Divine Providence And Religious Cartography In Milton's Paradise Lost

As Milton's most brilliant classic,Paradise Lost explores the Christian theological themes in a grand epic narrative.The scholars of British and American literature have explored it from the perspectives of complex historical context,blank verse pattern,solemn biblical style and magnificent religious imagination.However,there is no study on the relation between Divine Providence and Religious Cartography in Paradise Lost,which is the origin of this study.As an indispensable core concept of Christian theology,Divine Providence emphasizes the miracle of God's creation and the eternal maintenance of cosmic order,which has been studied by John Milton in his De Doctrina Christiana.He declares that Divine Providence is God's government to all things in the Universe,and it can be divided into two categories: Special Providence which means God's government to special souls and General Providence which signifies God's holy maintenance to the order of the world.The core principle of Divine Providence is that God conserves,governs and takes care of all his creatures and guides them to the final good which is the final purpose of this Universe.From another perspective,religious map is the spatial metaphorical representation of God's creation,providing a visual cosmic model for all creatures to get rid of fetters of the secular world and access to the heaven of final good,for their reference and worship.In this sense,map and religion have the same final purpose,which provides a solid logical support for this study.In addition to the introduction and conclusion,the main body of this study is divided into three chapters.The first chapter focuses on the creation of Divine Providence and the construction of religious map in Paradise Lost.Divine Providence and the world are created by God at the same time.The world composed of physical creatures and holy natural laws constitutes a stereo dynamic religious map.The second chapter explores the development of Divine Providence and the space division of this religious map in Paradise Lost.God's motivation to the good and his governance to theevil are both embodied in the binary statute of the religious space which consists of the heavenly space on the top of this map and the hellish space in Chaos at the bottom.Thus the Christian ethics of good and evil are depicted in the graphical representation.The third chapter deals with the result of Divine Providence and the destination of this religious map in Paradise Lost,which is the final good.In the core conceptual metaphor of Divine Providence,God's temptations and miracles are effective ways to guide his creatures to the final good,and all elements in the map of Paradise Lost develop towards the ultimate religious purpose.It is found that Milton visualizes Divine Providence through the spatial representation of religious map,guiding the souls suffering from material desires to reach the paradise of final good and eternal life.