The Word Made Flesh: The Bible, Gender, and Embodiment in Milton's Poetry

Abstract

Arguing for the marginality of the Bible in current studies of John Milton might strike some readers as absurd. That Milton read and engaged with the Bible in his writings is clearly evident, and the Bible’s centrality to his work is readily granted by almost every scholar working in the field. So obvious is his biblical engagement, that his particular method of reading the Bible and re-imagining of it in his poetry is a subject that scholars have surprisingly neglected. Drawing upon the most recent developments within the history of reading, my thesis will seek to broaden the current field of research beyond Milton’s use of the Bible purely as a literary source in order to investigate Milton’s particular wayof reading the Bible.

Beginning with a theoretical and historical approach, Chapter 1 will investigate the cultural and religious contexts of Bible-reading and interpretation in seventeenth-century England. My thesis will then turn to consider three of Milton’s major poetic works in turn: Comus, Paradise Lost, and Samson Agonistes. Adhering to the overarching theme of the female embodied, the following chapters will present individual case studies. Chapter 2 demonstrates that, in Comus, Milton “confers” the Lady’s plight with that of Dinah in the Bible, a pairing that has not been hitherto recognized. In Chapter 3, I argue for a re-reading of Satan’s first experience of pain during the War in Heaven in light of Milton’s engagement with the biblical motif of labouring pain in Paradise Lost and its postlapsarian significance. Continuing an investigation of the overarching themes of female speech and corporeality in Milton’s major poetry, Chapter 4 investigates Dalila’s speech in Samson Agonistesand its allusion to the biblical metaphor of milk and honey in the Bible. Centring my research within a biblical framework, my thesis seeks to take the focus of current studies of Milton and the Bible back one step in Milton’s process of composition, from his writing and his readers, to the contemplative and introspective processes behind his own reading and re-imagining of the Bible. This thesis will thereby demonstrate Milton’s particular method of reading and re-imagining the Bible.