Milton’s Reformed Animals: The Raven and Macbeth
Edwards, Karen. “Milton's Reformed Animals: An Early Modern Bestiary.”Milton Quarterly 42.4 (2008): 285-88. EBSCO.Web.
In Milton’s Reformed Animals: An Early Modern Bestiary, in the Milton Quarterly, the author Karen Edwards does an in-depth analysis of various animals that are present in plays and symbolize the importance of certain themes or characterize features of the plays. In the “Raven” section of the article, Edwards begins by giving examples of different ravens and interpretations of ravens in plays such as The Jew of Malta, where the raven is an object of “fatal prediction,” or to authors like Thomas Browne, an “ill omen.” Others also interpret the raven as representing the pitiless, by its natural habit to attack prey’s eyes, as described in Paradise Lost.In the listed biblical text, it is also compared to the dove as less trustworthy and less purposeful, and associated with the destructive nature of the Flood in the Bible. Edwards then goes on to define ravenous, as “seizing violently.”
The source was surprisingly versatile, drawing on descriptions of ravens from several sources. The quotations were also exact and cited right in the text. The author, Dr. Karen Edwards, is also published in many journals, books, and conferences, and is an associate professor at the University of Exeter, which concretes her analysis’ reliability. The text was also peer reviewed. She primarily studies early modern literature, especially that of John Milton, meaning much of her work is focused on that period and Milton’s work. The dynamic of her animal studies is, thus, limited to how the raven is interpreted in early modern plays and poetry, and does not make a more universal claim on the symbol of the raven and its significance in literary culture. In that way, the claims made in it are also slightly biased, in that the focus of the argument is on the idea that the raven had a meaning, and a specific one, from the Abrahamic religions to post-Renaissance. Much of the text is also a listing of interpretations of the raven, rather than independent analysis of each source.
The source has helped me understand in part what the meaning of certain animals in Macbeth mean, as Edwards gave a brief, direct analysis of the raven’s part in Macbeth, and educated me on other arguments about the raven that can be made for Macbeth as well.