I. In the beginning is the Word

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (Gospel of John, 1: 1) In the beginning, the Word was hovering upon the waters, creating all beings including humans. In the East, He created a paradise, opening the first chapter of the human race. The rise and fall of our human ancestors, Adam and Eve, initiated and inspired Milton’s writing of Paradise Lost, an eternally memorable epic of Western literature. This dissertation is designed to methodologically research a way of interpreting the Word in order to dialectically apply an illuminating method for uncovering the significance or meaning in Milton’s work. At first, I will adopt the conception of fore-structure delineated in Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time to pinpoint the conscious meaning , whose fabric controls the semantic development of all books of the epic. Concerning this point, I will associate the idea of fore-structure with Gadamer’s “hermeneutic circle,” a theological way of interpreting the Word and literary texts. It is to be noted that Heidegger’s fore-structure is very similar to the idea of pre-understanding or presupposition in hermeneutics, whereby “self” and “I” combine to create a personal horizon of reading or interpreting the texts, resulting, to some extent, in prejudice and a vicious circle of misreading. However, this is paradoxically a necessary evil in constructing a fore-structure. The redeeming method is to use a well-applied hermeneutical circle in which the individual parts of the text can remedy the limitations of the pre-understanding or the personal horizon of the reader. In addition to an explication of the meaning of the text, I will go further to uncover the significance, or, in E. D. Hirsch words, the implications of the epic. Indeed, the central theme of the work lies in the fore-structure and can be revealed and evidenced by a hermeneutic circle. However, just as the Word consists of two aspects, that is, Logos and Rema, a dialogue between the author and the reader can be so didactic that it can uncover the fixed and absolute meaning of the text, and on the other hand, the dialogue can also be now-and-here and be fused into the contemporary world. Since Rema is actually the living logos, which has been experienced in today’s world of the reader, a contemporary reading of the text can be associated with the reader’s personal horizon as well as his or her social milieu. To illustrate this, I will put forth themes such as creation, marriage, sex, sin and salvation to renew or refresh one’s reading of Milton’s work. Meaning and implication will be fully explicated in this dissertation.

The epic poem Paradise Lost by John Milton was written during a time of religious revolution in England. John Milton did not want his epic to be just a traditional one, a story of a nation or a people. Instead, he would make the entire story about the human race, thereby making his epic more pointedly important to all mankind, not just to England. Milton loads the first twenty-six lines with references to classical literature and biblical passages. Also in those lines he presents his proclaimed subject, identifies a muse, declares that his epic will surpass those epics written before, and states his goal in writing the poem. Milton, in addition to that, manages to personalize his poem by references to his blindness and political happenings in England in his day. Only a great poet could fit so gracefully all this pertinent information into the first twenty-six lines of a twelve-book poem. All these qualities insure that his epic will truly exceed all the rest.