Looking Into Providences : : Designs and Trials in ‹em›Paradise Lost‹/em› / / Raymond Waddington.

• VerfasserIn: Waddington, Raymond,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2017]; ©2012
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (328 p.)

What is the role of providence in Paradise Lost? In Looking into Providences, Raymond B. Waddington provides the first examination of this engaging subject. He explores the variety of implicit organizational structures or 'designs' that govern Paradise Lost, and looks in-depth at the 'trials,' or testing situations, which require interpretation, choice, and action from its characters.Waddington situates the poem within the context of providentialism's centrality to seventeenth-century thought and life, arguing that Milton's own conception of providence was deeply influenced by the theology of Jacob Arminius. Using Milton's Arminian conception of free will, he then looks at the providential trials experienced by angels and humans. Finally, the work explores the ways in which providentialism infiltrates various kinds of discourse, ranging from military to medical, and from political to philosophical.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations and Tables -- Note on Texts and Abbreviations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter One. Providence and Providences -- Chapter Two. Memory and the Art of Composition -- Chapter Three. Satan's Machiavellian Enterprise: Force and Fraud -- Chapter Four. Providence Working: The Son and the Adversary -- Chapter Five. Possessing Eve: Tobias and Sarah in Eden -- Chapter Six. Murder One: Blood, Soul, and Mortalism -- Chapter Seven. Providential Design: The Death and Conversion of Adam -- Afterword -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index