A01=Michael E. Bryson
agonistes
Apophatic Theology
Author_Michael E. Bryson
Category=DS
Category=DSB
Category=DSC
Category=QRA
christiana
Divine Impulsion
Divine Similitude
doctrina
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Error Lead
Eternal Coeternal Beam
Hail Holy Light
Henry's Article
Henry’s Article
Human Innocence
Intimate Impulse
John Rumrich
Joseph Wittreich
lost
Milton Criticism
Milton Quarterly
Milton's Jesus
Milton's Version
miltons
Milton’s Jesus
Milton’s Version
Moabite Stone
negative
Negative Theology
paradise
Paradise Lost
Paradise Regained
poetry
regained
samson
Samson Agonistes
Samson's Act
Samson’s Act
Satan's Temptations
Satan’s Temptations
Son's Rejection
Son’s Rejection
Synecdochic Theory
Young Men
Product details
- ISBN 9781138247123
- Weight: 453g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 26 Aug 2016
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Basing his contention on two different lines of argument, Michael Bryson posits that John Milton-possibly the most famous 'Christian' poet in English literary history-was, in fact, an atheist. First, based on his association with Arian ideas (denial of the doctrine of the Trinity), his argument for the de Deo theory of creation (which puts him in line with the materialism of Spinoza and Hobbes), and his Mortalist argument that the human soul dies with the human body, Bryson argues that Milton was an atheist by the commonly used definitions of the period. And second, as the poet who takes a reader from the presence of an imperious, monarchical God in Paradise Lost, to the internal-almost Gnostic-conception of God in Paradise Regained, to the absence of any God whatsoever in Samson Agonistes, Milton moves from a theist (with God) to something much more recognizable as a modern atheist position (without God) in his poetry. Among the author's goals in The Atheist Milton is to account for tensions over the idea of God which, in Bryson's view, go all the way back to Milton's earliest poetry. In this study, he argues such tensions are central to Milton's poetry-and to any attempt to understand that poetry on its own terms.
Michael Bryson is Associate Professor of English at California State University, Northridge. He is the author of The Tyranny of Heaven: Milton's Rejection of God as King. He has also written on the relationship between sacrifice, death, and community formation in the book of Judges (in Religion & Literature).
