Conceptions of likeness in the epic similes of Homer, Vergil, Dante, and Milton

The dissertation takes the following question as its point of departure. According to what conception of likeness are the members of the comparison like one another? This question then leads to two related ideas: the interplay between likeness and unlikeness in the simile and the poem's overall mimetic style--the likeness of the poem writ large. Finally, the dissertation examines an aspect of thought or experience which is contemporary with each poem and which exhibits a similar conception of likeness.;The similes of the Iliad are dominated by visual forms of resemblance: kinetic motifs or Gestalt-like patterns. In this bodily conception of likeness, we catch something of the facticity--at once beautiful and terrible--of Homer's world, as well as a glimpse into a different way of organizing visual experience in language. The Vergilian similes are held together by associative likeness, even as they are thrown off center by visual difference. This displacement of formal coherence is one aspect of the larger mimetic instability of the Aeneid, which is the best perspective from which to understand the poem's political resonance. Although the similes of the Comedy look like poetic comparisons, they are actually miniature metaphysical systems. Dante's similes are patterned after Aquinas's theory of double causality: "Man always chooses in accord with God's operation in his will." In the relationship between its members, the Dantean simile is a formal emblem for this co-operation between divine power and human choice. Finally, the Miltonic similes dramatize a preemptive form of literary history, by shifting likeness from the ostensible physical referent of the comparison to its field of textual reference. The similes of Paradise Lost expand to include classical archetypes while simultaneously absorbing those archetypes in its own ur-archetypal narrative. This double process of inclusion and depletion characterizes Miltonic mimesis as a whole.