Ethos in Milton's Psalm 114

So while I was rereading Milton's sonnets of the Psalms, I noticed that Milton seems to use ethos as his primary device in making his appeal for God, especially in Psalm 114. While pathos and logos are definitely also present in the text, Milton writes "Jehovah's wonders were in Israel shown, / His praise and glory were in Israel shown (5-6)." In the line before the author references the "strength of the Almighty's hand (4)" as the reason for the Israelite's success, and later we find allusions to God's divine power in the earthquakes and floods referenced in the original psalm.

While these could definitely be interpreted as logos, pathos, or a combination of the three, I think these aren't used an emotional or purely logical appeal, but instead a testament from Milton's point of view of God's very real divine powers. Milton is in a sense building a bit of a resume for God, writing up the miracles of Biblical times and pointing out a very practical reason He should be revered and worshipped.

I'm interested to see if this pops up in Paradise Lost and Milton's other religious works, and I'll look forward to spotting it in the future. This is a great version of the poem, and has some pretty handy footnotes as well.

Milton's use of Rhetoric

So I wanted to use what I learned about rhetoric to take a look at Milton’s Prolusions 1 in a new light. I decided to find instances when Milton demonstrates the persuasive appeals, Logos, Pathos, and Ethos. While I know that in rhetoric, these appeals are used a lot and often combine together, I’ll just show a few examples when he does demonstrate these appeals.

Milton displays logos when he is arguing why Night rejected Phanes’ proposal of marriage in the legend of day and night. He looks at the reasoning, and logically discerns why Night rejected Phanes and why she preferred the security of Erebus. He shows the logic by showing Night’s nature and concerns, which then leads to her course of action.

Milton displays ethos when he talks about how we shouldn’t place our entire confidence on the poets that described Greek mythology. He then goes into the history of how such ideas have become changed and twisted. Here, Milton demonstrates a character of learning and shows that he understands the extensive history of this subject, thus assuring the reader that he knows his subject well.

Milton displays pathos when he is describing how desirable the day is to all living things. He goes into beautiful details of how the birds sing joyously of the day and he talks of all different animals that greet the day and sunshine with delight and joys. The description appeals to us in that we can understand that wondrous beauty and delight of having the sun on our faces.

Milton's prolusions show his growing strength in rhetoric and persuasive writings. These examples are just a few among the many appeals he makes in his writing. It does show to be a precursor to Paradise Lost, in which Milton has mastered the art of persuasive writing. I'm excited to see more of this persuasive writing.