Greek Tragedy and Hebrew Antiquity in John Milton’s 1671 Poems

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 5 examines Milton’s detailed engagements with Reformation poetics that render tragedy a precise philosophical and theological resource. In his 1671 poems Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes Milton responds directly to Reformed poetics, pointing methodically to the limits of tragedy, exposing the extent to which divinity and its agencies exceed and confound the philosophical vision of the Poetics. In Paradise Regain’d, for instance, Milton’s Jesus relocates the birth of tragedy from Athens to the Levant, claiming that tragedy belongs first to the Hebrews. Greek tragedy is thus derivative and degraded; Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristotle, to say nothing of the traditions to which they gave rise, appropriated tragic forms and resources from Hebrew antiquity. Milton advances Pareus’ theses on tragedy and Scripture beyond the scope of Pareus’ own text, arguing for a more comprehensive Christian archive of tragedy as well as a daring account of tragedy’s sacred origins.