Milton and the Reformation aesthetics of the passion / by Erin Henriksen.

• Superior document: Studies in the history of Christian traditions, v. 145
• Author: Henriksen, Erin.
• Year of Publication: 2010
• Language: English
• Series: Studies in the history of Christian traditions ; v. 145.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (224 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Scholarship on Milton's view of God the Father and the Son has focused on the author's theological beliefs. For Milton, these are equally artistic questions, and to address them this study considers the precedents in Christian art that provide models for portraying the divine within a reformed context. Milton's revision of the passion tradition in his short poems of 1645 and his later epic poems substitutes a living, obedient and subservient Son in place of late medieval representations of the crucifixion. His alternative passion unfolds through a poetic vocabulary of fragmentation, omission, and restoration, drawing on iconoclasm as an artistic strategy. This study addresses the long-standing question about Milton's avoidance of the crucifixion and contributes to the broader study of his reformed poetics.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Milton's poetics of absence and restoration -- Strategies for depicting the Son in Christian art -- Iconoclasm as an artistic strategy -- The post-Reformation passion -- Milton's alternative passion -- "No death!" : rewriting the Protestant elegy in Milton's early poems -- The art of omission and supplement in Paradise lost -- Paradise regained and the art of the incarnation -- Rewriting the Christus patiens tradition in Samson agonistes -- Epilogue: Broken and whole.