College Honors Program

How Catholic are Milton’s Angels? An Analysis of Angelic Substance and Hierarchy in Paradise Lost in the Light of Catholic Angelology

Date of Creation

5-31-2023

Document Type

Campus Access Only

Department

English

First Advisor

Melissa Schoenberger

Abstract

John Milton is a literary prophet whose warnings of tyranny, falsehood, and intellectual serfdom continue to reverberate the same solemn caution that they first did in the seventeenth century. The revelations that Milton has left us, in poem and polemic, are often viewed through the sister-lenses of theology and religion. Milton’s Puritanical stance on matters ecclesiastical have been scrutinized copiously by Miltonists and Renaissance scholars. Peripheral theological topics such as pneumatology, meanwhile, remain exceptionally fertile ground for new examination and discussion. This paper, then, extends into the theological periphery and reconsiders Milton’s relation to Catholic Angelology—it examines the two foremost topics of angelological speculation: substance and hierarchy, and explores the extent to which Milton accommodates Catholic Angelological concepts in his angelic epic, Paradise Lost.

Comments

Reader: John Gavin, S.J.

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