Torah and Law in Paradise Lost

Jason P. Rosenblatt

Published by Princeton University Press 1994

Torah and Law in Paradise Lost

Jason P. Rosenblatt

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400821303

Overview
Contents

About this book

It has been the fate of Milton, the most Hebraic of the great English poets, to have been interpreted in this century largely by those inhospitable to his Hebraism. To remedy this lack of balance, Jason Rosenblatt reveals Milton's epic representations of paradise and the fallen world to be the supreme coordinates of an interpretive struggle, in which Jewish beliefs that the Hebrew Bible was eternally authoritative Torah were set against the Christian view that it was a temporary law superseded by the New Testament. Arguing that the Milton of the 1643-1645 prose tracts saw the Hebrew Bible from the Jewish perspective, Rosenblatt shows that these tracts are the principal doctrinal matrix of the middle books of Paradise Lost, which present the Hebrew Bible and Adam and Eve as self-sufficient entities.

Rosenblatt acknowledges that later in Paradise Lost, after the fall, a Pauline hermeneutic reduces the Hebrew Bible to a captive text and Adam and Eve to shadowy types. But Milton's shift to a radically Pauline ethos at that point does not annul the Hebraism of the earlier part of the work. If Milton resembles Paul, it is not least because his thought could attain harmonies only through dialectic. Milton's poetry derives much of its power from deep internal struggles over the value and meaning of law, grace, charity, Christian liberty, and the relationships among natural law, the Mosaic law, and the gospel.

Author / Editor information

Jason P. Rosenblatt is Professor of English at Georgetown University.

Reviews

[Jason Rosenblatt] convincingly demonstrates that Milton's Hebraism, though ambivalent, is a significant and enduring feature of his poetic art.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter One. Law and Gospel in Paradise Lost Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	12
Chapter Two. Milton’s Hebraic Monism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
Chapter Three. Moses Traditions and the Miltonic Bard Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	138
Chapter Four. Angelic Tact: Raphael on Creation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	156
Chapter Five. Book 9: The Unfortunate Redemption Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	164
Chapter Six. The Law in Adam’s Soliloquy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	204
Chapter Seven. The Price of Grace: Adam, Moses, and the Jews Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	218
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235
Index of Biblical References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267
General Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	269

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