Milton's response to the Book of Revelation: Apocalyptic allusions in Paradise Lost.

SULAGNA CHOWDHURY
PG II
ROLL NO- 15


"Apocalypse" is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.
                                               - Semeia.

In biblical terminology, an "apocalypse" is not an event, but a "revelation" that is recorded in written form. It is a piece of crisis literature that "reveals" truths about the past, present, and/or future in highly symbolic terms. "The Apocalypse" is also the alternate name (used especially by Protestants for The Book of Revelation. The Book of Revelation had its origin in a time of crisis, but it remains valid and meaningful for Christians of all time. In the face of apparently insufferable evil, either from within or from without, all Christians are called to trust in Jesus’ promise, 
“Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age” .
Those who remain steadfast in their faith and confidence in the risen Lord need have no fear. Suffering, persecution, even death by martyrdom, though remaining impenetrable mysteries of evil, do not comprise an absurd dead end. No matter what adversity or sacrifice Christians may endure, they will in the end triumph over Satan and his forces because of their fidelity to Christ the victor. This is the enduring message of the book; it is a message of hope and consolation.

The figure of the Antichrist is predominant in the Book of Revelation. The word "antichrist" means in opposition to or in the place of Christ, meaning attempting to be a counterfeit or a false representation of Christ. There have been many manifestations of Antichrist in various sects of Christian belief, the major rift arose in the views of the Catholics and the Protestants. While Catholics expected Antichrist to materialise in a particular individual, Protestants insisted that the idea is a cumulative mystery of iniquity rampant in the world, the manifestations being the institutions like the papacy, national entities like the Ottoman Empire, extreme radicals like the millenarians at Munster, and individual persecutors of the elect, basically those guilty of encroaching on the consciences of mankind. It was in the twilight of such a background that Milton studied, and responded to, the Book of Revelation. He uses the Protestant principle in Paradise Lost . Although the first two books of  Paradise Lost shows Satan as a nominally credible opponent of the Almighty, Milton's Satan gathers in himself many facets of Antichrist. For one, the designation of Satan as 'great Sultan' invokes the medieval identification of Antichrist with the Ottoman Empire. Another far more eloquent facet is established when Milton asserts Satan's parody of the activities of God.  It envisages what is represented in the series of parodies enacted by the Forces of Darkness in The Book of Revelation: the dragon's bestowal of 'great authority' in the style appropriate solely to Christ, the ominous figure seated on a white horse in imitation of Christ and particularly the demonic trinity- the dragon, the first beast and the second beast- to be false god, a false Christ and a false prophet. While in Faerie Queen Spenser adapted the idea of Satan as 'God's Ape', Milton embedded it into the very fabric of Paradise Lost. The grandiose prospect of Satan seated on the throne of Hell in plain emulation of the Most High is tempered with the narrator's sarcasm:

High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth or Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
Satan exalted sat, by merit raised
To that bad eminence; and, from despair
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires
Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue
Vain war with Heaven;

                                 - Book II, Paradise Lost.

The word 'Barbaric' explicates itself, diagnostic as it is of the nature of both Antichrist and his agents like the Ottoman Empire or the papacy. The thematic pattern of 'God's Ape' also operates within an 

apocalyptic context in the way that the parallelism between Satan's offer destroy man, and the Son's to redeem him, is underlined by the moment of silence that precedes each. It obliges one to recall the 

sombre occasion in The Apocalypse, just after the opening of the seventh seal, when the 'silence in 

heaven about the space of half an hour' is followed by the blaring of the trumpets and the devastation of the created order. In that moment, the lines of demarcation between Christ and Antichrist are drawn firmly in the Apocalypse as they are in Paradise Lost. 

Milton's response to the Book of Revelation in Paradise Lost is comprised of many elements. The 

critical invocation of the Apocalypse at the outset of Book IV is a major element. 

                                   " For that warning voice, which he who saw

Th' Apocalyps, heard cry in Heaven aloud,
Then when the Dragon, put to second rout,
Came furious down to be reveng'd on men,
Wo to the inhabitants on Earth! that now,
While time was, our first-Parents had bin warnd
The coming of thir secret foe, and scap'd
Haply so scap'd his mortal snare;"

There is a very strong Apocalyptic thread running in the entire account of the war in Heaven. The bestial imagery that stalks Satan throughout the poem obliges one to remember the beasts in the Demonic Trinity of The Apocalypse.The brief account of the war in the Apocalypse appears to be set in the future. Milton deliberately transferred it to the remote past, even before the foundation of the world and the outset of history. But the war is fraught with allusions to the Future: first, Israel's redemption from Egypt and the annihilation of the Pharaoh's might; secondly the redemption of the world by Christ and his conquest of Death and thirdly the Second Advent, intimated through the conduct of the Son of God when 'full of wrath bent on his Enemies' he adopts the style appropriate to the 'wrath of the Lamb' detailed in the Apocalypse.

   The principal divisions of the Book of Revelation are the following:

1. Prologue (1:1–3)
2. Letters to the Churches of Asia (1:4–3:22)
3. God and the Lamb in Heaven (4:1–5:14)
4. The Seven Seals, Trumpets, and Plagues, with Interludes (6:1–16:21)
5. The Punishment of Babylon and the Destruction of Pagan Nations (17:1–20:15)
6. The New Creation (21:1–22:5)
7. Epilogue (22:6–21)

      A reader may conjecture that Paradise Lost is naturally divisible into the seven visions evidently central to The Apocalypse and therefore assume that The Apocalypse provided the model for Milton's Paradise Lost. But while the Apocalypse tells us that the shape of Heaven is a cube but in Paradise Lost the shape of Heaven is neither square nor round but 'undetermind square or round'. Milton also went out of his way to oppose the relentless emphasis of the Apocalypse on implacable retribution by introducing into all the visions of Paradise Lost a decisive and recurrent element of lenity. While Tradition says that Christ is to appear as  Judge, Milton says that Christ is to be as much judge as mediator and saviour. The vision of the future that Michael unfolds before the stricken Adam discloses that the world shall go on to "To good malignant, to bad men benigne, Under her own weight groaning". The terminal point of history in the epic is not preceded by the massive and devastating calamities set forth in the Apocalypse. Not vengeance but the fulfillment of God's promises and the beatific vision beyond history is what Milton's conclusion. It is the prospect of the Second Advent when the Son of God is to

                                                           " ....raise

From the conflagrant mass, purg'd and refin'd,
New Heav'ns, new Earth, Ages of endless date
Founded in righteousness and peace and love 
To bring forth fruits Joy and eternal Bliss."

                                                                    - Book XII, Paradise Lost.

The four horsemen of The Apocalypse. The Last Judgement.

                                                     Michael's prophecy of Crucifixtion in Paradise Lost.

Although The Book of Revelation provided a model for Milton's Paradise Lost , the underlying essence of the two books are very different despite the recurrent allusions. 

Bibliography:

- Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre, Semeia.

- Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser.

-The New Testament.

-The Key of the Revelation, translated by Richard More.

- Paradise Lost by John Milton.