Reason in Seventeenth-Century Millenarian England: The Example of John Milton’s Paradise Lost

Year 2021, Volume: 31 Issue: 2, 491 - 523, 06.12.2021

Kyriaki Asıatıdou

https://doi.org/10.26650/LITERA2021-907720

Abstract

Milton’s England experiences military conflict, sociopolitical change, religious reform, and scientific progress. Seeking stability in a world of uncertainty, a substantial part of seventeenth-century English literature expresses millennial expectations, faith in the birth of a new and better humanity. Paradise Lost is a millenarian work that advocates humanity’s perfection through the proper use of reason. The latter has as prerequisite man’s self-knowledge—within a philosophical context—and union with God, Who is the supreme reason (Logos), within a religious context. Specifically, this article discusses Milton’s definition of human reason and its implications for humanity’s perception of reality/truth, through the examination of specific imageries reflecting four different levels of human reason in a hierarchical order: the lowest/first level, the low/second level, the high/third level, and the highest/fourth level. Imageries of sterility, erotic pervasion, ugliness, restrainment, concealment, sorrow, and power relationships mirror human reason in the first and second levels. Human reason in the first and second levels is corrupt and inadequate to perceive reality because it is based on the physical senses (natural reason). In contrast, imageries of fertility, erotic innocence, beauty, excess, revelation, bliss, and love relationships reflect human reason in the third and fourth levels. In the third and fourth levels, human reason incorporates love and creative imagination beyond the senses to endow humanity with a deep and comprehensive understanding of reality. The discussion of Milton’s imageries of human reason and its redemptive function for humanity is mainly built on Christian philosophy.

Keywords

Milton, reason, Paradise Lost, millennialism, amillennialism

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