Incompatibility as sufficient grounds of divorce: A critical approach to the modern idea of marriage and divorce from Milton's divorce tracts

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24617007
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: 文化学
• Research Institution: Nagoya University
• Principal Investigator: SUZUKI Shigeo 名古屋大学, 国際言語文化研究科, 教授 (50162946)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: ミルトン / 離婚 / 結婚愛 / 家族法 / 性格不一致 / 聖書釈義

Outline of Final Research Achievements

John Milton claims temperamental incompatibility between spouses to be a legitimate reason for divorce. He enlarges the realm of charity to support rather than criticize divorce on grounds of no humane interaction. In fact, Milton went further than the family laws in 1990's which introduced divorce by mutual consent on the no-fault basis. But many of Milton's interpretations of the biblical texts should be regarded with suspicion or as idiosyncratic as was treated by his contemporaries. Milton also argued that God ordained marriage to be an institution where men are provided with companionship and comfort as the remedy of solitude. Milton’s stress on the emotional aspects of marriage matches our trend that animosity between spouses should be reduced as a matter of "public reason" responsive to the complexities of private values. Divorce was rooted in religious sentiments of human sanctity rather than in reasonable views to human nature that are indispensable to the public debate.

Free Research Field

英文学