Anxiety in Eden: A Kierkegaardian Reading of Paradise Lost

ISBN-13: 9780195072044 / Angielski / Twarda / 1992 / 224 str.

John S. Tanner

Opis

Tanner uses Kierkegaard's thought, particularly his theory of anxiety, to enrich and enliven a bold new reading of Milton's Paradise Lost. He argues that for Milton and Kierkegaard, the path to sin and to salvation lies through anxiety, that both the poet and the philosopher include anxiety--along with pain, suffering, and paradox--within the compass of paradise. The first half of the work explores anxiety in Eden before the Fall, providing fresh perspectives on such issues as free will, the problem of a fall before the Fall, original sin, the etiology of evil, and prelapsarian knowledge. The second half examines anxiety after the Fall, offering original insights into such issues as the demonic personality, remorse, despair, and faith. Taken as a whole, Tanner's study provides a coherent new existentialist reading of Paradise Lost. Further, though intended primarily as a work of literary criticism, the book touches on matters of broad philosophical, theological, and simply human interest--such as the nature of freedom, knowledge, sin, the self, and salvation.

Recenzje

The thoroughness of the texts themselves and the thoroughness of the comparison between them means, in fact, that this study can stand in its own right as a useful introduction to the doctrine of the Fall. The book is, finally, commendably free of jargon: where issues themselves are so complex and delicate the critic has no need to inflate language in order to make important points.