How are the Renaissance and the Reformation elements or the Hellenic and the Hebraic elements blended together in Paradise Lost?
or, In what sense is Milton the child of the Renaissance and the Reformation?
Answer: The fusion of Hellenism and Hebraism means almost the same as the mingling of the elements of the Renaissance and the Reformation. The first part of the seventeenth century and even a little of the second witnessed crosscurrents of the two movements and Milton assimilated them thoroughly to express them in Paradise Lost. The Renaissance, flourishing in the fifteenth, sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in England, was marked by an awakened interest in the old writings of the Greeks and the Romans. The scholars of the Renaissance period intended to infuse into English the beauties of Greek and Roman literature. The Reformation was a religious movement which aimed at the cultivation of religious, moral and spiritual values. The spirit of the Reformation includes all that Hebraism stands for viz, spiritual discipline, moral austerity and other worldly outlook.
Milton's great epic, Paradise Lost, is the product of the Renaissance and the Reformation. Here Milton employs the art and learning of the Renaissance in the service of religious and moral truths. The theme of Paradise Lost is based on the Bible. Milton rejects the subject of King Arthur and his Round Table as the theme of his epic. His epic is a Christian epic recounting the story of the Fall of Man as told in the Bible. His aim in writing the epic is to assert eternal Providence and "justify the ways of God to men.” There is a temper of militant Puritanism. The theme of the epic is Biblical and directly traceable to the Puritan element in Milton. But the treatment of the Biblical theme of Puritanism is thoroughly classical. He employs the form of the classical epic and brings in the pagan deities as fallen angels. He presses to the service of the Puritan epic the machinery of the Renaissance.
The character of Satan is glorified at the expense of God and it is due to the influence of the Renaissance love for dangerous adventures and enterprises. Spenser's The Faerie Queene has a knight of the Red Cross. Similarly, Satan is a knight of Stygian Darkness and has all the attributes of knightliness which gleamed in the romance and the epic of the Renaissance. Thus, in the presentation of Satan's character, Milton is animated with the Renaissance love for romance, chivalry and adventure as in the following lines spoken by Satan:
"To reign is worth ambition though in Hell
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”
What saves Paradise Lost from being a complete triumph of Puritanism is its Humanism. The Renaissance movement was chiefly characterised in England by Humanism and formed the main background of the work of Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon and Hooker. Humanism recognises the virtue as well as the vices of human nature. It upholds the power of reason and the freedom of the individual. It asserts the essential dignity of man.
Paradise Lost is the work of a Renaissance humanist, Milton, who has pointed out that God possesses a for knowledge of man's destiny but He leaves man's will free. The man was created free and, therefore, was solely responsible for his fall. This attitude of Humanism is embodied in Paradise Lost in the work of a Renaissance artist rather than a Puritan.
So, to sum up, we can say that Paradise Lost is a wonderful blend of Puritanism and Humanism. If it had been written entirely from the standpoint of humanist tradition, it would have lacked the sense of high seriousness necessary for the theme of the fall of man.
Again it had been written entirely from the standpoint of a puritanical hatred of the world, it would have been a failure as poetry. So, agreeing with C.M. Bowra, we can conclude that the Puritanical and humanist elements in Milton are the outcome of Hebraism and Hellenism and these have been nicely combined in Paradise Lost. It is for this combination that the epic has gained universal interest and wide popularity.
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