‘In Fit Sound’

Abstract This chapter considers the role of enactment or onomatopoeia in Milton’s verse—traditionally a quality highly valued, but doubted by Samuel Johnson and by some recent critics. The pervasive but constantly modulating relations between words and meaning, symbol and sense, are explored, ranging through onomatopoeia and beyond. Diverse modes of onomatopoeia such as the iconic, potential, realised, imparted, imitative, and emphatic are considered, together with styles of realisation varying from the bravura to the latent. Although onomatopoeia has only a minor role in language as a whole, it can seem the epitome of literature. As for Milton, in the words of Hazlitt: ‘The sound of his lines is moulded into the expression of the sentiment’.