Moral Fiction in Milton and Spenser.

In Moral Fiction in Milton and Spenser, John M. Steadman displays a romance mind; with erudition, he wanders from the course. This is at once the strength and weakness of his book. A paradigmatic moment occurs when a two-page digression on the "epithet 'divine'" (27-29) interrupts a unit on Du Bartas. Since the unit is largely a description rather than an analysis of Du Bartas's troping of poetic inspiration, the learned digression appears as an inspired breath of intellectually fresh air.

In his introduction, Steadman lays out his project. He will use "Milton and Spenser" to probe "the Renaissance poet's (and critic's) changing attitudes toward the boundaries of truth and fiction - his sense of the variable relationship between . . . moral and theological doctrine" (1). Thus "the principal theme of this book" will be the "values and techniques of poetic illusion" 0). Steadman argues that both poets "use the resources of poetic fiction in the interests of what they regard as moral and historical 'truth' and reality; but both differ radically in their poetic and epistemological strategies": "In Spenser's ambiguous image of a romantic never-never land . . . one may find both a parallel and an antithesis to Milton's fictive image of a prelapsarian world, an image that he must have regarded as an imaginative reconstruction of historical and theological fact" (1). In support of this argument, Steadman focuses on the two poets' "very different revaluations of epic tradition; on their contrasting relationships to Renaissance literary theories of epic and romance; and, above all, on their diverse approaches to the exploitation of poetic invention and illusion as vehicles of ethical and historical truth" (3).

Steadman divides his study into two parts: in the first, he emphasizes "Milton's treatment of the metaphor of the poet's divine inspiration"; in the second, "Spenser's exploitation of the conventions of romance epic as vehicles for celebrating Elizabethan achievements" (3). In both parts, he treats the two poets "as foils to each other: masters of poetic fiction whose essential values emerge in . . . bolder relief through juxtaposition and contrast" (3): "Spenser's illusory invocation of the muse of history under the pretense that the events he is recounting are not simply his own imaginative inventions but long-neglected facts" contrasts with "Milton's invocations addressed to the muse of biblical poetry and the Spirit of the Judeo-Christian God, and to his own imaginative reenactment of biblical history" (3).

In his epilogue, Steadman identifies the significance of his study. "Examining these techniques against the background of Renaissance literary theory and the practice of . . . Tasso, Du Bartas, and other[s]," he has attempted to "reassess the significance of Renaissance conceptions of the relations between epic and romance for two major poets. . . ." At the same time, "[b]y analyzing the Renaissance poet's . . . self-image as divinely inspired bard," Steadman has "endeavored to revalue the views of twentieth-century critics and to demonstrate the importance of conscious fiction over biographical . . . fact" (162).

In between his introduction and epilogue are seven chapters - two on Milton's Christian "epic," four on Spenser's "romance epic," and one on Du Bartas and Spenser. As Steadman's description intimates, his book is useful as a learned overview of "moral fiction" in Paradise Lost and The Faerie Queene by a critic whose sympathies and strategies lie with critics writing in the 1950s and '60s. Since the "twentieth-century critics" are almost exclusively from that era, it becomes inherently problematic to judge the success of his "Revaluation." For instance, he remarks that "interpretations" of The Faerie Queene's "structure and allegory have been almost equally varied" (73), but in a note he cites only Freeman, Hough, Nelson, and Williams - the presence of twenty-five years of criticism distinctly absent.

The twinning of the book's value and limitation, however, lies more precisely in Steadman's romance habit of mind. He is most at home on the road. Often, he makes an illuminating remark that has the discipline of epic, but then, instead of probing that remark, he turns to its "tradition": "the very indefiniteness of Spenser's Faeryland . . . enhances the clarity and distinctness of his moral categories, underlining their essentially elderic character and status as universals. This imaginary land . . . possesses obvious affinities with the various worlds of epic and romance but also differs significantly from them" (91). Steadman's strength lies in the catalogue of learning, not in the depth of specificity.

While Moral Fiction in Milton and Spenser ignores most recent criticism, lapses too often into narration at the expense of analysis, and prefers the general to the specific, Steadman circulates learnedly around an inspired topic on two poets central to the European Renaissance in England.

PATRICK CHENEY Pennsylvania State University