밀턴의 눈멂 소네트 가르치기

Abstract

This essay discusses Milton’s sonnet on blindness in an attempt to provide pedagogical contexts by which lecturers may endear students to the works of Milton, whose values are usually shunned owing to his notoriety in Latinate diction, complicated literary style and ambiguous sentence structure. This essay on Sonnet 19, “When I consider how my light is spent” will provide lecturers with instructional contents that will not only allow them to ease the minds of students over Milton’s works, but also encourage students to relate their readings to their own lives. In addition, introducing to students the sonnet, consisting of only 14 lines, will be a natural segue into Milton’s works in general, bringing their mind to bear on his life and literary claim. At first read, though appearing simple as a reflection on the loss of his sight, the sonnet contains all the threads of Milton’s thoughts and life, before and after his blindness. If his prose prior to blindness had been produced primarily under the burden of “man’s work,” the blindness renewed his inner sight to the vision of true God from which he learned to “stand and wait”; he in fact stood and waited in service to God, for the composition of Paradise Lost. The sonnet is a point of departure from showing how Providence manifests itself in man’s life, especially Milton’s, to “justify[ing] the ways of God to men” as shown in Paradise Lost. Such change in his life was made possible by accepting the virtue of patience. The sonnet, whose contents address problems in life, can meaningfully connect to students frustrated by setbacks and failures.