John Milton's Incarnational Poetics: The Roles of Mary and Christ in Paradise Regained

This work argues that Milton's Incarnational Poetics or Logocentrism is nowhere more evident than in "Paradise Regained", a poem which serves as a meditation upon the Four Gospels, most particularly the Gospel of St. John, the fullest theological pronouncement upon the Son's Divinity. Most critics of John Milton's "Paradise Regained" emphasize the relative humanity of the Son while ignoring the Messianic attributes which uniquely define His Divinity. Milton's Christology has been subject to increasing scrutiny as scholars attempt to expose his supposed unorthodox and heretical propensities; yet a careful analysis of this marginalized poem reveals that Milton is, as J.H. Adamson puts it, a "Singer of the Logos", a poet whose allegiance to the Scriptural Christ transforms and infuses his art with an evangelical and poetic authority. Throughout the poem, the mystical union of Christ's divine and human natures are fully explored, with each temptation confirming the complete self-sufficiency of the Son as He rejects anything and everything which threatens to avert men's eyes away from Him. Type gives way to antitype in "Paradise Regained", the final apotheosis of the Christian heroic tradition and Milton's most profound explication upon the meaning and mystery of salvation.