Our Mission
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The Budapest Milton Lecture features internationally-renowned Milton scholars who present their recent and ongoing work and lead open discussions with researchers and students.
The Budapest Milton Lectures are held in the central building of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Károli Gáspár University, right in the heart of Budapest.
Our Next Invited Speaker
Deni Kasa is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. He previously held an Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellowship at Tel Aviv University after completing his PhD in English at the University of Toronto. His research and teaching revolve around the intersection between religion, literature, and politics in Early Modern literature.
​Deni's Selected Recent Publications
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“Education, Political Theology, and Anti-Trinitarianism in Paradise Lost.” Forthcoming in Milton Studies.
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“Christian and Stoic Patience in King Lear.” Forthcoming at SEL: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 62.2, Spring 2022,
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“‘Not so much perdition as an hair’: The Political Deployment of Christian Patience in The Tempest,” Renaissance and Reformation 43.1, July 2020, 135–159.
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“Abraham Among the Tyrants: The Politics of Gen. 22 in George Buchanan’s Iephthes, Sive Votum and Abraham Cowley’s Davideis.” Modern Philology 117.1, August, 2019, pp. 48–69.
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“Arminian Theology, Machiavellian Republicanism, and Cooperative Virtue in Milton’s Paradise Lost.” Milton Quarterly 50.4, December 2016, 260–276.
Our Next Session
The next Budapest Milton Lecture will take place in room #104 of the central building of Károli Gáspár University (4 Reviczky Street) from 4:00 p.m. CET on 2 December, 2021. Attendees will be required to present proof of vaccination.
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We will also stream the event via Teams. Please click here to register.
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Deni Kasa, Education and the Trinity in Paradise Lost
Abstract
Milton's God in Paradise Lost has long been seen as an authoritarian ruler; for William Empson, he was even comparable to Josef Stalin. This paper suggests that Milton’s God can also be understood as a humanist teacher. This double identity—God as both teacher and sovereign ruler—is part of Milton’s unique response to the culture of early modern anti-Trinitarianism, which saw God the Father in this way in order to establish an unequal hierarchy between him and the Son of God. Such a perspective was anathema for most early modern Protestants, and Milton never espoused it publicly, but it nevertheless shapes the representation of God in Paradise Lost. By foregrounding the tensions of the anti-Trinitarian God, Milton’s poetry allows us to ask more broadly how different theological positions wove together education and sovereignty.
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All Welcome!
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