John Milton's Paradise Lost in the Anti-Trinitarian Crisis 1674-1732: Heresy, Orthodoxy, Poetics

我的博士项目将研究约翰·弥尔顿的《失乐园》(1674)对17世纪末18世纪初伟大异端邪说的倡导者和反对者的影响：反三位论，即基督和上帝不是同一人的论点。对弥尔顿神学的研究主要集中在早期对弥尔顿异端信仰的影响上；对他的诗歌接受的学术研究主要集中在诗人或政治思想家之间引发的辩论。没有深入的现代研究来评估弥尔顿在他的诗歌中发展起来的激进神学的遗产。利用文献资料和文学分析，我的项目将以弥尔顿最早的三位读者为个案研究，展示《失乐园》对反三位一体论战双方的意义。它将第一次表明，弥尔顿史诗中体现的神学是诗人留给第一批读者的重要遗产。

My doctoral project will examine the impact of John Milton's Paradise Lost (1674) on later seventeenth and early eighteenth-century advocates and adversaries of the great heresy of the era: Anti-Trinitarianism, the argument that Christ and God were not one and the same. Scholarship on Milton's theology has predominantly focused on the earlier influences upon Milton's heterodox beliefs; scholarship on his poetry's reception has focused upon the debates it provoked among poets or political thinkers. There has been no thorough modern study which evaluates the legacy of the radical theology Milton developed in his poetry. Using archival and literary analysis, my project will take three of Milton's earliest readers as its case studies, demonstrating Paradise Lost's significance for those on both sides of the Anti-Trinitarian controversy. It will show, for the first time, that the theology embodied within Milton's epic poetry was a vital part of the poet's legacy to his first readers.