摘要
The Tempest （1623） provides an acknowledged major context for Milton＇s Masque （1634）. Though few has seen The Tempest as significant to Paradise Regained （1671）, Milton＇s brief epic extensively shares in this intertextuality Arguing this, the author will focus on how the poem engages with his reformist masque＇s interrogation of Prospero＇s cultural authority, especially as an author figure. Where Paradise Regained does not parallel this critique, it extends it. This, the author will conclude, indicates Milton＇s strong sense that many of his hopes for the function of literature had been realized rather than disrupted during the Restoration. If his poem does not explicitly comment on Restoration politics, it is because Milton＇s primary political-cultural argument has been achieved. Milton＇s emphatically contemporary public voice enacts the argument of his poem, advancing God＇s renovation of the human race, a renovation that predetermines a nation＇s politics. Instead of suffering from the cultural alienation that is often assigned to the Restoration, Milton, the poet, was more unsettled by the dangers of his art being subverted by those who, as Satan attempts with Jesus＇ work in the brief epic, participate and even sponsor, its success
