{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.03461538461538462, 'fraction_numerical': 0.007692307692307693, 'mean_word_length': 5.322916666666667, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Sweet Imperfection: Milton and the Troubled Metaphor of Harmony

The English half of Milton’s 1645 Poems refers throughout to music, from the hymn in ‘‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,’’ with its ‘‘musick sweet’’ (95) and ‘‘stringed noise’’ (97), to the songs and dances of Comus. Such consistency in figuration suggests unity, but only in the terms used; what exactly is being referred to is less consistent and less clear. If the volume is read as a whole, the optimism of ‘‘Nativity,’’ which is akin to the youthful ‘‘rural ditties’’ (32) remembered wistfully in ‘‘Lycidas,’’ is not sustained. In what follows I argue that the 1645 collection demonstrates profound alienation toward music even in the context of the playfulness and confidence with which individual poems—particularly earlier ones—explore various versions of the metaphor of music. That alienation develops throughout the volume; its later poems contain images of music that become harder and harder to read as literal references to performed music, and those images, cumulatively, introduce a complex irony into the metaphor of music as it informs the Poems in its entirety. Musical theory and practice changed rapidly over the course of the seventeenth century in response to the transition, beginning on the Continent, from modal to tonal counterpoint. In England, those changes coincided with considerable debate about the social functions of music, spurred by radical reformers who associated music with a popish disregard for the comprehension of sacred texts. Milton was familiar with and apparently enthusiastic about Italian music, including Monteverdi’s fairly advanced counterpoint, but was also intimately involved with the Calvinist movement that was so suspicious of this music. The dichotomy deepens in significance given the recep-