| dc.description.abstract | A study of Milton's revisions to Lycidas and Comus should give us some insight into the creative and critical activities of Milton's mind, aid us in perceiving how Milton fashioned his poetical conceptions, perhaps throw some light on passages which has disputed interpretations, and help us to understand in what ways Milton considered his poetry unpremeditated and inspired. The revisions inwords, phrases, lines, and sometimes passages, are studied individually in order to discover reasons for these changes. The organization of the study depends upon the line numbers of the poems, and the revisions are referred incidentally to the headings (1) vivideness and clarity, (2) poetic suggestiveness. (3) tone-color, and (4) special consideration of there which do not fall under any of the first three headings. The revisions generally result in better expression of ideas and images, often create emphasis by the use of carious petic devices, and in some cases unify and sustain the theme and tone of the poems better than do the original readings. Milton's professed unpremeditation may be reconciled to this practice when we realize that his unpremeditation concerned the overall structure of whole passages while the revisions concered words, phrases, and lines; and the revisions were a case of post-meditation -- pencillings of "curious touches of art" as Milton himself expressed it. | |
