The Unfolding God of Jung and MiltonIn this first extensive Jungian treatment of Milton's major poems, James P. Driscoll uses archetypal psychology to explore Milton's great themes of God, man, woman, and evil and offers readers deepened understanding of Jung's profound thoughts on Godhead. The Father, the Son, Satan, Messiah, Samson, Adam, and Eve gain new dimensions of meaning as their stories become epiphanies of the archetypes of Godhead. God and Satan of Paradise Lost are seen as the ego and the shadow of a single unfolding personality whose anima is the Holy Spirit and Milton's muse. Samson carries the Yahweh archetype examined by Jung in Answer to Job, and Messiah and Satan in Paradise Regained embody the hostile brothers archetype. Anima, animus and the individuation drive underlie the psychodynamics of Adam and Eve's fall. Driscoll draws on his critical acumen and scholarly knowledge of Renaissance literature to shed new light on Jung's psychology of religion. The Unfolding God of Jung and Milton illumines Jung's heterodox notion of Godhead as a quarternity rather than a trinity, his revolutionary concept of a divine individuation process, his radical solution to the problem of evil, and his wrestling with the feminine in Godhead. The book's glossary of Jungian terms, written for literary critics and theologians rather than clinicians, is exceptionally detailed and insightful. Beyond enriching our understanding of Jung and Milton, Driscoll's discussion contributes to theodicy, to process theology, and to the study of myths and archetypes in literature. |
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... Godhead in Milton's major poems would enumerate and tactfully comment upon archetypes and mythic patterns. But that would betray the spirit and objective of Jung and do nothing to account for the difficulties moderns experience with ...
... God, the unfolding nature of Godhead, the meaning of the Trinity, the role of Satan and evil, and the function of the ... archetypes; we apprehend them indirectly through images, myths, and symbols. He sought to enhance our awareness of ...
... Godhead. Such is my paramount ambition; I no more limit myself to cataloging the archetypes in Milton's poems than ... Godhead conscious, but the process did not stop with Saint John the Divine. Powered by archetypes, it moves in a gyre ...
... archetypes of Godhead for our modern era even as the Book of Job, the Gospels, and the Apocalypse constellated these archetypes for their times. Despite all orthodox qualms, The Unfolding God of Jung and Milton will remain true to the ...
... archetypal conflicts influence theological positions on free will. In the fourth section I use Jung's analytical psychology to investigate the archetypes of Godhead. And in the final section I establish an archetypal perspective upon ...