Gordon Teskey's Book Delirious Milton and Walter J. Ong's Thought

Abstract

In this 4,700-word essay, I relate certain points in Gordon Teskey's 2006 book Delirious Milton to relevant points that Walter J. Ong discusses in connection with Milton's Logic, which was published in 1672 when Milton was famous. But Milton got it up in the 1640s. Milton's Logic (in Latin) is based on Peter Ramus' 1972 Dialectic (in Latin). Ong's massively researched doctoral dissertation at Harvard University was a study of the French logician and educational reformer and Protestant martyr Peter Ramus (1515-1572). Ong and Charles J. Ermatinger translated and edited Milton's Logic for volume 8 of Yale's Complete Prose Works of john Milton: 1666-1682 (1982, pages 139-407) -- and Ong supplied the lengthy introduction (pages 144-205). From various statements that Teskey makes about Milton, it appears that he is not familiar with Ramist logic in general or with Milton's Logic in particular.