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The Alternative Trinity: Gnostic Heresy in Marlowe, Milton, and Blake
The Trinity of orthodox Christianity is harmonious. The Trinity for Blake is, conspicuously, not a happy the Father and the Son do not get on. It might be thought that so cumbersome a notion is inconceivable before the rise of Romanticism but the Ophite Gnostics of the second century AD appear to have thought that God the Father was a jealous tyrant because he forbade Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and that the serpent, who led the way to the Tree of Knowledge, was really Christ. This book explores the possibility of an underground "perennial heresy," linking the Ophites to Blake. The "alternative Trinity" is intermittently visible in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and even in Milton's Paradise Lost . Blake's notorious detection of a pro-Satan anti-poem, latent in this "theologically patriarchal" epic is less capricious, better grounded historically and philosophically, than is commonly realized.
- GenresNonfictionReligion
302 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1998
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About the author
A.D. Nuttall
22 books4 followersAnthony David Nuttall was an English literary critic and academic.
Nuttall was educated at Hereford Cathedral School, Watford Grammar School for Boys and Merton College, Oxford, where he studied both Classical Moderations and English Literature. As a postgraduate he wrote a B.Litt thesis on Shakespeare's The Tempest subsequently published as Two Concepts of Allegory (1968), and considered by some to be his most original book. Nuttall first taught at Sussex University where he was successively Lecturer, Reader and Professor of English and where his students included the philosopher A.C. Grayling and the critic and biographer Robert Fraser. After a tumultuous period as Pro-Vice-Chancellor at Sussex, he moved on to New College, Oxford in 1984, eventually being elected to an Oxford chair.
His published works include studies of Shakespeare and works on the connections between philosophy and literature. Prominent among the first is Shakespeare the Thinker (2007), in which he examines the philosophical issues implicit in Shakespeare's plays, and among the second A Common Sky in which he follows through the literary repercussions of the English empiricist tradition and of the idea of solipcism. His work is characterised throughout by wide reading (especially in classical sources), common sense, a deep and broad humanity, a robust sense of humour and by occasional - and sometimes eccentric - references to popular culture (In Shakespeare the Thinker, for example, he cites the TV series "Wife Swap".) His brother Jeff Nuttall was a poet and an important figure in 1960s counterculture. To him he dedicated his book The Alternative Trinity, a study of the Gnostic tradition in English literature through Marlowe and Milton to William Blake, a poet to whom both brothers had been attracted in their youth, if in rather different ways.
From Wikipedia.
Obituaries:
The Times (UK) Online, The Guardian (UK) Online.
Nuttall was educated at Hereford Cathedral School, Watford Grammar School for Boys and Merton College, Oxford, where he studied both Classical Moderations and English Literature. As a postgraduate he wrote a B.Litt thesis on Shakespeare's The Tempest subsequently published as Two Concepts of Allegory (1968), and considered by some to be his most original book. Nuttall first taught at Sussex University where he was successively Lecturer, Reader and Professor of English and where his students included the philosopher A.C. Grayling and the critic and biographer Robert Fraser. After a tumultuous period as Pro-Vice-Chancellor at Sussex, he moved on to New College, Oxford in 1984, eventually being elected to an Oxford chair.
His published works include studies of Shakespeare and works on the connections between philosophy and literature. Prominent among the first is Shakespeare the Thinker (2007), in which he examines the philosophical issues implicit in Shakespeare's plays, and among the second A Common Sky in which he follows through the literary repercussions of the English empiricist tradition and of the idea of solipcism. His work is characterised throughout by wide reading (especially in classical sources), common sense, a deep and broad humanity, a robust sense of humour and by occasional - and sometimes eccentric - references to popular culture (In Shakespeare the Thinker, for example, he cites the TV series "Wife Swap".) His brother Jeff Nuttall was a poet and an important figure in 1960s counterculture. To him he dedicated his book The Alternative Trinity, a study of the Gnostic tradition in English literature through Marlowe and Milton to William Blake, a poet to whom both brothers had been attracted in their youth, if in rather different ways.
From Wikipedia.
Obituaries:
The Times (UK) Online, The Guardian (UK) Online.
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