《失乐园》中的政治、虔敬与诗学

Politics,Piety,and Poetry in Paradise Lost

本文标题中“政治”“虔敬”“诗学”这三个押头韵的名词是弥尔顿史诗最根本的关注点。这些关注点在诗人最伟大的诗歌《失乐园》(也可算是最伟大的英语诗歌)里表现得最为明显和紧迫。然而,这首诗也提出了政治、虔敬和诗学如何结合的问题。它们是彼此一致、互相合作,还是相互抵制和竞争?它们之间复杂的关系能说明什么?对于17世纪晚期的读者而言,这首诗意味着什么?也许更重要的是,它对今天的读者来说有什么意义,为什么重要?

The alliterative nouns of my title identify fundamental concerns of Milton’s poetry,nowhere more obviously and urgently than in his greatest poem(arguably the greatest poem ever written in English),Paradise Lost.The question,however,raised by the poem is how politics,piety,and poetry might align.Do they coincide and cooperate?Or do they collide and compete?What does their fraught relationship tell us about what this poem might have meant to its readers in the late 17th century or,perhaps,more importantly,about how and why the poem might matter to us today?