Living Texts: Interpreting Milton

Front Cover
Kristin A. Pruitt, Charles Durham, Charles W. Durham
Susquehanna University Press, 2000 - Literary Criticism - 312 pages
The essays in this collection are a testimony to Milton's claim that books doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are. They are proof that Milton's progeny, whether poetry or prose, continue to inspire readers to investigate and interpret, and that even the poet himself is at times the subject of scrutiny. Although these essays examine issues as widely diverse as the reliability of Adam's narration to Raphael and the portrayal of chaos in Paradise Lost to the poet's role as an object of erotic attention in the nineteenth century, all suggest that Milton's are still living texts.

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Contents

Testimony and Transition in Paradise Lost
21
Afterthoughts on Adams Story
48
John Milton Object of the Erotic Gaze?
57
Cesarean Section and the Birth of Eve
80
John Miltons Social Contract
99
The Evil Eye in Paradise Lost Book 4
118
Miltons Use of the Helen Episode Aeneid 256788
131
Theosis and Paideia in the Writings of Gregory of Nyssa and the Prelapsarian Books of Miltons Paradise Lost
144
Milton Lucretius and the Void Profound of Unessential Night
198
Of Chaos and Nightingales
218
The Confounded Confusion of Chaos
228
The Amyraldian Connection
237
Miltons Heterodoxy of the Incarnation and Subjectivity in De Doctrina Christiana and Paradise Lost
264
Miltons Of True Religion and Antipapist Sentiment
283
List of Contributors
303
Index
307

Riding the Hebrew Word Web
162
The Central Naturalistic Narrative and the Allegorical Dimension to Paradise Lost
178

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Page 32 - I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.
Page 47 - For we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
Page 149 - Time may come, when Men With Angels may participate, and find No inconvenient diet, nor too light fare ; And from these corporal nutriments perhaps Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit...
Page 274 - He left it in thy power; ordained thy will, By nature free, not over-ruled by fate Inextricable, or strict necessity; Our voluntary service he requires, Not our necessitated; such with him Finds no acceptance, nor can find; for how Can hearts, not free, be tried whether they serve Willing or no, who will but what they must By destiny, and can no other choose?
Page 102 - By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband...
Page 230 - Boundless the deep, because I am who fill Infinitude, nor vacuous the space. Though I uncircumscribed myself retire, And put not forth my goodness, which is free To act or not, Necessity and Chance Approach not me, and what I will is Fate.
Page 151 - I can repair That detriment, if such it be to lose Self-lost, and in a moment will create Another world, out of one man a race Of men innumerable...
Page 49 - Yet when I approach Her loveliness, so absolute she seems And in herself complete, so well to know Her own, that what she wills to do or say, Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best.
Page 148 - O Adam, one Almighty is, from whom 'All things proceed, and up to him return, < If not depraved from good ; created all Such to perfection, one first matter all, Endued with various forms, various degrees Of substance, and, in things that live, of life...

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