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Abstract This study begins by examining the interconnections between print and nationalism in John Milton’s prose works in order to demonstrate that Milton’s interest in print—including print-related activities like reading, writing, and publishing—is not simply a byproduct of his vocation. Instead, I argue that Milton consciously registered his reliance on and use of print in writing the nation. Further, I argue that Milton’s writing of the nation is in keeping with a modern definition of nationalism as a unifying cultural construct that wields considerable emotional poignancy despite its lack of ideological specificity. In making this argument, I am adapting a modern definition of nationalism and arguing against scholars who see nationalism as a product of modernity. I organize my dissertation into two sections: the first section, chapters 2 and 3, discusses the confluence of print and nationalism while the second section, chapters 4 and 5, examines Milton’s poems, Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes, as nation-building texts. As chapters 2 and 3 demonstrate, Milton had an acute awareness of the role of print in the public life of the nation, and he shaped his own identity as an author based on his contribution to England’s print culture. In chapters 4 and 5, I look at the ways Milton’s poems suggest a continuation of his commitment to nation-building although the poems were written during the Restoration: a period of time when Milton would have doubted the critical capabilities of his fellow countrymen. Paradise Lost continues the recuperative work undertaken in prose pieces like Eikonoklastes by helping to educate the reader in political reading. In Samson Agonistes, Milton explores the way that the individual and nation are vulnerable to the same sort of corruption which emphasizes the degree to which inward and outward servitude is linked. Yet, neither poem gives up on “nationalism” as a source of individual liberty and positive form of community. Instead, both poems offer an examination of nationalism that balances the nation’s potential with a consideration of the limits and possible abuses of this potential. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2008-09-25 15:22:21.28

To mark its 250th anniversary in 2002, the British Museum decided to make one of the earliest existent depictions of Lilith, or Astarte, its chief acquisition. Called The Burney Relief —after Sidney Burney, who had purchased it in 1935— it was purchased in June 2003 from a Mr Sakamoto at the price of ₤1,500,000. To celebrate its entrance into the museum's collections, it was renamed the “Queen of the Night” by the British Museum (Collon 2005 511). It has been connected to feminine divine and demonic figures, such as Ishtar, Lilith, Astarte, and has been called “Queen of the Underworld” (Collon 2007 50). My thesis looks at these figures of the feminine demonic and the evolution of occult philosophy, and particularly demonology, within Early Modern England, and how demonological studies influenced and were influenced by current sociopolitical climates. Within much occult writing, nonChristian sources (including preChristian philosophy and Hebraic Cabala) were incorporated into the Christian world view, and affected Christian systems of angelic hierarchies and man's place within these hierarchies. English occult thought was influenced by continental writers and philosophers such as Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and Leon Modena. One figure, in particular, featured strongly in many of the demonological writings which were making their way into English occultism: Lilith. When dealing with issues of political and sexual power, Lilith often appears as a focal point for philosophers as they attempt to discover links between gender, demons, and evil. This thesis examines the feminine demonic and the figure of Lilith in the art and literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, looking both at the occult practioners John Dee, Simon Forman, and Edward Kelley, and at the literary traditions that came out of that occult philosophy. It explores how Lilith manifests in literature which tries to address anxieties surrounding the feminine demonic and sexuality, and the implications of a demonic, political inversion. Lilith and the feminine demonic are seen to be relevant to the works of Ben Jonson, James VI and I, Thomas Dekker, Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and John Selden, with a final chapter examining the evidence of Lilith in Milton's poetry, and in particular, Milton's Paradise Lost.

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There have been many studies of keywords in Paradise Lost. Over the last fifty or so years words such as �wander�, �lapse�, �error�, �fruit�, �balmy�, �fall�, �hands�, among others, have attracted critics� attention. The present enquiry brings under scrutiny three linked keywords which have up to now escaped notice. These are the words �bliss�, �delight�, and �pleasure�. The fundamental proposition of the thesis is that Milton does not use these words haphazardly or interchangeably in his epic poem (though in other of his poetic productions he is by no means as fastidious). On the contrary, he self-consciously distinguishes among the three terms, assigning to each its own particular �theatre of operations�. Meant by this is that each keyword is selectively referred to a separate structural division of the epic, thus, �bliss� has reference specifically to Heaven (or to the earthly paradise viewed as a simulacrum of Heaven), �delight� to the earthly paradise in Eden and to the prelapsarian condition nourished by it; while �pleasure�, whose signification is ambiguous, refers in its favourable sense (which is but little removed from �delight�) to the Garden and the sensations associated with it, and in its unfavourable one to postlapsarian sensations and to the fallen characters. Insofar as the three structural divisions taken into account (Hell is not) are hierarchically organized in the epic, so too are the three keywords that answer to them. Moreover, in relating keywords to considerations of structure, the thesis breaks new ground in Paradise Lost studies.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Western Theological Seminary, 1987. / Includes abstract and vitae. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 214-225).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina Wilmington, 2008. / Title from PDF title page (October 20, 2008) Includes bibliographical references (p. 38-40)

Thesis--Freiburg i. Br. / Cover title. Vita. Literaturverzeichnis: p. 139.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Inaug.--diss.--Berlin. / Vita.