Empathy with the Other: The Problem of Knowing Evil in Spenser and Milton

This essay examines how Milton revises Spenser on the issue of empathy as a narrative technique of allegory. Spenser’s allegory The Faerie Queene is empathetic in that it interconnects good and evil characters through their shared affects. Milton revises Spenser’s empathy, first in Areopagitica, and then in Paradise Lost. In Areopagitica, Milton misremembers the Palmer’s absence in Mammon’s cave, which, I argue, shows Milton’s limit in his appropriation of Spenser’s empathy: Milton sustains the interconnection between good and evil only until a subject reaches knowledge to separate them. However, years after he experienced the failure of a republican ideal corrupted by passion, he went on to revise his previous appropriation of empathy in Paradise Lost. I discuss Eve as a character that resembles Guyon in being subordinate to a guide yet differs from Guyon in guiding the guide through empathy. KCI Citation Count: 0