Medieval analogues of Paradise Lost

Abstract

This manuscript was prepared for submission to the faculty of the Graduate School of Texas Christian University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Beginning with a basic bibliography of analogues of Paradise Lost compiled by Watson Kirkconnell in The Celestial Cycle, the author surveyed innumerable works in English paralleling portions¿ of Milton's epic, but has limited the dissertation to a consideration of the Anglo-Saxon Genesis and Christ and Satan and relevant Middle English mystery plays. Some relationships with The Canterbury Tales and an appended description of seven Middle English poetic analogues are included. The author's thesis is that sufficient parallels exist between earlier English literature and Paradise Lost to indicate that Milton's composition was stimulated either directly through the works or indirectly through traditions based upon them. Although the Anglo-Saxon God through a relation of Genesis primarily praises God through a relation of earthly history or legend concerned with the decensus, Milton combines the materials therein with much additional legend concerning earth, heaven, and hell for his explanation of God' s ways to man. Comparable to the process of the mystery plays, Milton's poem fuses the religious and the secular, the homiletic and the dramatic, the abstract and the concrete, and presents a figurative model of the Christian concept of salvation. While Paradise Lost reestablished the reverence for Hebraic-Christian myths which gradually had become abandoned in medieval dramatic literature, the realistic and humorous spirit of the mystery play traditions in Milton's poem not only aids specification of the abstract for the benefit of the reader, but also reduces the esteem which man might have for the pseudoheroic forces of evil in the universe. Milton's native English heritage apparent in Paradise Lost is, therefore, as impressive as is his classical or Christian heritage.