Individual Post - Comus

Brown, Cedric C., John Milron's Aristocratic Entertainments.  Cambridge University Press, 1985.

John Milton's masque, as defined in Sheryl's previous post,  Comus, encompasses some of the ideas of free will and personal motivation seen in Paradise Lost.  In John Milton's Aristocratic Entertainments by Cedric C. Brown, Brown reveals connections and meanings within Milton's works, especially in his chapter entitled 'Komos' - The Adversary for the Occasion.  In this chapter he draws connections between one of Milton's other works, The Arcadians and Comus, recognizing the importance of providence and the existence of the protective spirit, Jove in both works, enabling the reader to draw a potential reason behind the similarity.  In Aristocratic Entertainments, Brown describes Comus as "the deceptive spirit of that kind of luxurious feasting which habitually perverts its company" (Brown, 58), stating that the Greek word for komos is revelry, defined as "merry-making: boisterous gaiety or mirth" in the Oxford English Dictionary.  Here he is addressing the presence of evil and temptation in all of Milton's poems, making the main character a force of over exaggerated luxury.

Brown also draws connections between Comus and Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost.  One of his examples is how "the audience is made to understand how men are deceived by devilish illusion" (Brown, 63), both in Comus and Paradise Lost.  Similarly, Milton will "allow the action to reveal, by stages" (Brown, 61), much like his techniques in Paradise Lost where the reader is thrown into a post-fall discussion, only to be brought back to the true beginning of the story in later books.

Cedric Brown's John Milton's Aristocratic Entertainments analyzes the works of John Milton, including Comus, The Arcadians, and Paradise Lost in chapter 3, allowing the reader to obtain a deeper understanding of the thoughts and meanings behind Milton's other works, in our case, particularly Paradise Lost.

Kellie M.