"What in Me Is Dark/Illumine" (PL 1:22-23): the "Other" Body of Samson Agonistes (Critical Essay‪)‬

How do we read a text like Samson Agonistes in the light of the 21st century where distinctions between father and mother, brother and brother, father/mother and child lose its character in collective madness. If we are walking, to borrow the title of Gupta's book, the Path to Collective Madness, should we not extricate ourselves from the conventional reluctance to demythologize the violence suppressed in religious texts and its antecedents based on historical and authorial premise? To insist on pure "historical" readings of any text is to suggest that history/literature/ art has only one face, frozen at the site of its articulation, and the rest of literature is and must be tested merely as fossil records. While we may speculate on authorial intention, we can never determine its validity beyond the boundaries of the core/source text, and even then we would still be speculating. It is my intention to propose a reading of Samson Agonistes to debunk some of the myths that have popularised readings of Samson as a traditional Israelite hero. The controversies over Samson Agonistes reflect the tensions with reading a text whose authority is debated on the basis of its biblical antecedent. For many the traditional view of Samson is that of undisputed hero, his death, redemptive, his "rousing motions" a final and cataclysmic demonstration of faith. Such orthodox readings have a long history and continue to be debated till recent times. Elizabeth Oldman sees that Samson's "warlike retaliation against his enemies is justifiably defensive according to Groatian principles" of just war" (2007, 369). George McLoone argues, for an emphasis on "ecclesiastic and liturgical allusion in the text", which he regards is central to an understanding of Milton's view of Samson as tragic rather than epic hero (1995, 2) These and "typological readings" which see Samson as a "imperfect" Christ (Wood 2001, 6) labour the point that Samson is either God's favoured son, a classical hero with a tragic flaw or epic hero (Wood 2001, 6). Such readings regard the poem as embodying a kind of Homeric vision: Samson's own chartered Gethsemane, his desert experience; his movement through trial and suffering into regeneration and redemption is argued in the light of God's witness and affirmation of Samson's sacrifice. Such readings also appear to need to "confirm the intelligibility" of the world (Fish 2001, 435).