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The Reader of Milton's Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Spring 2009 The Reader of Milton's "Higher Argument" in Paradise Lost Patricia A. Callahan Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Callahan, P. (2009). The Reader of Milton's "Higher Argument" in Paradise Lost (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/377 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE READER OF MILTON’S “HIGHER ARGUMENT” IN PARADISE LOST A Dissertation Submitted to McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Patricia A. Callahan May 2009 Copyright by Patricia A. Callahan 2009 THE READER Of MILTON’S “HIGHER ARGUMENT” IN PARADISE LOST By Patricia A. Callahan Approved March 20, 2009 _______________________________ ______________________________ Albert C. Labriola, Ph.D. Bernard F. Beranek, Ph.D. Professor of English Associate Professor of English Dissertation Director First Reader _______________________________ ______________________________ Anne Brannen, Ph.D. Magali Cornier Michael, Ph.D. Associate Professor of English Professor of English Second Reader Chair, English Department _______________________________ Albert C. Labriola Professor of English Acting Dean, McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts iii ABSTRACT THE READER OF MILTON’S “HIGHER ARGUMENT” IN PARADISE LOST By Patricia A. Callahan May 2009 Dissertation Supervised by Professor Albert C. Labriola Milton has a literary place within the Christian understanding of grace, entangles his reader into Paradise Lost, and embeds a “higher Argument” of an economics of salvation of grace within the text which thus forms a transcendent reader who responds by a choice for the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of mammon. Paradise Lost as a tertiary stage in epic development maintains a grand style, but modern critics have problems with Milton’s God. Autobiographical elements in The Reason of Church- Government indicate Milton’s sense of a divine calling in poetry, but Professors Grierson and Tillyard disagree regarding Milton’s prophetic powers in Paradise Lost, while William Kerrigan, Joseph Wittreich, John S. Hill, and Michael Lieb recognize a sacred calling and elements of the sacred in Milton’s epic. Subsequently, I trace the shifting nuances of grace and follow its development through six historical periods that cover (1) the Old Testament, (2) the New Testament, iv (3) post-Apostolic Period, (4) Patristic, (5) Scholastic eras, and (6) the Arminian heresy and the De Auxiliis controversy in the seventeenth century. John Milton, influenced by St. Augustine, contributes to the grace conversation through Paradise Lost. Five topics concern the transcendent reader: (1) the philosophical shift that occurs in modern philosophy, theology, and later in literary criticism with “the turn toward the subject” anticipated by Milton; (2) reader response theory that develops as a result of the philosophical interest in the subject; (3) PL as an epic experienced as drama enacted within a reader’s mind; (4) the possibility that PL becomes a reflection for a reader to consider grace, responsibility, and salvation; (5) the “higher argument” of PL that includes the economics of grace and salvation. To situate Milton as a theologian, I mark the importance of Christian Doctrine and its relationship to PL, review the qualities of the Puritan sermon that Milton incorporates into PL, and note Milton’s debt to Puritan homilists. Finally, I look into biblical economics and how Milton integrates the economics of grace into his “higher Argument.” v DEDICATION With gratitude I dedicate this dissertation to all believers in education as a life- long pursuit—family, friends, colleagues, and professors—who encouraged me to find in the past the foundation of the present. For all yearning to do something similar: come to the University where the journey challenges but gives understanding, insight, meaning, and perhaps wisdom to face reality. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is the place . in which the intellect may safely range and speculate, sure to find its equal in some antagonist activity, and its judge in the tribunal of truth. It is a place where inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries verified and perfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, and error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, and knowledge with knowledge. J. H. Cardinal Newman, The Idea of a University My interest in John Milton turned significantly in 1993 when I applied to Dr. Albert Labriola’s NEH second summer seminar “Paradise Lost (PL) and the Contemporary Reader.” I feared Milton since I was ill-prepared for a first reading of PL years before and wanted to overcome my anxiety about him. Two reasons therefore motivated my application for this particular seminar offered for high school teachers. I first wanted to understand the epic as a Christian but Protestant text, to know more about its classical and Renaissance antecedents, and to supplement my deficiencies about the English Revolution. Second, in overcoming my problems with PL perhaps I would be a better teacher for my secondary students who could face similar problems. That NEH seminar changed my intellectual focus. So enriching was the seminar that I applied the following year for a grant from the Council for Basic Education to study Milton’s PL along with his Christian Doctrine (CD). Dr. Labriola, the English Department, and Duquesne University offered me their resources to investigate the relationship of the two texts. During that summer’s study my interest in reader response to PL increased theoretically and practically as I read through CD. Both texts led me to question a person’s relationship to the Divine as defined by Milton. I also read Stanley Fish’s Surprised by Sin wherein he argues that readers caught vii up in the text respond with “wayward, fallen responses” that either the narrator or a divine character in the epic reproves or corrects. In their responses, readers, too, are caught in the web of evil Satan spins for Adam and Eve. However, I also asked—could the reader just as easily be surprised by grace, the divine counter attack to Satan’s machinations, as well as sin, since PL also dwells on this happy event? I discovered that reader-response criticism opened up the epic to the contemporary reader working within an interpretative community such as Duquesne’s English Department and offered a possible means to resolve the sin-grace question. As a result of a wager struck with my principal prior to Dr. Labriola’s seminar, my private high school bought me a set of PL paperbacks for a trial class in the epic. I experimentally taught PL during the 1994 spring semester to an honors class of sophomore boys who read more than the brief excerpts offered in AP or Senior English. The following year, the students demanded that more than one class read Milton. Until I left Southern California in 1998, I offered Paradise Lost to two classes of sophomore boys. Although the less advanced class did not progress as quickly through the text as honor students, their responses to a questionnaire indicated that reading PL also made classes in Scripture and church history more meaningful to both groups. My little experiment in reading Milton with these classes offered insight into reader-responses, especially questions posed by students about sin, grace, and man’s relationship to the Divine, but it also taught me the value and need of a classical background for understanding an epic. When the English Department of Duquesne University accepted me into their Ph.D program, both the Department and Dr. Labriola permitted and encouraged me to viii take a detour through the Classics Department to learn about the epic by studying Greek and Latin. I am indebted to my four years with the Classics Department, Dr. Larry Gaichas, Dr. Stephen Newmyer, Dr. Jerry Clack, and Dr. Ann Wilkins, for the opportunity to learn the grammar necessary to read Greek and Roman epics and myths in their original languages and to discover the classical foundation of the epic. Dr. Gaichas gave me a foundation in Latin grammar and the encouragement to pursue additional study in Latin and Greek. The course on the Epic Journey by Dr. Wilkins first suggested the correlation to me between the classical epic and the epic journey each of us writes with our lives, often leaving its presence inscribed in some way on our bodies. Both Dr. Stephen Newmyer’s lectures on mythology, Ovid, and Seneca and Dr. Clack’s lectures on Roman history and Greek drama, Vergil, and Euripides opened classical allusions in PL to many levels of comparisons and meaning that I would not have had without their instruction. I am most grateful to Duquesne University, to the English Department of McAnulty College, and to its Professors who taught and honored the great literary tradition of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth. My appreciation extends especially to Dr. Albert Labriola, chairman of my committee, who introduced me to Milton scholarship with his NEH seminar, supervised my work for CBE, and encouraged me through grave illness, to Dr. Bernard Beranek, my first reader, who supported my forays into classical studies, and to Dr. Anne Brannen, my second reader, who connected Chaucer horizontally and vertically to the period before and the periods after him, particularly the Renaissance, and shared the wisdom of medieval spirituality with her students. I value three additional members of the English Department: Dr ix Frederick Newberry let me roam among colonial Americans in search of Milton’s influence in early America and especially the Founding Fathers; Dr.
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