A shift in gaze has occurred in the study of the early modern period, one which has begun to examine the Western world in a more global and comprehensive context. This shift has been extensively written upon with regards to a historical consideration by researchers like Nabil Matar, Jeremy Brotton, Gerald MacLean, and others. This “re-orientation”, as MacLean calls it, has extended itself into the realm of literature studies, though Shakespeare and his works have been the focus of much of the scholarship circulating today. While the Bard has much to tell us, in the spirit of this expansion my thesis will focus on the work of another early modernist: poet, activist, and scholar John Milton. Utilizing both the knowledge provided by historicist scholars for contextualization and the critical apparatus of scholars like Gil Anidjar and Daniel Vitkus as a framework, my thesis will work to examine the possibility of the Islamic holy text, the Qur’an, as an influence for Milton. Focusing on the text of Samson Agonistes as a site for this influence and interaction, it will be my intention to deconstruct specific passages from Milton’s text and verses from the Qur’an in order to expose a thematic and dialectic connection between these two seemingly incongruous corpi. I will accomplish this through a careful deconstruction of elements of monotheistic religious violence and political theology as well as an examination of the inclusion or exclusion of certain events, people, or themes in Milton’s text which deviate from their Judeo-Christian origins. Finally, I will discuss the early modern Christians’ historical fear of Islamic conversion and conquer alongside an examination of Samson’s destruction of the Philistine temple in the context of political theology, in an attempt at elucidating the link between this historical fear of “turning Turk” and the supposed justification for violence against an ideological other that drives Samson towards his violent and self-conclusive act. Through this research I intend to broaden the scope of Miltonic and early modern literature studies in the hopes of creating a more global and considerate understanding of Milton’s texts.

Despite recent scholarship, critics have yet to offer a sustained, interdisciplinary interpretation of John Milton's engagement with millennial ideas that takes into equal account the historical context of seventeenth-century religious and political controversy, the ways in which the pending apocalypse transformed how people imagined and experienced time, and how we see evidence of this cultural shift in Milton's poetry. This dissertation opens new possibilities of understanding Milton's relation to apocalyptic belief in the Revolutionary and Restoration era through an investigation of how millennial thinking cut across a variety of discourses including theology, politics, and science. At its most basic level, my dissertation argues the seventeenth-century anticipation of the apocalypse fundamentally altered the way people imagined time; this new way of conceptualizing temporality changed early modern religious beliefs, conceptions of history, the scientific imagination, and practices of reading philosophy, politics, and literature. My project proposes that the poetry of Milton helps us better understand these extensive cultural transformations. I explore this new understanding of time that is both reflective of discursive changes in the seventeenth century as well as characteristic of Milton's aesthetics, by offering an understanding of Milton's relationship with millennial ideas and their constitutive temporal structure. I argue that, in response to the inevitable and immanent "end of time" suggested by seventeenth-century apocalyptic temporality, Milton's poetry creates an alternative temporality, opening up an experience of time that is not necessarily unidirectional, closed, and speeding towards its end. I suggest that this different experience of time can best be understood through the framework of a temporality explored by contemporary philosophers Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, and Giorgio Agamben--messianic time. Put in its most basic terms, messianic time is a way of thinking about temporality differently, of calling into question our narratives of how time and history function. The messianic invites us to interrogate the notions of closure, certainty, and inevitability that are implicit in our linear, apocalyptic notion of time. Milton's texts continually constitute the possibility of a messianic temporality that can be read as a response to changing conceptions of time in the seventeenth century, millennial anticipation, and the belief that the apocalypse was close at hand. Entering a recent critical conversation regarding Milton's engagement with millennial and apocalyptic thinking, I suggest that we can understand this involvement through the alternative temporality his poetry creates. Each chapter of this dissertation fuses a formalist close reading of the temporality and uncertainties opened up by generic revisions, literary allusions, and rhetorical devices in Milton's poetry with a reading of how ideologically-conflicting interpretations of millennial time are articulated in the text and are reflective of contemporary discourse. I demonstrate how messianic time functions in each text and I prove the importance of this experience as it relates to historical and ideological questions about the millennium. This dissertation contributes to an ongoing conversation regarding how political, religious, scientific, and aesthetic texts are interconnected, and explores the plurality of Milton's ideological positions as they emerge out of the ambivalence and tension in the language of his poetry. In my reading, Milton's texts articulate a way of being in the world--both structural (created through language) and historical (tied to seventeenth-century millennial thinking)--that suggests uncertainty is the condition of knowledge and truth. / English

The seventeenth-century epic poem Paradise Lost is one of the most widely studied texts in all of literary history. The work, written by John Milton, depicts Satan's fall from Heaven and subsequent deeds on Earth and in Hell. One of the more remarkable and, often, most overlooked scenes in the story involves the distinctive personification of Sin and Death. Milton depicts Sin as the daughter of Satan, with no mention of a mother, born through a process of spontaneous generation. Satan then becomes so captivated by his daughter's wickedness that he forces himself upon her, causing Sin to bear a son, Death. This illustration is striking, especially given that it also appears in the opening pages of the fourteenth-century Mirour de l'Omme (c. 1376) by John Gower. In both Milton and Gower's poems, Satan, Sin, and Death are personified as having this familial, incestuous relationship which ultimately creates the world's evils. Their depictions are not merely reminiscent of one another, but rather, often match up in nearly identical fashions. John S. P. Tatlock was the among the first to notice these similarities, but was also quick to express his hesitance to say with any sort of assurance that Milton had read Gower: "Since only one manuscript of the Mirour is known, and that was never published until seven years ago [1899], the chance is infinitesimal that Milton ever heard of the poem. But that his and Gower's sources are ultimately the same seems to me highly probable." Yet to date, no studies have been conducted to determine which shared sources could possibly lead Milton and Gower to construct such similar personifications of Sin and Death. Indeed, John Fisher notes that currently "the influence of the Mirour upon Paradise Lost remains an open question." It is upon this open question that I now attempt to help fill this century-old void in literary research / Master of Arts

John Milton (1608 1674) é conhecido não só como o poeta do épico Paraíso perdido, mas também como um dos grandes teóricos e polemistas do período das Guerras Civis Inglesas. Seu principal tema é o problema da liberdade em um reino que se transformou segundo ele em uma tirania de reis e potentados religiosos, onde o súdito não era mais adequadamente representado por seu soberano; de acordo com Milton, como o rei não era mais o representante justo do reino, ele não deveria mais exercer as suas funções, sendo necessária a sua deposição e, em alguns casos extremos, o regicídio (como foi defendido pelo próprio poeta); assim, a solução proposta junto com outros panfletários anti-realistas, que nunca atingiram a riqueza retórica e a ousadia teórica de Milton é o surgimento de uma república inglesa, inspirada nos moldes ciceronianos e de clara influência secular-humanista. A partir de agora, o verdadeiro representante do governo deve ser o povo, mais precisamente a commonwealth, formada por indivíduos capazes de dominar as paixões que os podem transformá-los em escravos e viver de acordo com a vontade da razão e da prudência. A liberdade interior dos membros desta república se dá dentro desta commonwealth, onde eles podem exercer a liberdade civil (em que o indivíduo pode viver com tranqüilidade desde que respeite as leis da república), a liberdade doméstica (em que se pode escolher qual é o tipo de educação que pretende ter, quais são as pessoas com quem pretende se relacionar, etc.) e a liberdade religiosa (a possibilidade de escolher uma religião sem a interferência do governo ou de qualquer outra seita religiosa que se classifique como oficial). / John Milton (1608 - 1674) is known not only for his epic Paradise Lost, but also as one of the great theorists and polemicists of the period of the English Civil Wars. Its main theme is the problem of freedom in a kingdom that has become a tyranny of kings and religious potentates, where the subject was not properly represented by his sovereign; according to Milton, as the king was no longer the right representative of the kingdom, he should no longer perform his duties, requiring the deposition and in some extreme cases, the regicide (as argued by him); thus, the proposed solution along with other anti-royalist pamphleteers, who never reached Milton´s rhetoric and the theoretical boldness is the emergence of an English republic. From now on, the true representative of the government should be the people, specifically the commonwealth, made up of individuals able to master the passions that can turn them into slaves and live according to the will of reason and prudence. The Freedom of the Republic takes place within this commonwealth, where its members can exercise civil liberty (in which the individual can live with peace of mind provided if it complies with the laws of the Republic), domestic freedom (where you can choose what kind education you want to have, who are the people you want to relate, etc.) and religious freedom (the ability to choose a religion without interference from the government or any other religious sect that classify them as \"official\").

John Milton (1608 1674) é conhecido não só como o poeta do épico Paraíso perdido, mas também como um dos grandes teóricos e polemistas do período das Guerras Civis Inglesas. Seu principal tema é o problema da liberdade em um reino que se transformou segundo ele em uma tirania de reis e potentados religiosos, onde o súdito não era mais adequadamente representado por seu soberano; de acordo com Milton, como o rei não era mais o representante justo do reino, ele não deveria mais exercer as suas funções, sendo necessária a sua deposição e, em alguns casos extremos, o regicídio (como foi defendido pelo próprio poeta); assim, a solução proposta junto com outros panfletários anti-realistas, que nunca atingiram a riqueza retórica e a ousadia teórica de Milton é o surgimento de uma república inglesa, inspirada nos moldes ciceronianos e de clara influência secular-humanista. A partir de agora, o verdadeiro representante do governo deve ser o povo, mais precisamente a commonwealth, formada por indivíduos capazes de dominar as paixões que os podem transformá-los em escravos e viver de acordo com a vontade da razão e da prudência. A liberdade interior dos membros desta república se dá dentro desta commonwealth, onde eles podem exercer a liberdade civil (em que o indivíduo pode viver com tranqüilidade desde que respeite as leis da república), a liberdade doméstica (em que se pode escolher qual é o tipo de educação que pretende ter, quais são as pessoas com quem pretende se relacionar, etc.) e a liberdade religiosa (a possibilidade de escolher uma religião sem a interferência do governo ou de qualquer outra seita religiosa que se classifique como oficial). / John Milton (1608 - 1674) is known not only for his epic Paradise Lost, but also as one of the great theorists and polemicists of the period of the English Civil Wars. Its main theme is the problem of freedom in a kingdom that has become a tyranny of kings and religious potentates, where the subject was not properly represented by his sovereign; according to Milton, as the king was no longer the right representative of the kingdom, he should no longer perform his duties, requiring the deposition and in some extreme cases, the regicide (as argued by him); thus, the proposed solution along with other anti-royalist pamphleteers, who never reached Milton´s rhetoric and the theoretical boldness is the emergence of an English republic. From now on, the true representative of the government should be the people, specifically the commonwealth, made up of individuals able to master the passions that can turn them into slaves and live according to the will of reason and prudence. The Freedom of the Republic takes place within this commonwealth, where its members can exercise civil liberty (in which the individual can live with peace of mind provided if it complies with the laws of the Republic), domestic freedom (where you can choose what kind education you want to have, who are the people you want to relate, etc.) and religious freedom (the ability to choose a religion without interference from the government or any other religious sect that classify them as \"official\").

John Milton, par son œuvre polémique en prose, a exercé une influence importante d’abord sur les colonies américaines, et ensuite aux Etats-Unis. C’est autour de l’interprétation de son statut de Dissenter que se met en place la construction d’une figure d’identification qui traverse les époques, pendant la Révolution et la campagne abolitionniste notamment. Cette thèse cherche à identifier les mécanismes et les moments fondamentaux de cette transmission culturelle, à travers le parcours de plusieurs auteurs américains : le Quaker John Woolman, l’abolitionniste William Garrison, et le Transcendantaliste Ralph Waldo Emerson. On analysera comment l’évolution de la définition du dissent a permis à l’œuvre de Milton d’accompagner différents mouvements intellectuels américains. On verra comment, à partir de racines anglaises, les problématiques soulevées par Milton dans les années 1640 à 1660, ont pu frapper ses lecteurs transatlantiques comme étant pertinentes pour leur époque, et comment l’œuvre en prose de Milton a pu participer à la définition de la désobéissance civile. / : John Milton in his prose works had a deep influence in North America, first in the colonies, and then in the United States. His status as a Dissenter, subject to many interpretations, enabled him to remain relevant throughout the different stages of American history, allowing actors from the American Revolution or the abolitionist campaign to identify with him and his works. This dissertation aims at identifying the mechanisms and stages of this form of cultural transmission, through the study of several American authors: the Quaker John Woolman, the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, and the Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Rooted in the English Civil War, the issues raised by Milton between 1640 and 1660 nonetheless strike a chord within his American readers as germane to their time. This work shall also investigate how Milton’s prose work, through the shifting definitions of Dissent, directly influenced the concept of civil disobedience.

This dissertation explores the influence of Reformation representational anxiety on early seventeenth-century poetic depictions of Christ. I study the poetic shift from physical to metaphorical portrayals of Christ that occurred after the English Reformation infused religious symbols and visual images with transgressive power. Contextualizing the juncture between visual and verbal representation, I examine the poetry alongside historical artifacts including paternosters, a painted glass window, an emblem, sermons, and the account of a state trial in order to trace signs of sensory “loss” in the verse of John Donne, George Herbert, Aemilia Lanyer, and John Milton. The introduction provides a historical and poetic overview of sixteenth-century influences on religious verse. The first chapter contrasts Donne’s sermons—which vividly describe Christ—with his poems, in which Christ’s face is often obscured or avoided. In the chapter on George Herbert's The Temple, I show how Herbert’s initial, physical portraits of Christ increasingly give way to metaphorical images as the book progresses, paralleling the Reformation’s internalization of images. The third chapter shows that Aemilia Lanyer’s Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum makes use of pastoral conventions to fashion Christ as a shepherd-spouse, the divine object of desire. In the final chapter I argue that three poems from John Milton’s 1645 volume can be read as containing signs of Milton’s emerging Arianism. Depictions of Christ in the poetry of Donne, Herbert, Lanyer, and Milton reveal the period’s contestation over images; the sensory strain of these metaphorical representations results in memorable, vivid verse.

This thesis examines Josef Jungmann's translation of John Milton's Paradise Lost. Josef Jungmann was one of the leading figures of the Czech National Revival and translated Milton 's poem between the years 1800 and 1804. The thesis covers Jungmann's theoretical model of translation and presents Jungmann's motives for translation of Milton's epic poem. The paper also describes the aims Jungmann had with his translation and whether he has achieved them. The reception Jungmann's translation received after it was published and its significance for the Czech literature is also discussed. This thesis is based on existing works cited in the bibliography and aspires to extend them. Primarily, this thesis focuses on detailed translation analysis of how Jungmann's translation compares prosodically, lexically and stylistically to the original. The main focus of the lexical analysis are neologisms that John Milton introduced in Paradise Lost and aims to find how Jungmann, who is widely considered as one of the foremost innovators of the Czech language, was able to translate them into Czech. There are two key points - lexical correctness and potential inspiration for his neologisms. Key words: Josef Jungmann, John Milton, Czech National Revival, neologisms

Foreword This paper will be of value in answering continuing questions regarding John Milton's position on war and peace. The questions continue and are valid because Milton's works, as considered in the paper, offer support for both pro-war and pro-peace interpretations. The paper also addresses a middle-ground interpretation-that Milton's position can best be understood in light of the legal theories of Hugo Grotius, the seventeenth-century Dutch scholar who is generally accepted as the father of modern international law. The works considered include, among others, the Nativity Ode, the sonnets, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes (including post 9/11 controversy involving its alleged endorsement of terrorism), Christian Doctrine, and Milton's infrequently cited History of Britain. No ultimate answers are suggested except that more than three hundred years of Milton scholarship have left little unexplored regarding Milton's views on war and peace. Milton will always be known for his admiration of soldiers, particularly his employer, Oliver Cromwell, and for his military imagery, particularly in Paradise Lost. He will also be known as a man who lived in a time of constant warfare, and yet who valued and sought individual inner peace.

In his Dialogue on the State of a Christian Man (1597), William Perkins articulated the popular early-modern understanding that the individual is a "double person" organised under "spiritual" and "temporal" regiments. In the one, he is a person "under Christ" and must endeavour to become Christ-like; in the other, he is a person "in respect of" others and bound to fulfil his duties towards them. This early-modern self, governed by relationships and the obligations they entail, was profoundly vulnerable to the formative influence of speech, for relationships themselves were in part created and sustained through social dialogue. Similarly, the individual could hope to become "a person...under Christ" only by hearing spiritual speech - Scripture preached or read, or the "secret soule-whisperings" of the Spirit. The capacity of speech to effect real and lasting change in the auditor was a commonplace in seventeenth-century England: the conscious crafting of identity, dramatised by Stephen Greenblatt in Renaissance Self-Fashioning, occurred daily in domestic and social transactions, in the exchange of civilities, the use of apostrophe, and strategies of praise. It happened when friends or strangers met, when host greeted guest, or the signatory to a letter penned vocatives that defined his addressee. It lacked a sense of high drama but was nonetheless calculated and effective. Speaking Selves proposes that examining the impact of speech upon the "double person" not only contributes to our understanding of selfhood in the seventeenth century, but also, and more importantly, leads to new insights into some of that century�s greatest literary artefacts: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. The first chapter turns to conduct manuals and conversion narratives, to speech-act theory and discourse analysis, and draws out those verbal strategies that contributed to the organisation of social and spiritual selves. Chapter 2 turns to Paradise Lost and traces the Father�s gradual revelation to the Son, through apostrophe, how he is to reflect, how enact the divine being whose visible and verbal expression he is. Chapter 3 discusses advice on address behaviour in seventeenth-century marriage treatises; it reveals the positive contribution of generous apostrophe and verbal mirroring to Adam and Eve�s Edenic marriage. The conversational dyads in heaven and prelapsarian Eden enact positive identities for their collocutors. Satan, however, begetting himself by diabolical speech-act, discovers the ability of words to dismantle the identity of others. Chapter 4 traces the development of his deceptive strategies, drawing attention to his wilful misrepresentation of social identity as a means to pervert the spiritual identity of his collocutor. The final chapter explores the reorganisation of the complex social-spiritual person in the postlapsarian world. We watch the protagonist of Samson discriminate between the many voices that attempt to impose upon him their own understanding of selfhood. Drawing on spiritual autobiographies as structurally and thematically analogous to Milton�s drama, this final chapter traces the inward plot of Samson as its fallen hero redefines identity and rediscovers the "intimate impulse" of the Spirit that alone can complete the reorganisation of the spiritual self.