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“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 Paradise 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 criticism 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 educational 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 English and Germanic Philology, 21 (1922), 127-152.; Hittway, Tyrus, Milton’s Theory of Education, 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., Sanctification 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 + 77 +
