Joseph A. Wittreich. Shifting Contexts: Reinterpreting Samson Agonistes.

Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 2002. xxxii + 352 pp. index. $60. ISBN: 0-8207-0331-1.

Stanley Fish made his reputation as a Miltonist by reconciling two famous and contradictory readings of Paradise Lose the first of Romantic pedigree, sympathetic to Satan, and inclined to view the poet himself as sharing that sympathy; and the second, of more orthodox doctrinal genesis, which felt compelled to debunk Satan's claims on our imagination. As it happens, Samson Agonistes embodies a similar tension, and Joseph Wittreich's new book on the play sets out to resolve it.

The difficulty in Samson Agonistes, arising as it does from the hero's vengeful and suicidal behavior, has grown steadily more pressing over the past two decades. In light of the recent growth of international terrorism, to say nothing of the peace movement of the 60s and 70s, it has become increasingly difficult for many critics to accept Samson's dying revenge upon the Philistines as either a heroic or a sanctified act. But objections to this view have frequently labored under the charge of anachronism, of importing contemporary sensibilities into a 350-year-old text. Wittreich aims to resolve this conflict by demonstrating the existence of a seventeenth-century exegetical tradition critical of Samson's behavior, and by locating Samson Agonistes within a parallel tradition of tragedy, originating in the work of Euripides and Seneca, that "invert[s], correct[s], and refine[s] ... standards of heroism founded upon war and violence" (12).

The first of Wittreich's six chapters is devoted to establishing the Euripidean and Senecan context. Regarding these playwrights as "models for Milton's interrogations" in Samson Agonistes, Wittreich argues both for the importance of Euripides' particular influence upon Milton and for the existence of a broader Euripidean tradition in sacred drama, traceable through Seneca to such works as the Christos Paschon (attributed by Milton to Gregory Nazianzen) and Hugo Grotius' Christus Patiens. In chapters 2-4, then, Wittreich addresses the seventeenth-century hermeneutical tradition as it attaches to the Samson story. The moral of these chapters is that the phrase "seventeenth-century hermeneutical tradition" must itself stand as a misnomer; thus Wittreich quotes Christopher Hill to the effect that "It is quite wrong to see Milton in relation to anything so vague and generalized as 'the Christian tradition'" (8). Surveying seventeenth-century debates on the perseverance of the saints, among other matters, Wittreich finds that even when the debaters support Calvinist orthodoxy on this subject, they repeatedly discover in Samson a "problematical case" that "raises the question of how we know when instigation and animation come from God," and that also risks "attributing certain of [Samson's] cruelties to God himself" (130). And considering the biblical status of the Tribe of Dan, together with Samson's status as a member of that tribe, Wittreich concludes that "Samson is now one of the elect, now one of the reprobate" in the work of seventeenth-century commentators (151). Finally, in chapters 5-6, Wittreich proceeds toward a direct critical engagement with the text of Samson Agonistes itself, which he views as designed "to frustrate, not foster, platitudinous Christianity" (194), and which embodies a post-Restoration critique of "Samson as Dan, Samson as Israel, Samson as Christ, Samson as Cromwell/Milton, [and] Samson as England" (198).

At first, Wittreich's argument seems weakest in its survey of scriptural commentary, relying largely upon innuendo and inference. Joseph Mede, for example, "never mentioning Samson, sets forth a reading of Revelation 7, the implications of which are clear enough" (148). Again, Wittreich claims that the early modern "indictment of Samson is seldom in the form of bald assertion but registers itself in hints" (155). But by the end of his exposition, Wittreich adduces startling evidence that the figure of Samson becomes subject to a new hermeneutic in the latter half of the seventeenth century: one that calls on readers (with Herbert Thorndike) "to advise, whether sinful actions, and not according to God's own law, were fit to figure Christ" (175). This hermeneutic, in turn, arguably invests Milton's presentation of Samson: one that questions the moral character of his involvement in the seventeenth-century culture of violence at the very time that it also rehearses traditional typologies that associate Samson with Christian suffering and divine dispensation.

Shifting Contexts probably will not generate the excitement of a Surprised by Sin, for the simple reason that Wittreich's book is much more deeply immersed in the history of seventeenth-century scriptural hermeneutics than is anything by Fish. Rather than appealing to a readily-apprehensible and attractive interpretive principle like that of reader response, Shifting Contexts develops its argument through carefully-historicized close readings of a wide range of esoteric theological texts. The result is a dense and difficult book that pursues an equally-difficult interpretive trajectory. While it will probably prove caviar to the multitude, it should be of great interest and value to students of Milton's later poems, his attitudes toward violence, and his engagement with varying lines of seventeenth-century biblical interpretation.

BRUCE BOEHRER

Florida State University