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34 Paradise Lost, the Bible, and Biblical Epic
Get accessBarbara K. Lewalski is Professor of History and Literature at Harvard University, where she has taught for many years. Some publications include: Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric (Princeton, 1979), The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography (Blackwell, 2000, 2003); Paradise Lost and the Rhetoric of Literary forms (Princeton, 1985), and an original spelling/punctuation edition of Paradise Lost (Blackwell, 2007). She is co-editor of vol. iii (Milton’s Shorter Poems ) for a multi-volume edition of Milton’s Works (Oxford University Press).
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Published:12 November 2015
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Abstract
From patristic times until the seventeenth century, more than a hundred mostly forgotten biblical poems in several languages made some claim to epic status. Milton’s Paradise Lost has not only endured but has become a classic of western literature. This chapter asks why, especially since this poem emerged in a Protestant culture marked by great anxiety about altering or adding to the biblical text. Milton’s project succeeded in part because he treated the biblical text with freedom, inventing scenes with no biblical basis and departing readily from orthodox understandings of texts and doctrines. Milton drew readily on the scriptures in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and the Geneva and KJB English translations, but gave priority to the indwelling illumination of the Spirit of God over the literal biblical text. Lewalski examines how this is manifested in his epic.
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