『투사 삼손』에 나타나는 시간과 언어의 이중 구조 = The Double Plot of Time and Language in Samson Agonistes

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of this paper is to explore the double plot of time and language in Samson Agonistes, and to examine Milton's greatness as a literary artist who has a great talent for making his grand theme "to justify the ways of God to men" have a more significant meaning and persuasive appeal to his readers.
Samson Agonistes has a double plot of time and language, each of which has the same process of moving along with the other, The direction of the plot of time is a paradoxical one that moves forward and backward and forward again. Milton rejects the past time as a destructive one that leads men to the spiritual bondage, which is typically connected with men's cyclical repetition of error and sin.
However, men cannot overcome the destructive past without passing through the sufferings and the paradoxes that it brings to them. Milton's soteriology includes the paradoxial process of recovery through sin and error in this way. It is the so-called felix culpa (fortunate fall) of his grand theme. To have a genuine future, it is essential for Milton's characters to experience the inferno of past time and to have real repentance for their past mistakes and sins.
The language plot of Samson Agonistes has a very similar aspect to that of time. In this drama Samson passes through the limits of speech and beyond them into noise and, finally, silence. In the various verbal encounters with the visitors, who are themselves preoccupied with words, he is offered various temptations, and at the same time, the way to his recovery. As a result, at the beginning, the hero is in the bondage of words, at the end, he finally arrives at the calm silence of liberation through the regeneration and inner transformation offered by the valuable experiences of languages.
Milton's greatness lies in his literary artistry to make his theme appear to his readers more effectively and more movingly by using various different plots focusing on his grand theme: man's fall and salvation. He suggests that man's ultimate salvation is the total salvation of man's whole existence. This means not only the salvation of mans soul and morality, but also, more importantly, the redemption of man's fallen time and language.