Sound as Substance and the Poetics of Listening in Samson Agonistes

Abstract

Although scholarship on John Milton has long acknowledged the significance of the auditory in his poetry, this dissertation contends that in Samson Agonistes the poet reconceives sound and listening—not politics or theology—as the substance of his art. Together, they form the medium through which poetic meaning is made, unmade, and transferred to the listener. Via its typography, syntax, and formal dissonance, Milton’s neoclassical tragedy exposes listening as both an ethical and creative act, rendering the audience responsible for how the poem, and particularly its climactic “hideous noise,” is heard and construed. In interpreting Samson Agonistes through early modern acoustics, late style, and disability studies, this project ultimately repositions Milton as a poet of embodied audition rather than visionary mastery. The result is a new account of the tragic poem not as a quiet coda to Milton’s career but as his most searching meditation on the confluence between audition and poetic-making.