Sublime Reciprocity in Milton, Kant and Wordsworth

In Paradise Lost the reciprocal forces of ‘first matter’ are centrally located in ‘Light Ethereal, first of things’, ‘that light’, as Raphael explains, that is constituted from its inhering ‘reciprocal’ forces. This study argues that the workings of this Miltonic reciprocity were first understood in concrete specificity by Immanuel Kant, though buried on two intricately argued manuscript pages of his Opus postumum . Almost as remarkable as Kant’s Miltonic recognitions, William Wordsworth – direc