‘Eden raised in the waste wilderness’: Atonement in Milton’s Paradise Regained
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This paper examines a central conundrum for readers of John Milton’s brief epic Paradise Regained: the omission of Christ’s Crucifixion from a poem about the regaining of paradise. Indeed, Milton does not include the word ‘Christ’ anywhere in Paradise Regained’s four books. What then does Milton mean when he writes in the opening lines, “And Eden raised in the waste wilderness”? How is he defining atonement and Jesus’ mission on Earth? The paper’s answer to this question falls in two parts: chapter one argues that the poem presents Jesus’ resistance to Satan’s temptations in the desert as if they were adequate to save mankind through privileging privacy and obedience to the Father above sacrifice and public martyrdom. The second chapter follows upon the conclusions drawn in the first to examine how Jesus’ hermeneutic struggle to interpret the scriptures is sufficient to achieve atonement for fallen man. The thesis ends by reflecting on a theme running throughout the project about the relationship Milton creates between the character of Jesus and the reader of Paradise Regained.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | May 2018 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Johnston, Tish |
|---|---|
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Department of English |
| Primary advisor | Hoxby, Blair |
| Advisor | Greene, Roland |
Subjects
| Subject | Department of English |
|---|---|
| Subject | John Milton |
| Subject | Temptation |
| Subject | Early Modern Period |
| Subject | Paradise Regained |
| Subject | Atonement Theory |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Johnston, Tish. (2018). ‘Eden raised in the waste wilderness’: Atonement in Milton’s Paradise Regained. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/zc458vj3182
Collection
Stanford University, Department of English, Undergraduate Honors Theses
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- Contact
- letitia.johnston@gmail.com
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