English Language and Literature ETDs

Publication Date

7-26-1971

Abstract

A lost paradise in man's mythic past has evoked tra­ditionally a feeling of intense nostalgia. Yet in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, in Marvell's garden lyrics, in Gulliver's "Voyage to the Houyhnhnms," and in Rasselas, this elegiac sentiment is countered by a sense of boredom and dissatisfaction with the state of paradise. Partly by relating paradise and stoicism and partly through the means of parody and comedy, these works describe an impossible relationship between a life of reason, fulfillment, and harmony, and a human nature of unappeasable desires. Thus, there is a shift of concentration from the object of per­ception to a renewed interest in man's inner psychology, and the theme of the failure of this ideal implies a turn­ing away from the static mediaeval world and toward empiricism and Locke's conception of man's nature as rooted in change. However, self-knowledge is not held up as a new ideal, so that these works have an inconclusive air and are characterized by a dialectic which balances one view against another.

Degree Name

English

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

English

First Committee Member (Chair)

James Llewellyn Thorson

Second Committee Member

Laure Scott Catlett

Third Committee Member

Joseph Frank

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

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