Samson's Now and I: Their Development in Time

Abstract

This essay proposes that there exists in Samson Agonistes a fully intelligible and concrete movement from despair to regeneration, which is conditioned on Samson’s capacity to integrate his split self in and through the present moment, the now. It is only after Samson has situated his ‘I’ in the now, formed a temporal succession between his past and present experiences, and opened it up to the future, that he is capable of unifying his bifurcated self and achieving an understanding of his relationship to God as enduring through the full scope of time.