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The Reader's Attitude in Paradise Regained

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Lawrence W. Hyman
Lawrence W. Hyman*
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College Brooklyn, N. Y.
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Abstract

The inability of readers to identify themselves with the hero of Paradise Regained, far from being an obstacle to the success of the poem, is an essential part of the central conflict within the poem. For Christ, although created as both God and man, moves closer to the divine as the action of the poem progresses. In doing so, Christ renounces the hope of redeeming this world in human or secular terms. He must do this to fulfill his role as the Son of God; but the reader regrets this necessity. Consequently there is a tension throughout the poem between the divine and the human nature of Christ. The reader is asked to accept the uncomfortable fact that Christ's redemption of the world must be made in divine not in human terms. To gain eternal life for us He must die to the life of this world. The truth of this Christian paradox is assumed by Milton; but Milton recognizes that this Christian truth conflicts with our human desires for a victory within this world. And it is this conflict between the divine and the human that provides the emotional center of the poem.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 85 , Issue 3 , May 1970 , pp. 496 - 503
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1970

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References

Note 1 in page 496 Arnold Stein, Heroic Knowledge (Minneapolis, Minn., 1957), p. 4.

Note 2 in page 496 W. W. Robson, “The Better Fortitude,” in The Living Milton, ed. F'rank Kermode (London, 1960), p. 135.

Note 3 in page 496 Perhaps the earliest work in this enterprise is Merritt Y. Hughes, “The Christ of Paradise Regained and the Renaissance Heroic Tradition,” SP, xxv (1938), 254–271. The most recent is Barbara Lewalski, Milton's Brief Epic (Providence, R. I., 1966).

Note 4 in page 496 Robson, p. 131.

Note 5 in page 496 Stein, p. 131.

Note 6 in page 496 The Return of Eden (Toronto, 1965), p. 134.

Note 7 in page 497 In his De Doclrina Christiana, Ch. xiv, Milton affirms the dual nature of Christ as both God and man. For a recent commentary, see J. Max Patrick, The Prose of John Milton (Garden City, ?. Y., 1957), pp. 647–648.

Note 8 in page 497 All quotations are from the Complete Poetical Works of John Milton, ed. Douglas Bush (Boston, 1965).

Note 9 in page 497 The Return of Eden, pp. 122–123.

Note 10 in page 498 “The Theme and Pattern of Paradise Regained,” UTQ, xxv (1955–56), 167.

Note 11 in page 499 Frye, p. 123.

Note 12 in page 501 Studies in Milton (London, 1951), p. 306.

Note 13 in page 501 Stein, p. 101. Barbara Lewalski makes a similar distinction between scienlia and sapientia, Milton's Brief Epic, p.290.

Note 14 in page 502 Milton's Brief Epic, p. 310.

Note 15 in page 502 Milton's Brief Epic, p. 313.