Oldal 79 [79]
“DICTATES TO ME SLUMBRING"
— DICTATION AND INSPIRATION IN PARADISE LOST
——o—
MIKLÓS PÉTI
Critics have long recognized that education is of one of the key themes of Para¬
dise Lost. Four of the twelve books of the epic (5, 6, 7, and 8) are devoted to the
instruction of Adam and Eve by the archangel Raphael, which God authorizes
"Least wilfully transgressing he [i.e. Man] pretend / Surprisal, unadmonisht,
unforewarnd" (PL 5.244—245),? while in the last two books the archangel Michael
reveals the future of mankind, predominantly to Adam,’ but indirectly also to Eve
(cf. PL 12.610—623). Several attempts have been made to trace in these and other
parts of the epic the idea of a reformed education put forth in Milton’s treatise Of
Education,‘ and the past few decades have seen an unprecedented surge in criti¬
cism concerning the ways in which Milton’s epic educates readers through active
choice-making in the interpretive process, and thus serves on a practical level
the purpose of “justify[ing] the wayes of God to men” (PL 1.26).° It is interesting
1 For a brief general overview of the question see LEWALSKI, Barbara K. (ed.), John Milton: Paradise
Lost, Oxford, Blackwell, 2007, xvii-xxv. Research for this paper was supported by the Hungarian
Scientific Research Fund, OTKA (Grant No. 101928), and the Bolyai Janos Research Scholarship.
In this paper I quote Barbara Lewalski’s edition of Paradise Lost (LEWALSKI 2007) and give
parenthetical references to book and line numbers within the text. On Raphael’s special edu¬
cational method, see THICKSTUN, Margaret Olofson, Raphael and the Challenge of Evangelical
Education, Milton Quarterly, 35 (2001), 245-257.
On Michael’s special method of instruction see, LARES, Jameela, Milton and the Preaching Arts,
Cambridge, James Clarke, 2001, 158-162, and WHEATLEY, Chloe, Epic, Epitome, and the Early
Modern Historical Imagination, Farnham, Ashgate, 2011, 121-123.
See, e.g. BUNDY, Murray W., Milton’s View of Education in “Paradise Lost”, The Journal of Eng¬
lish and Germanic Philology, 21 (1922), 127-152.; Hittway, Tyrus, Milton’s Theory of Educa¬
tion, College English, 5 (1944), 376-379.; Corro, Ann Baynes, “To Repair the Ruins of Our First
Parents”: Of Education and Fallen Adam, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 28 (1988),
133-147.; ALLEN, Michael, Divine Instruction: Of Education and the Pedagogy of Raphael,
Michael, and the Father, Milton Quarterly 26 (1992), 113-121.; SCHULER, Stephen J., Sanc¬
tification in Milton’s Academy: Reassessing the Purposes in and the Pedagogy of Paradise
Lost, Milton Quarterly 43 (2009), 39—56.; etc. For the most recent comprehensive attempt see,
GORE, Jeffrey, Repairing the Ruins: John Milton’s Of Education and the Early Modern Culture of
Obedience, University of Illinois at Chicago, PhD dissertation, ProQuest, 2008.
This trend in Milton criticism is due to the influence of Stanley Fish’s argument articulated in
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