Milton’s Titles
Hale, John K.
Early Modern Literary Studies 13.1 (May, 2007)
Abstract
Milton’s titling practices are examined from four main standpoints. First, ideas about titling as a speech-act are applied from Gérard Genette’s seminal study in Paratexts. Next, the unusual degree of multilingualism in his practice is charted; and then their favoured syntax, a feature more presupposed than foregrounded but distinctive. Signs of development within his practice are drawn from the Trinity Manuscript, where dozens of possible poems exist solely as titles, and where he tries out successive titles for the emergent Paradise Lost. Throughout, the essay’s aim is to defamiliarize the titles of his three last English poems, so as to rethink the implied relations between each title and its whole. “Paradise Lost” in particular is a title of great power, fit to stand like the poem itself among the very greatest.
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