The Word Made Text: An Exercise of Christly Reading (in) “Paradise Regain'd“

Paradise Regain’d is Milton’s brief epic, describing when Jesus is thrice tempted by Satan in the Wilderness. This poem’s central question is what it means to be the Son of God. Indeed, the nature of Jesus’ status as incarnate divinity has engendered a great critical schism between those who see an imperfectly human Son of God, and those who see Milton’s Jesus as a rigidly perfect being. Yet both critical perspectives assume that the poem works on a passive audience, one that sits idly as the dramatic action or didactic ‘meaning’ is narrated to it. Milton’s ideal reader, however, is the opposite: as an active participant in the reading process, he or she constantly reinterprets the events and conclusions of any argument. I argue for seeing the Jesus of Paradise Regain’d as the epitome of this ideal, and that the act of reading the poem acts as a whetstone for readers’ interpretive skill and individual agency. I begin by exploring theological background: the Protestant Reformation’s identification of the Bible as manifested divine. I combine this investigation with an examination of Milton’s Areopagitica in order to illustrate his conception of the individual, choice, and the value of discernment. I trace this value through the poem, especially when it contrasts Satan’s recourses to twisted logic. The difference between Jesus’ copiously figurative and Satan’s limitedly literal reading thus sheds light on Milton’s conception of history, the status of classical culture, and provides the basis for a liberal subject free from coercive laws