Christopher Bond: Spenser, Milton Paperback sku-194807598

Christopher Bond's paperback studies theology and poetics in the Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. It compares the poems' godlike, virtuous and powerful primary heroes, Arthur and the Son, with their human, fallible and weak secondary heroes, Redcrosse and Adam.

Bond traces this pattern of dual heroism through classical, Medieval and Italian Renaissance literature, then examines how Spenser and Milton adapted it. He reads the Jesus of Paradise Regained as the culmination of the tradition.

The book challenges the usual opposition between a "Calvinist," "allegorical" Spenser and an "Arminian," "dramatic" Milton, arguing for doctrinal and literary affinities within European epic. Bond argues that Spenser influenced Milton, links their poems structurally and thematically, and examines how the addition of a crucial, sometimes ambivalent heroine changed a strongly antifeminist genre.

He also addresses Spenser's treatment of free will and Milton's treatment of the Trinity, bringing theological and poetic readings of the epics together. Collectible Comics N.E. listing; sku-194807598.