| This dissertation applies to Milton the questions and methodology of some recent feminist efforts to recover the Bible from patriarchy. It addresses what has been called the "problem of patriarchy,"--the possibility that readers, affected by an immersion in patriarchal discourse, have restricted the parameters of their interpretations. When is patriarchal bias endemic to the text and when it is the result of, in Mieke Bal's words, the "ideological position of the scholar?" Milton's major poems, like the Bible, often may be read against their putative patriarchal grain.;Each of the chapters in this project sets Milton's texts in relation to a different but related aspect of spirituality to which feminist theology speaks. Woman's association with Original Sin has kept her from claiming a share in the imago dei since Augustine. Chapter one on Milton's Muse argues that an ethos of Original Blessing, over Original Sin, drives Paradise Lost. As God's self-revelatory Spirit, she encompasses the Hebraic understanding of a God immanent in creation who confirms creation's goodness. The second chapter, also on Paradise Lost, centers on a frame of mind subtly urged upon women who seek holiness: the posture of mourning and penitence. But Eve's suicide gesture departs from these conventions of women's heroism (especially current in the Renaissance) and Books 11 and 12 sanction women's self-development. Chapter three shows Paradise Regained to "re-image" redemption so as to include women's agency. The focus moves away from the cross, a single act by a male savior, replacing it with a different pathos: the stuggle to receive and discern God's revelations. My reading of Dalila's defense, chapter four, joins Samson's wife to a company of biblical femme fortes, including Judith, Esther, and Jael. Chapter five elucidates the political utopian vision of post-Christian feminist theology as Comus voices it.;The project does not aim to deem either the Bible or Milton feminist. But just as the Bible speaks to the marginalization of women by virtue of what feminist theologians view as its prophetic principle of "full and authentic humanity," so might Milton's readers find the basis of a similar principle within his departures from classical Christian theology. |
