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The Quest of the Mysterious Engine
Author(s) -
Turner W. Arthur
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
milton quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.101
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1094-348X
pISSN - 0026-4326
DOI - 10.1111/j.1094-348x.1979.tb00079.x
Subject(s) - damnation , interpretation (philosophy) , heaven , parliament , meaning (existential) , history , order (exchange) , philosophy , law , literature , art , theology , political science , epistemology , politics , linguistics , finance , economics
More than a quarter of a century ago I published an article with the not very imaginative title “Milton's Two‐Handed Engine.“ 1 I began with the now standard statement of the importance of the image and a list of several earlier interpretations, and set down nine conditions which it seemed to me the “engine” must meet in order to satisfy the demands of the poem itself as to meaning and propriety. I ended with my own suggestion that the engine was the lock on the door to Heaven, to which St. Peter carries the keys. Professor Merritt Hughes gave me credit for having turned attention from earthly instruments (such as the two houses of Parliament, etc.) “to the now prevailing tendency to interpret it theologically.” But (unintentionally I am sure) he misrepresented my interpretation by saying that the lock represented “the two sanctions of death and damnation.“ 2 Of course it should have been “salvation and damnation.“