Notes to Chapter 1land” (dissertation, Harvard University, 1999), 298–368.
123 For the many psalmic echoes, see Mary Ann Radzinowicz, Toward Samson Agonistes,
188–260.
124 Classic accounts of the regenerate Samson are in Arnold Stein, Heroic Knowledge
(Minneapolis, 1957) and John H. Steadman, “ ‘Faithful Champion’: The Theological
Basis of Milton’s Hero of Faith,” Anglia 77 (1959), 12–28; for the unregenerate Samson
see Irene Samuel “Samson Agonistes as Tragedy,” in Calm of Mind: Tercentenary Essays
on Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, ed. Joseph A. Wittreich, Jr. (Cleveland,
Ohio, 1971), 237–57.
125 See Joseph A. Wittreich, Jr., Interpreting Samson Agonistes (Princeton, NJ, 1986), and
Stanley Fish, “Spectacle and Evidence in Samson Agonistes,” Critical Inquiry 15 (1989),
556–86.
126 The positions, respectively, of Jackie DiSalvo, “ ‘The Lords Battels’: Samson Agonistes
and the Puritan Revolution,” MS 4 (1971), 39–52; Christopher Hill, Milton and the
English Revolution, 428–48; Samuel “Samson Agonistes as Tragedy”; Achinstein, “Samson
Agonistes and the Drama of Dissent,” 133–58; and David Loewenstein, “The Revenge
of the Saint: Radical Religion and Politics in Samson Agonistes,” MS 33 (1996), 159–
80.
127 See Lewalski, “Milton’s Samson and the New Acquist of True [Political] Experience,”
MS 24 (1999), 233–51.
128 The epigraph reads: “Arist. Poet. Cap. 6. Tragoedia mimesis, praxeos spoudaias, etc.
Tragoedia est imitatio actionis seriae, &c. Per misericordiam & metum perficiens talium
affectuum lustrationem.” Milton of course means the reader to recall the entire defini-
tion: “Tragedy is, then, a representation [mimesis, imitation] of an action that is heroic
and complete, and of a certain magnitude – by means of language embellished with all
kinds of ornament, each used separately in the different parts of the play; it represents
men in action and does not use narrative; and through pity and fear it effects relief to
those and similar emotions.” See The Poetics 6.1, trans. W. Hamilton Fyfe, Aristotle,
vol. 23 (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), 24–5.
129 David Pareus, A Commentary upon the Divine Revelation of the Apostle and Evangelist
John, trans. Elias Arnold (Amsterdam, 1644). See chapter 5, p. 131 and note 102.
130 Ibid., p. 20. See Lewalski, “Samson Agonistes and the ‘Tragedy’ of the Apocalypse,”
PMLA 85 (1970), 1,050–62.
131 W. R. Parker, Milton’s Debt to Greek Tragedy in Samson Agonistes (Baltimore, 1937);
and Anthony Low, The Blaze of Noon: A Reading of Samson Agonistes (New York,
1974).
132 See chapter 12, pp. 400–6. Also, Knoppers, Historicizing Milton, 42–66, and Worden,
“Milton, Samson Agonistes, and the Restoration,” in Maclean, ed., Culture and Society
in the Stuart Restoration, 122–6.
133 For the limitations of the chorus, see Joan S. Bennett, “Liberty Under the Law: The
Chorus and the Meaning of Samson Agonistes,” MS 12 (1978), 141–63.
134 Vane reportedly said, when friends spoke of giving thousands of pounds for his life,
that “If a thousand farthings would gain it, he would not do it.” The Tryall of Sir Henry
Vane, Kt. (London, 1662); and Worden, “Milton, Samson Agonistes, and the Restora-
tion,” 119–22.
135 For a range of views, see Susanne Woods, “How Free are Milton’s Women,” Jackie
Notes to Chapter 14