"Account Me Man": Economic Incarnation and Common Wealth in Paradise Lost

Thomas Lay, University of Pennsylvania

Abstract

Recent scholarship has considered the materialist and economic logic of Medieval Catholicism's theology of redemption, and suggested that Protestant ideology suppressed an earlier economic conceptualization of belief. In this paper, I consider John Milton's Paradise Lost, a late work in this history that, despite is Protestant authorship, offers Christian redemption in explicitly economic terms. Milton's unusually materialist theology, I argue, constituted a political challenge to the Restoration by demystifying social hierarchies and privileging wealth shared communally ˆ Commonwealth ˆ over the Satanic idolatry of kingship.

Suggested Citation

Lay, Thomas, ""Account Me Man": Economic Incarnation and Common Wealth in Paradise Lost" 30 May 2006. CUREJ: College Undergraduate Research Electronic Journal, University of Pennsylvania, https://repository.upenn.edu/curej/14.