"To Set Himself in Glory Above His Peers"

This thesis examines the ways that Augustinian and Petrarchan poetics and philosophy both influenced and frustrated the author of Paradise Lost, for John Milton's works in many ways represent a culmination of the linguistic and moral angst of Augustine and Petrarch, especially in their obsession with the power of rhetoric, a desire for linguistic permanency and power, and the divided consciousness of Western male subjectivity. Indeed, the enduring rhetorical command of Milton's Satan in particular, 350 years after his literary creation, attests to the cultural and psychological potency of the model of suffering masculinity. The first chapter locates both Augustinian and Petrarchan influence and religious anxiety in Milton's shorter, earlier poems including his Italian sonnets; the second chapter explores the ways that Milton's elegy, Lycidas, both imitates and rejects Petrarchan and classical tropes; the third chapter explores these ideas in Paradise Lost, especially the ways that the character of Satan embodies Milton's views on rhetoric and poetry. The end result will be a fuller appreciation of the anxiety that a modern, Christian poet, heir of Augustinian and Petrarchan poetics, displays through his art, especially the conflict between the desire for linguistic glory and permanency and a conviction that such ambition is inherently sinful according to Christian morality.