『실락원』 에 나타난 밀턴의 공화주의 = Milton`s Republicanism in Paradise Lost

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Despite its epic magnificence and religious spirituality, Paradise Lost still retains Milton's political thoughts. In the epic the poet's republicanism is expressed mainly as a form of anti-monarchism. One problem is that God's idealized Heaven cannot be a republican world, since the Creator is essentially an absolute monarch, while His creatures are governed by His absolute will. If the poet accepts God, he should accept His absolute monarchism, arguably even its earthly counterpart. Another problem is, Satan's republican (though disguised) discourse against God's monarchism seems to reflect the poet's republican resistance against earthly monarchism. This spurious parallelism leads many readers, including most of 19th-century romantic poets and critics, to sympathize with Satan or to pass judgment with Blake that the poet was "of the devil's party without knowing it."
In Paradise Lost, though God's Heaven shows much of what happens on the human world, the poet provides a basic difference between the two worlds. Only God in Heaven rules absolutely as monarch, whereas in the human world kings, themselves creatures, are given no right to absolute monarchy. The poet therefore neither supports human kingship nor resists God's monarchy. As for Satan's republican discourse, we need take into account the historical context in which the epic was written. The earlier books of the epic, at least, would have been written before the Restoration, as many of the poet's early biographers agree. The poet can then be seen to attack both the autocratic tendency of Cromwellian rule and the Royalists' challenge to the Protectorate. This interpretation can be achieved only when we consider the historical context of the epic and the superficiality of Satan's republican discourse. Milton's republicanism can be extended to the relationship between Adam and Eve, which is based upon what is called an ontological republicanism. For Milton, his loss of the English republic is a repetitive tragedy of history, the incipiency of which goes back to the loss of Eden.