Milton's Prudent Ambiguities

This new reading of Paradise Lost concentrates on the analysis of linguistic concepts underlying Milton''s epic, and then builds on those concepts with a fresh interpretation that considers the role that Raphael plays in it. Relying on a narrative model that was already well-known in the seventeenth century and was baptized godgame by the twentieth century British novelist John Fowles, it reinterprets the role of the archangel as that of a tool in the great plan of Milton''s Father''s ''ironic'' teaching. This book complements a basically linguistic approach to Milton''s poetry and prose with concepts such as that of retraction adopted from ''heretical'' Milton critics as Saurat, Hill, and Empson.