God and Humanity in John Milton's Paradise Lost

Abstract

This thesis concerns questions of being in good relation, with others and the created world, in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which shows interdependent and positive self-other relationships in Eden, as well as a mutual, constructive, and enduring relationship between God and humanity. Working with Lee Morrissey’s suggestion that “subjectivity requires difference, not, as Adam had assumed, similarity” (“Eve’s Otherness” 340), my thesis not only suggests that Milton’s poem esteems relationships that recognize others as welcome additions to the self – hence, Milton’s “other self” (8.450, 10.128) – rather than subtractions or even self-absorptions, but also explores what specific differences emerge across relationships (e.g., God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit versus Satan, Sin, and Death) and how they might fulfill or, conversely, upend God’s plan for His original created good to continue as such. I argue that within Paradise Lost, both earthly and divine self-identity develops and becomes fully realized only through relationships with others. And further, because the good in the created world of Paradise Lost comes from humanity’s relationship with God, this relationship is the basis of all relationships that are good.