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. |
From inside the book
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... artist and his culture—such is the fundamental principle of authentic Jungian criticism. Conventional critics who make authorial intentions and cultural values their touchstones for meaning will find Jungian criticism often frustrating ...
... Milton the Christian apologist through rhetoric. Milton the artist presents them through symbol, myth, and archetype and leaves their interpretation to us.5 Moreover, when we learn to interpret the artist's meanings, we realize that ...
... artist's vision of the future and by his unconscious intuitions about both present and past. Jung and Erich Neumann provide a corrective.7 The psyche of the visionary artist and seer, they maintain, follows unconscious, teleological ...
... artist's audience or freed him from his audience as the case may be. Because the audiences of Shakespeare and Milton lacked the theory and bent to anatomize psychological nuances, these poets were safe to imaginatively communicate ...
... Milton the artist's many quiet epiphanies of Godhead, allows us to conclude that man's fall was not fortunate and ours, therefore, is not the best possible universe.25 Better than our universe where God busies himself turning Satan's ...