuve in his 1962 essay “The Symbol of Light in Comus” points out that “First and simplest, this masque (like a dozen others) uses the ancient enmity between Jove and Night, physical darkness being used as symbolic of radical moral evil and protectress of its exponents.” Right from the dragon womb of Stygian darkness, the dark veiled Cotyotto to the ebony chariot of Hecate – the darkness has been associated with a certain moral, psychic and spiritual abyss.

The Guardians that the Lady calls upon and the Attendant spirit however, have been depicted in overtly illuminated terms and images.

“O welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope,

Thou hovering angel girt with golden wings,

And thou unblemished form of Chastity!” (Comus, 213 -215)

The Lady herself, coupled with the Attending spirit and the Guardians are imaged in words suggesting light, but the third (“And thou unblemished form of Chastity!/ I see ye visibly”) she sees literally with her physical eyes, as she does the Moon which comes into view from behind the “sable cloud”. While one would traditionally expect these free associated images with divine providence and protection, it is proved to be an exercise in futility as the Lady still falls under the spell of Comus and is taken to his palace.

Comus, the titular anti-Divine and pro villainous force of the masque nonetheless, is never associated with the image of night or darkness as one would expect. As a force of evil, his palace however is stately and not the Stygian cave of lore. It is to be noted here conversely, that Milton’s Comus is the son of Bacchus and Circe – essentially a post-classical invention. In Greek mythology, Comus is the god of festivity, revels and nocturnal dalliances, a son and a cup-bearer of the god Bacchus, and represents anarchy and chaos. Unlike the purely carnal Pan or purely intoxicated Dionysius, Comus was a god of excess. Milton describes him as the grandson of the physical embodiment of light itself, having designated Circe as his mother (“Who knows not Circe, / The daughter of the Sun [50-51]) . The image of Night or Darkness is thus never directly used for what is the most evil force of this masque. Instead, the woods are referred to as “dungeon of innumerous boughs”, “drear”, “black shade”, ominous”, and even “dun”. Though the Attendant spirit refers to this source of darkness and everything dim in a pejorative sense, there is never a clear indication of darkness as evil, unlike Light as good. Like the woods however, the darkness is certainly a shelter from the forces of light – a breeding ground of debauchery which according to Comus, is labeled as Sin by the daylight itself. Rosemond Tuve, here notes that even the Lady believes “that even ‘all things ill’are but as unwilling officers that inescapably do the bidding of ‘Him, the Supreme good’. When she sings to wake Echo, the irony of Comus’s appearance in answer plays again on these strings of natural, supernatural, unnatural, and we take in complex notions of the relations between them long before any such are stated.”

But not only is there plentiful imagery of light in the speeches of Comus himself, there is no clear indication that night itself is evil either. Whether there is a clear division here between Darkness and Night as between Chaos and Night of Paradise Lost, it is however unclear. The Lady herself does not seem to consider Night as the embodiment of evil, and there is an indication that greater darkness can darken the “dim” shade of Night. She calls the night “thievish” because an unnatural “single darkness”, “envious”, had unseated the starlit night in which an ally of nature itself would give “due light” to the lost, misled and the lonely:

Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end,

In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars

That Nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps

With everlasting oil, to give due light

To the misled and lonely travailler? (Comus, 195-199)

The “sable cloud” that Comus uses in the conjuration of Hecate, becomes the Lady’s aid in turn:

 

Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud

Turn forth her silver lining on the night?

I did not err: there does a sable cloud

Turn forth her silver lining on the night,

And casts a gleam over this tufted grove.

(Comus, 221-225)

The irony in the masque however stands in the invocation and references to Light itself, and not Night or Darkness. While in the generally established hierarchy of theology, Light, because of its associations with God and the good, is a redemptive and protective agency, in Comus, its symbolism is slightly more ambiguous:

                                                  

"He that has light within his own clear breast

May sit i’ the centre, and enjoy bright day:

But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts

Benighted walks under the mid-day sun;

Himself is his own dungeon." (Comus, 385- 389)

The Elder Brother’s speech here, is applicable both for Comus and the Lady herself. While Comus perfectly embodies the “he” with the “dark soul” and “foul thoughts” who “walks under the mid-day sun”, he is in no self created dungeon. The dungeon here is more of the Lady’s who, in spite of the departure of Comus, is unable to break free of the paralytic shackle with the “light” of her own virtue in her “clear breast” alone. If the mind-body dichotomy of Comus and the lady is accepted, it is questionable as to how far the virtuous mind of the Lady is truly free of the limitations of the more physical Comus. Though slated as the power of Virtue itself, the Lady is unable to enjoy the “bright day” and is beguiled and abducted by Comus nonetheless.

Another glaring instance of Light shining with this irony is the usage of the word “glistering” – once in the stage directions associated with Comus, and once by the Lady.  The appearance of Comus on stage with his ‘Monsters’ in a Bacchic and almost Dionysian frenzy is marked by the word “glistering” in reference to their apparel:

“COMUS enters with a charming-rod in one hand, his glass in the other; with him a rout of Monsters, headed like sundry sorts of wild beasts, but otherwise like men and women, their apparel glistering. They come in making a riotous and unruly noise, with torches in their hands”

The very same word is again used by the Lady while calling in for Divine protection from the darkness surrounding her:

That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill

Are but as slavish officers of vengeance,

Would send a glistering guardian, if need were,

To keep my life and honour unassailed”(Comus, 217 – 220)

If her Guardians (Hope, Faith and Chastity) are indeed glistering, so are the Monsters of Comus. If nothing, this deliberate usage of the term for both the traditional elements of the Light and Dark only serves to lessen the dividing line between the two.

Having presented the argument, I am of the opinion that instead of clear cut dividing lines between light and dark, good and evil, Milton aims to show a subtler link between the two – one of Metamorphosis and an essential duality. Like Good and evil, light and darkness are the two sides of the same coin. In keeping with the Greek paradox of the blind seer, Milton’s use of darkness was never negative – but as an agent essential for the functioning of light, and he does refer to Night as the “eldest of things” and light as the “first of things” in Paradise Lost. If the Lady represents the spiritual soul of the being, Comus is the physical existence of it – and one cannot exist without the other. Even with the departure of Comus, the Lady is bound to the chair in a very physical sense. While Milton was not blind at the time he was composing the masque, it is not improbable that he did consider darkness to be just a veil of sorts, that has to be illuminated by the poet-prophet with ‘aletheia’. Like ignorance giving way to wisdom and blindness to insight, the use of darkness is Comus is but a precursor to the Light and is not laden with any direct association to evil in any way. Milton considers light and vision in ways that are not purely physical. Instead, he expresses to his reader the need to understand light and vision as phenomena that are also spiritual and intellectual, rather than merely physical. There is no strict adherence to the Judeo-Christian traditions of darkness as solely “far remov'd from God and light of Heav'n" [Paradise Lost, I.73].Neither have any well defined boundaries, and just as Light is susceptible to darkness, so is the Darkness vulnerable to light. The encompassing metaphors in the terminology of Light and Darkness in Comus is thus in the spirit of pastoral imagery and theatrical devices alone and not associated with any moral or theological elements of the good or the bad only.  

REFERENCES:

Milton, John. Comus, a Masque. Project Gutenberg. Web. September 3, 2014.

Fixler, Michael. “Plato’s Four Furors and the Real Structure of Paradise Lost.”PMLA.92.5 (1977): 952-962.JSTOR.Web. September 3, 2014.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2005.Print.

Tuve, Rosemond. The Symbol of Light in Comus (1962). Milton: Comus and Samson Agonistes Casebook. Macmillan. 1975. Print.

SANCHALI GHOSH
PG II
ROLL - 08

“The labour of my thoughts”: The Mind-Body Debate in John Milton’s Comus.

Lysippus:  Strato, thou hast some skill in poetry;

                 What thinkest thou of the Masque? Will it be well?

Strato:      As well as Masque can be.

Lysippus:  As Masque can be?

Strato:      Yes.

                 They must commend their king, and speak in praise

                 Of the assembly, - bless the bride and bridegroom

                 In person of some god. They’re tyed to rules

                 Of flattery.

                                                                       

--Maid’s Tragedy (Act I, Sc. I),                      Beaumont and Fletcher.

The masque as a literary form is not one that most people hold in high esteem. Strato succinctly points out the formal limitations that the masque as a genre is inherently restricted with and thus losing out in terms of respectability. Warton in his History of Poetry dismisses the masque as a mere “branch of the elder drama.” The masque as a genre draws upon varied sources and diverse traditions including those of the Morality plays and pastoral poetry for its sustenance in the midst of other genres that had overtaken it in its growth in history. Enid Welsford in her work The Court Masque however brings up one of the central deviations that Comus has in relation to the typical court masque. For her, the typical court masque “is a dramatised dance, [but] Comus is a dramatised debate”, since “the hinge....on which Comus turns is not the solution of a riddle, not a sudden metamorphosis or revelation, but an act of free choice.” It is for this reason that she thinks Comus is closer to moral dramas like Nabbes’ Microcosmus and Shirley’s Honoria and Mammon. In this paper I will try to focus on the arguments of both Comus and the Lady to figure out whether the views that they represent can be acceptable and wholly applicable to men of all times. Moreover, I shall focus on how Milton’s masque, and the ensuing debate of the protagonists, transcends the simple binaries of right and wrong, good and evil that characterise the genre called the court masque.

Milton’s handling of the genre of the masque has given rise to a plethora of interpretations and comments. Perhaps, these subtle changes in the genre of the masque by Milton are the reason for Robert M. Adams’ comment that Milton’s Comus is “overread” to a great extent. The traditional interpretation of the poem is about the triumph of Virtue, represented by the Lady over Vice symbolised by Comus in the literary work that still evokes interest in the academic circles when other works of the period had either been relegated to the borders of oblivion or lost because of time. A typical philosophical interpretation of the masque examines it as war between reason and passion, as a conflict of the mind and the flesh. The poem is viewed as the victory of the human mind and will over the body or the inferiority of the flesh. The masque in a sense anticipates Cartesian Mind-Body dualism. Descartes in his Meditations on First Philosophy is of the view that the mind is superior to the body. The body and all the external sensory perceptions are deceptive and cannot be relied upon. Milton too engages in a similar debate of sorts, pitting the Lady and Comus against one another in an attempt to portray the superiority of the human mind and will over the desires of the body.

A great deal of the action of the masque takes place in the forest. In Arthurian romances, the forest plays a two-fold role. It can be seen as the binary opposite of civilized society, a place where hideous creatures, sorcerers, and witches tempt the “forlorn and wandering passenger.” It is also a place for the knight errant to test his prowess in battle. But more importantly, the forest becomes a region of the mind where one can construct fantasies. The setting does not need to be fantastic but merely allows for a place where things might happen which might be considered absurd and unreal in daily life. In Comus, therefore, the forest becomes a battleground of sorts for the verbal duel between Comus and the Lady. It is the place where Comus(representative of the desires of the physical body) and the Lady( representative of the mind) can have their ideological clash to decide who comes out as the winner. However Milton’s deviation from a traditional masque in the poem is his emphasis on the grey area that lies between both right and wrong, and the idea of good and evil. From the outset Milton makes us realize that Comus and the Lady are placed at extreme and untenable positions. Milton through his masque might also be questioning the rightness of these extreme ideological stands that have been taken by these characters in the poem.

The transformation myth employed in the poem is an old one and can be found in literature of all ages. Homer’s Odyssey is the primary source for the Circe motif that Milton employs. The transformation theme particularly pertinent to the text is that of the transformation of the head of a man with that of an animal and can also be found in works like Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and more recently in Thomas Mann’s Transposed Heads and Girish Karnad’s play Hayavadana. The Circe motif of transformation however is essential to the masque. The Mind-Body debate is presented through this motif. Comus in the masque is the son of Bacchus and Circe. Milton, through the character of Comus, is presenting to the reader the representative of the Body in the ideological battle with the mind. Milton’s Comus embodies a view that can be found in Thomas Mann’s Transposed Heads. Mann retells the story from an ancient collection of short stories in Sanskrit called Kathasaritasagara in which he ridicules the mechanical conception of life which differentiates between the body and the mind. He mocks the philosophy which holds the head superior to the body. The human body, Mann argues, is a fit instrument for the fulfilment of human destiny. In a sense, Comus’ argument can be seen to be a precursor of Mann’s.  Comus’ “orient liquor in a Crystal Glasse” offers the weary mortal a chance to experience the actual pleasures of Nature that he believes is superior to “lean and sallow Abstinence” that is preached by the Lady.

However, unlike his mother Circe, Comus only transforms the head of his victim into an animal rather than the whole body. He does so because it is the mind of his victim that he wants to conquer. While the transformation is a physical one, it is also figurative, done in an attempt to neutralise the superior metaphysical connection the mind has with the universe, a connection which is denied to the body:

“Can any mortal mixture of Earths mould                                                                                   

 Breath such Divine inchanting ravishment?”

Comus’ modus operandi reflects what in the 20^th century would be referred to as possessing fascist tendencies. Comus’ transformation of his victims’ heads usurps their ability to reason so they remain subservient to his will as a ruler. While living in the forest he is supreme ruler, but the Lady’s arrival anticipates a type of opposition to his fascist rule which he is unable to accept. An opposition party in a fascist rule is unheard of, and Comus must crush her opinion either by “well plac’t words.....Baited with reasons not unplausible” or by the power of sheer force. To do so he must employ all the weapons he has at his arsenal. Apart from the magic potion at Comus’ disposal which changes the head of a person into an animal, Comus also has the gift of rhetoric which functions in a similar way to the propaganda arguments of the Fascists. Comus’ argument, like Satan’s in Paradise Lost when he is about to tempt Eve, is attractive and alluring not because they are lies and fabrications but because they have at their core certain half truths:

“Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth,

  With such a full and unwithdrawing hand,

 Covering the earth with odours, fruits and flocks,

 Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable....?”

Comus exploits what A. S. P. Woodhouse calls the “two complementary aspects of Nature”- Nature that causes perpetual fecundity and growth, and Nature that is an ordered whole, a rationally graduated scale. His argument is that the natural world with its variety of gifts is an invitation for man to take part in ribald revelry and unrestricted enjoyment, a return to sensual bestiality as opposed to the principles preached by “Strict Age, and sowre Severity.” A refusal to partake in this “carnal sensualty” in a “pet of temperance” is to disregard natural processes of growth and regeneration. Comus posits the argument that Nature herself knows nothing of chastity and that true existence “consists in mutual and partaken bliss.” The Lady however refuses to believe him:

“Imposter, do not charge most innocent Nature,

As if she would her children should be riotous

With her abundance she good cateress

Means her provision only to good

That live according to her sober laws,

And holy dictates of spare temperance.”

She calls Comus’ arguments “false rules pranked in reason’s garb.” Comus attempts to mimic the essence of the Mind, reason and logic, but is bound to fail because that is the privilege only of the Lady. The Lady does not contradict his picture of Nature but merely points out its incompleteness. For her, true existence is not the prostitution of Nature’s gift for sensual pleasures but rather a life of temperance and moderation. Comus has the “power to cheat the eye with blear illusion\ And give it false presentments” but cannot cheat the mind. Milton’s Comus therefore can be read as a text about the deceptive nature of external sensory perceptions. The Lady is cheated by Comus’ external appearance of a shepherd, but the fallacies of his arguments are clearly perceived by her mind.

The lady misappropriates her ability to defend herself from Comus to her Chastity. While the elder brother is right in declaring that “she has a hidden strength”, it is not her Chastity but rather “the unpolluted temple of the Mind” that saves her from the “rash hand of bold Incontinence.” While Comus can chain up her body to the chair, he “canst not touch the freedom” of her mind. “The mind is its own place”, Satan had said in Paradise Lost, and the Lady knows that all of Comus’ enchantments cannot breach the barriers of her reason and logic.

Milton’s superiority as a poet lies in his ability to take a particular genre and modify it, giving it his own characteristic signature. In the masque too Milton does not make it a simple battle of Good against Evil. The Lady resists Comus’ enchantments, but cannot free herself of her own volition. Surprisingly, she needs saving not once but twice. Firstly it is the help offered by the Brothers and the Haemony given by the Attendant Spirit that drives Comus away. She is however still stuck to the chair. She requires the help of Sabrina, the water nymph to be saved completely.  For Clara Stevens, “Virtue’s resistance of Vice, while vitally important, failed to solve the problem, and that had not Sabrina’s aid been secured, the so called “triumph” would have been a distressing and unsatisfactory situation. The Nymph’s pre-eminence thus becomes striking.” Stevens argues that human agency alone is not enough to save the Lady from the grip of Comus. This is Milton’s point of departure from the superiority of the Mind over the Body. Stevens’ argument falls in line with the argument of Woodhouse where he asserts that despite the Lady’s dismissal of Comus’ seduction she nonetheless requires divine grace to save her from her plight.

            Divine grace is a theological concept that recurs in Milton’s poems, in Samson Agonistes, in Paradise Lost and also Paradise Regained. Divine grace is beyond human comprehension and therefore beyond the grasp of the Mind or the Body. It is a factor that plays an important and irreplaceable role in the redemption of a human soul. Reason alone cannot lead to salvation. What is needed is divine grace, the essence of which cannot be subsumed by any ontological considerations. This divine grace is bestowed upon the Lady through the agency of Sabrina, a nymph and therefore a supernatural being. In a sense Milton’s Comus attempts to open up the possibility of a solution to the world’s problems from outside the natural world itself.

FUZAIL ASAR SIDDIQI

PG-II

ROLL NO: 16