The Faces of God: Milton, Deity, and Discourse

FAIN: FT-51010-03

Michael Lieb
Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois (Chicago, IL 60612-4305)

I propose to write a book about the figure of God as a literary character and a doctrinal phenomenon in the writings of John Milton. From the time of Milton to our own time, the representation of God has been one of the most vexed issues in the interpretation of Milton's works. The problems to which Milton's representation of God gives rise are as much a question of the poet's ability to portray the unportrayable in verse as they are a matter of how the poet conceived the relationship between poetry and theology in the first place. This subject is crucial to all those interested in the portrayal of the unportrayable, on the one hand, and the relationship between literature and theology, on the other.