John Milton's Poetic Style - Greek Tragedy

Greek Tragedy

Milton defined his views of Greek tragedy in the preface to Samson Agonistes. His understanding of what would make an appropriate Christian tragedy combines aspects of Greek Tragedy with Hebrew Scripture, which alters both forms. Here again he was not an innovator, following for example the Adamus Exul (1601) of Hugo Grotius, and the Adamo (1615) of Giovanni Battista Andreini.

Milton believed that the Bible was a precursor to the classical forms relied on by the Greeks and Romans, and that the Bible accomplished what the Greeks and Romans wished in a more suitable manner. In his introduction, Milton discusses Aristotle's definition of tragedy and sets out his own paraphrase of it to connect it to Samson Agonistes:

Tragedy, as it was anciently composed, hath been ever held the gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other poems: therefore said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such-like passions, that is to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight, stirred up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion: for so in physic things of melancholic hue and quality are used against melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt humors.

Milton continues, "Of the style and uniformity, and that commonly called the plot, whether intricate or explicit... they only will best judge who are not unacquainted with Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the three tragic poets unequaled yet by any, and the best rule to all who endeavor to write tragedy". As with his Christian epics, Milton fused classical and Scriptural ideas in order to create better English literature.