The Analysis Of Salvation Theme In Milton's Three Epics

John Milton, who is an outstanding poet in England in the 17th century, creates three epics Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonists that all of these become the treasure in literature. His marvelous art of poetry profit from the classical art and his lofty thought comes from his zeal for the religion. The charming of Milton's works is accepted all over the world. However, when people analyze and appreciate his epics, they tend to choose one of them as text, and they always make research from religious perspective rather than treating these three epics as a whole text and analyzing it systematically.Salvation thought is the main contents of his thoughts, and more important, it is reflected in his works, especially in his epics, which constitute the salvation theme. And salvation thought is also applied in social activities, which constitute the salvation spirits. Milton implants Puritanism into humanism, and he cares and educates people from the perspective of salvation, which make the soul of people purer and nobler.He is not satisfied with his own well-off and wants to help the others. Therefore, he takes part in the revolution and works for it day and night, till lose his sight. In this way, his condition is amazing bad. But, the style of his long poem can make the others nobler. In viewing of these, we are attempting to probe into his salvation topic reflected in his three long poems Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonists from the points of religion, cultural anthropology and so on. After intensive reading and analyzing the text, we know that Paradise Lost mainly discusses the reason of salvation, that is, degeneration and original sin; Paradise Regained mainly tells us how to move to the salvation road; Samson Agonistes mainly explores how to achieve salvation from the perspective of humanity. These three epics contain profound humanistic care under the cover of mysterious religious theology. This care is so broad that is involved in the past, the present and the future of human being. Milton reflects over the past to learn lessons, conveys his sympathy on the present to think over how to fight against the present world and evil things, and also he is filled with confidence about the future of human being to predict that human being would be salved eventually. Whatever perspectives we take to appreciate his works, such as, his background, religious belief, education, traditional culture, social practice, thoughts, we should admit this fact that his works have some relations with salvation theme, including his famous epics.This thesis makes an analysis of the salvation theme in Milton's three epics from the perspective of religion, philosophy and other theories. In this thesis, interpretation and examples are combined in the methodology. This thesis carries out an analysis of salvation thoughts, theme and reasons about Milton's three epics comprehensively and thoroughly to help master the significance of Milton's epics and make few contribution to analyze Milton's epics, as well as his other works.