MILTON AGAINST HUMILITY?: MILTON’S PARADISE EPICS AND A POETICS OF HUMILITY

This paper sketches an account of Milton’s poetics of humility in his epic poems, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Resisting an argument that Milton rejects humility in favor of classical values, I argue that Milton retrieves dimensions of humility that were eclipsed by Reformation emphases. This paper explores ways that Milton diverges from the account of humility held by his contemporaries, examining a handful of notable instances of early modern humble discourse. It demonstrates a path that contemporary virtue ethics forges to wrest humility from its biographical entanglement with self-negation, offering a model that resonates with Milton’s presentation of humility as the absence of the vices of pride. This account makes room for the picture of humility Milton sketches to answer the problem of pride without the embrace of abjection, finding in Paradise Lost the presentation of the infernal vices of pride over and against a properly human humility of innocence lost in the loss of paradise. This paper further explicates Milton’s use of theological resources for the portrayal of Christological humility in Paradise Regained, including the doctrine of Christ’s two estates—humiliation and exaltation—and the theology of kenosis. Milton’s Paradise Lost and Regained valorize christological lowliness as the only way to exaltation, a poetic pattern by which all paths serve the providence that frustrates the proud and exalts the lowly.