Samson’s “Rousing Motions”: What They Are, How They Work, and Why They Matter

Abstract

Before going to the Temple of Dagon with the Philistian Officer near the climax of Milton’s Samson Agonistes, Samson tells the uncomprehending Chorus to “Be of good courage.” For, he assures them, “I begin to feel / Some rousing motions in me which dispose / To something extraordinary my thoughts” (1381–3). Samson’s motivation for his decision to enter the temple, together with his catastrophic act of pulling down the temple upon the Philistian nobility, and “inevitably” upon himself, has become the flashpoint of voluminous debate about Samson Agonistes in recent Milton criticism. This essay aims to contribute to this critical conversation by exploring precisely what Milton and his readers would have understood by the “rousing motions” that Samson reports feeling at this pivotal moment. Seventeenth-century readers would have recognized Samson’s “motions” as the part of the so-called system of “faculty psychology” responsible for the feelings. Beyond scrutinizing Milton’s text, I examine contextual support from ancient and early modern sources toward understanding Samson’s “motions” and their workings. As well as reviewing the theory of emotions expounded by Aristotle in the Rhetoric and Nicomachean Ethics, I describe the modifications to that theory propounded by the Protestant reformer Philip Melanchthon, as well as the nuanced approach to dealing with affective volatility developed by the Cambridge theologian William Fenner. Milton and these Protestant writers share three essential convictions: they locate the emotions within a comprehensive model of the mental faculties; they assert the power of the human agent, typically through the will, to control – in Milton’s phrase, “to temper and reduce to just measure”– their potentially overwhelming power; and, most significant of all, they regard the emotions as the specific point of interaction between God, typically in the form of the Spirit, and the aspiring spirits of the human being. This last claim in particular addresses a question raised by several recent commentators on Samson Agonistes, namely, whether Samson’s impulse to act comes from himself or from God.