Meditations on Mediation: John Milton and the Muslim Jesus

Abstract

This paper explores theological and textual confluences between John Milton and Islamic theology. Rather than argue for the direct influence of Islamic sources on Milton, a series of historical and intellectual contexts are adduced which mediated contact between English and Islamic (especially Ottoman) cultures: the Mediterranean trade conducted by the Levant Company, the seventeenth-century acceleration and institutionalization of Arabic scholarship, and theological currents including anti-Trinitarianism and the discourse of monotheism. These contexts furnish a perspective from which to read Milton's Paradise Regained as part of a global tradition of literary elaborations upon the life of Jesus that also includes accounts of the sayings and stories of Jesus in Arabic sources, a corpus collectively termed “The Muslim Jesus” by Tarif Khalidi. While Milton's theology takes account of Jesus's Sonship and role as mediator, his poetics displace these dimensions in favour of human ones consonant with Islamic tradition.