Milton's idea of love and the process of redemption in Paradise Lost
Abstract
The hypothesis on which this study will proceed is that Milton in Paradise Lost demonstrates as an integral part of Christian order that each fallen man nrust choose to love properly if he is to prove himself worthy of Christ's love and therefore of salvation. This "discipline" on which right choice must be based can be achieved only by imitation of the divine love which first created man and then provided a means of redemption for man after the Fall. Though the hypothesis seems obvious, recent scholarly books on Milton's idea of matrimony studied against the background of seventeenth-century Puritan ideas of marriage provide the occasion for this study. Milton's attitude to love and marriage has been the subject of some recent scholarship. Professor Halkett in his study Milton and the Idea of Matrimony has carefully defined the purposes of marriage as set out by the poet in both Paradise Lost and the divorce tracts. Both Professor Halkett and William Haller, writing in his Rise of Puritanism, have dealt with the characteristic roles which the marriage partners of an orthodox Puritan marriage were expected to play. These two scholars have also studied Milton's idea of matrimony against the contemporary Puritan view of marriage (with, it is true, somewhat different conclusions) and the idea that marriage may be redemptive is glanced at by Professor Halkett as one of the conclusions reached by his work. Irene Samuel, writing in Plato and Milton, has dealt with the Platonic elements in Milton's idea of love; and these elements have also been examined against the Renaissance idea of a Chain of Being, a graduated scale of nature representing all the fonns of creation from inanimate to celestial, by Professor Marilla and by D. C. Allen in two articles entitled ''Milton on Conjugal Love Among the Heavenly Angels" and "Love of the Angels" respectively. Another scholar, B. E. Gross, writing in an article called "Free Love and Free Will in Paradise Lost" has examined the thesis that a dominant theme of the epic is the difference between what he names 'true and false glory' or true heavenly love and human self-love. These scholarly treatments of topics related to the one which I propose are valuable in that they provide a background for the study of the process of redemption in Paradise Lost, specifically a study of that process in its relationship to the creative forces of both human and divine love. Though these works provide a framework and a starting point for this study, none of them emphasizes the modus operandi of love, "from centre to circumference" that Milton demonstrates in Paradise Lost, and none of them considers that love provides the means by which man develops "discipline" in his relationships with other human beings, particularly his marriage partner, as a means of being worthy of Christ's love which that "discipline" imitates.
Description
Bibliography: p. 120-123.
Keywords
Citation
Weaver, B. L. (1977). Milton's idea of love and the process of redemption in Paradise Lost (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/17240