Time: 14:40 to 16:00, Thursday 23 January 2020.

Location: G 160

Deni Kasa

Learning after Athens: Equity, Grace, and Prophecy in Milton’s Paradise Regained

Although Milton’s poetry is now understood to be republican, Paradise Regained poses a problem: it rejects Athenian learning in favour of the prophetic inspiration of the Holy Spirit. On this evidence, criticism has increasingly associated Milton with antinomian radicals who opposed humanism and republicanism.

I argue that notwithstanding the rejection of Athens, Paradise Regained approaches prophecy through the concept of equity—an interpretive paradigm derived from Cicero and Aristotle. Milton transforms prophecy into a form of equitable interpretation. In so doing, he demonstrates how Protestant theology in this period could be co-opted to support nationalist and republican understandings of the citizen.

Deni Kasa holds a PhD from the University of Toronto (2017) and is currently an Azrieli Postdoctoral Fellow at Tel Aviv University. He has three peer-reviewed articles either already published in or forthcoming from major journals, all AHCI indexed (Renaissance and Reformation, Modern Philology, and Milton Quarterly). He is completing a book project on the concept of grace in early modern England and intends to send a book proposal to publishers in early 2020.