Time, process, and moral value in John Milton's Paradise lost
Hooker, Wallace Kurth
Hooker, Wallace Kurth
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1966
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Abstract
The effort of this dissertation, Time, Process, and Moral Value in John Milton's Paradise Lost, is an attempt to investigate the poet's intentional and unintentional use of time in his epic. Milton thought that every aspect of the universe contributed toward moral value, for example even out of the Fall may come a "greater good." The first chapter of this dissertation discusses those cultural concepts of time which would have been familiar to Milton. Generally there were two concepts of time. The first concept is that time is actually an enemy of man, and that time is the cause of mutability and death. This concept is particularly expressed in the Ubi sunt and carpe diem poems and is a part of a tradition which, in England, may be traced back to Anglo Saxon poetry. The second concept is that time somehow brings out truth, and that in a Christian sense it provides man with an opportunity to work, prepare, and make choices through which he will obtain salvation. Chapter II continues the discussion of historical concepts of time begun in Chapter I, but the ultimate concern of this chapter is to discuss patterns of thinking concerning time which more nearly represent those used by Milton, especially thinkers such as St. Augustine, Richard Hooker, and Edmund Spenser. Chapter III which is concerned with Books I and II of Paradise Lost is a discussion of Satan's perversion of time and his own separation from heavenly time. Chapter IV of this dissertation offers a contrast of heavenly time, which Milton pictures in Book III of Paradise Lost, with the Satanic time of the earlier two books. Chapter v, The Pattern of Innocence in Book IV, is a picture of Adam and Eve before the Fall, when they apparently live in time, but it is a time of innocence, and Death has not yet entered into the world. However, Satan finds earth in this book, and Milton makes an obvious comparison of the change that has been worked upon Satan who shows the effects of change in time. Books V through VIII of Paradise Lost (Chapter VI, The Examples of Heavenly History, of this dissertation) concern the preparation of Adam and Eve to withstand the temptations of Satan. The learning process after the Fall is quite different, as Milton makes clear when Michael provides Adam with a look into the future in order that he can make some intelligent use of his free will in light of what he sees in the future. To use Whitehead's words, Raphael and Michael teach Adam of events in time so that he can make ". . . use of intelligence . . . to profit by error without being slaughtered by it." The final chapter of this dissertation, Chapter VII, The Race of Time in Books IX through XII, is concerned with the fall of Adam and Eve and the almost unbelievable changes the Fall brings to them and to the earth. It is also concerned with Christ's forgiveness of man and the hope of a "greater good" that man may earn because of the Fall. However the promise of hope comes only after Adam has seen into the future and has seen the destruction of the world and all men and creatures but those in the ark with Noah. Adam learns that there is a process at work in time which leads to Christ's redeeming death on the cross. Thus, within his limitations, man lives and acts out his existence, but, even though he is time-bound, he is always, in a timeless sense, in danger of mortal sin, though always within hope of salvation, Sin becomes a part of human time at the Fall, and man, therefore, lives outside God's timelessness even though he has been provided through Christ's provision of "redemptive time" a contact with God's infinite timelessness. This possibility is available only through time, a time which in an infinite number of ways allows man to exercise his free choice for salvation.
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Milton, John, 1608-1674. Paradise lost
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Dissertation
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vii, 219 leaves, bound
Department
English