Pastoral motives in A Pitiful Comedy about Adam and Eve by J. G. Gregory

2021 ◽  
pp. 69-81
Author(s):  
Marianna V. Kaplun ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Similar Technique ◽  
Garden Of Eden ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Special Place ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Clear Predominance

The paper examines the functioning of descriptions of the Garden of Eden in A Pitiful Comedy about Adam and Eve by Johann Gottfried Gregory, staged in 1675 at the court of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. The description of the paradise garden in the play under study originates from the biblical tradition and is structured according to the Lutheran canon that was well-known to the author. The Russian play on the plot of Adam and Eve shows a connection with Paradise Lost by J. Milton. Following Milton, Gregory depicts Adam as the crown of creation of pastoral harmony. However, unlike Milton, Gregory’s pastoral descriptions in the play are of an inset character. The description of harmonic nature takes on a pastoral motif when the author starts imagining a particular (royal) garden as a biblical Eden, making the biblical descriptions of the garden expressive in an idyllic way. A similar technique can be found in the works of the English playwrights of the Elizabethan era, for example, in the plays of J. Peel. In Gregory’s play, a special place is occupied by the eclogue, the elements of which can be identified in the work of Juan del Encina. When considering the relationship between the concepts of “a pastoral,” “an idyll,” “a secular pastoral,” and “an eclogue”, one can find in Gregory’s play a clear predominance of secular pastoral with elements of idyll, which is due to the court orientation of the first Russian plays written for the theater of Tsar Aleksey Mikhailovich.

scholarly journals "Sufficient to Have Stood, Though Free to Fall": Free Will in John Milton's Paradise Lost

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Martineau
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
John Milton ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Garden Of Eden ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Book Of Genesis ◽  
The Way

In Book I of Paradise Lost, John Milton (1608-1674) asserts his intent to “justifie the wayes of God to men” (Paradise Lost1 I 26), paving the way for a revolutionary discussion of human nature, divinity, and the problem of evil, all couched in an epic retelling of Satan’s fall from grace, his temptation of Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, as recounted in the Book of Genesis. In his treatment of the biblical account, Milton necessarily broaches a variety of subjects which were both relevant during his time and remain relevant in ours. Among these topics, and certainly one of the most compelling, is the matter of human free will.

Two Schools of Desire: Nature and Marriage in Seventeenth-Century Puritanism

2000 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 372-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belden C. Lane
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Garden Of Eden ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Nature Imagery ◽  
Evening Star

In Milton's description of the marriage of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost, the entire Garden of Eden is seen to participate in the celebration of their union. Spousal and nature imagery are woven together, beauty and desire joined in the mystery of Adam's amazement at this gift of his “other self” newly received from God's hand. Says Adam of his wife,To the nuptial bowerI led her blushing like the morn: all heaven,And happy constellations on that hourShed their selectest influence; the earthGave sign of gratulation, and each hill;Joyous the birds; fresh gales and gentle airsWhispered it to the woods, and from their wingsFlung rose, flung odours from the spicy shrub,Disporting, till the amorous bird of nightSung spousal, and bid haste the evening starOn his hill top, to light the bridal lamp.Joyous birds, whispering breezes, welcoming stars—they all share in the couple's holy delight in each other and in God.

Choosing Rest in Paradise Lost

2018 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-293
Author(s):  
Daniel Ritchie ◽  
Jared Hedges
Keyword(s):  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Sexual Expression ◽  
Speech Understanding ◽  
Garden Of Eden ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
The World

As they depart the Garden of Eden at the end of Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve must “choose their place of rest” in the world. Most scholarly treatments of this “rest” place it in the eschatological context of Hebrews 4. Our paper highlights the neglected worldly significance of rest in Paradise Lost. Adam and Eve come to understand rest in relation to work, speech, understanding, eating, and sexual expression, both before the fall and after. Our article enables readers to identify with “our first parents” in seeking a “place of rest” in this world.

Milton, Marriage, and the Politics of Gender

John Milton ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosanna Cox
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Political Obligation ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Politics And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter investigates the seventeenth-century cultural and historical context of Milton's portrayal the relationship of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost. This approach aims to bring the intellectual, doctrinal, and political debates with which he engaged in his portrayal of the relationship between the sexes. The chapter examines Milton' understanding of the ideas of woman, womanhood, and the cultural debates about the relationship of man and woman in marriage and in the household, and the ways in which these conceptions formed his political and theological outlook. Milton's thoughts on gender and marriage, which were grounded in reformation and seventeenth-century Puritan teachings, in political debates on family and political obligation, and in the ideological and imaginative relationships between politics and gender, formed his prose and poetry on the relationship of man and woman.

The Garden as Unfinished Narrative of the Good in C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-80
Author(s):  
Evrea Ness-Bergstein
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Garden Of Eden ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Dead End ◽  
Growth And Change ◽  
Literary Devices ◽  
Hortus Conclusus

In Lewis’ transposition of Milton’s Paradise to a distant world where Adam and Eve do not succumb to Satan, the structure of Eden is radically different from the enclosed garden familiar to most readers. In the novel Perelandra (1944), C.S. Lewis represents the Garden of Eden as an open and ‘shifting’ place. The new Garden of Eden, with Adam and Eve unfallen, is a place of indeterminate future, excitement, growth, and change, very unlike the static, safe, enclosed Garden—the hortus conclusus of traditional iconography—from which humanity is not just expelled but also, in some sense, escapes. The innovation is not in the theological underpinnings that Lewis claims to share with Milton but in the literary devices that make evil in Perelandra seem boring, dead-end, and repetitive, while goodness is the clear source of change and excitement.

scholarly journals Milton's Manly Angels

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Thomas Lissington
Keyword(s):  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Complete Understanding ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Book Viii ◽  
Close Study ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Learning Institutions

<p>The masculine nature of the angels in Paradise Lost, in conjunction with their sexuality as revealed in Book VIII, prompted C. S. Lewis to try and explain away, not entirely convincingly, any potential “homosexual promiscuity” in his Preface to the epic. But other critics are unconcerned about the angels’ sexuality, probably because, unlike Lewis, they see them as essentially immaterial beings.  In what follows I argue that a complete understanding of the angels’ sexuality must rest on Milton’s gradual revelation of the angels’ morphic substance, critical to their sexuality and gender identity. Milton’s use of the conventions associated with classical pastoral in depicting the angels suggests a male homosocial model analogous with the learning institutions of Milton’s own historical context – helpful when it comes to establishing the type of society, and relationships, in the heaven of Paradise Lost. Similarly, an exploration of bi-erotic elements occurring elsewhere within the Miltonic canon helps contextualise the bisexual potential of angelic desire.  With these things in mind, a comprehensive understanding of the angelic sexuality can be achieved through close study of instances of desire, and sexuality, in Paradise Lost. The strong parallel between the angels, and Adam and Eve infers the potential for their descendants to evolve into a similar state of intimacy free of “Of membrane, joynt, or limb, exclusive barrs”.</p>

scholarly journals The Concept in Life and the Life of the Concept: Canguilhem’s Final Reckoning with Bergson

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Basic Problem ◽  
History Of Biology ◽  
French Philosophy ◽  
Special Place ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Living Being

Foucault famously divided the history of twentieth-century French philosophy between a “philosophy of experience” and a “philosophy of the concept,” placing Bergson in the former camp and his teacher Canguilhem in the latter. This division has shaped the Anglophone reception of Canguilhem as primarily a historian and philosopher of biology. Canguilhem, however, was also a philosopher of life and a careful reader of Bergson. The recently-begun publication of Canguilhem’s Œuvres complètes has revealed the depth of this engagement, and a re-reading of Canguilhem’s final major statement on Bergson, the 1966 essay “The Concept and Life,” has thus become necessary. The basic problem of that essay is the relationship between knowledge and life in the history of biology and philosophy, with a special place for Bergson. Canguilhem’s strong criticism of him turns, however, on a misquotation. In claiming that Bergson fails to account for the struggle of the living being to maintain a species form, Canguilhem misconstrues the crucial Bergsonian distinction between vital order and geometrical identity; he thus misses the importance that Bergson accords to general biological tendencies, rather than to the generality of the species. Despite the differences on display in the 1966 essay, it will be argued that Canguilhem’s earlier remarks on Bergson show a surprising convergence in the underlying aim of each thinker’s biological philosophy: the call for a new ontology that grasps the ordered and intelligible character of life without relying on a principle of identity.

scholarly journals Milton's Manly Angels

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Thomas Lissington
Keyword(s):  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Complete Understanding ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Book Viii ◽  
Close Study ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Learning Institutions

<p>The masculine nature of the angels in Paradise Lost, in conjunction with their sexuality as revealed in Book VIII, prompted C. S. Lewis to try and explain away, not entirely convincingly, any potential “homosexual promiscuity” in his Preface to the epic. But other critics are unconcerned about the angels’ sexuality, probably because, unlike Lewis, they see them as essentially immaterial beings.  In what follows I argue that a complete understanding of the angels’ sexuality must rest on Milton’s gradual revelation of the angels’ morphic substance, critical to their sexuality and gender identity. Milton’s use of the conventions associated with classical pastoral in depicting the angels suggests a male homosocial model analogous with the learning institutions of Milton’s own historical context – helpful when it comes to establishing the type of society, and relationships, in the heaven of Paradise Lost. Similarly, an exploration of bi-erotic elements occurring elsewhere within the Miltonic canon helps contextualise the bisexual potential of angelic desire.  With these things in mind, a comprehensive understanding of the angelic sexuality can be achieved through close study of instances of desire, and sexuality, in Paradise Lost. The strong parallel between the angels, and Adam and Eve infers the potential for their descendants to evolve into a similar state of intimacy free of “Of membrane, joynt, or limb, exclusive barrs”.</p>

Sympathy for the Devil

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Dilan Tuysuz
Keyword(s):  
John Milton ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
The World ◽  
The Devil

John Milton, in his epic poem Paradise Lost, describes the expulsion of Adam and Eve from heaven, leading to the beginning of the oldest struggle. However, the representation of the devil in Milton's work, which is considered responsible for all evil in the world, is striking. The fact that Milton's devil's temptation has taken precedence over the story of expulsion of Adam and Eve is similar to Batman being overshadowed by the evil character Joker. Batman, who has many virtues and positive qualities as a superhero, has not impressed the audience as much as wicked Joker. But what makes the bad characters attractive to the reader/audience in Milton's Satan and the Joker? Is the Joker mentally ill? Is there a rebellion like the Satan's behind the Joker's malicious actions or is it possible to talk about a different motivation? The aim of this chapter is to explore the answers to these and similar questions by taking a journey through the psychology of evil. Thus, it will be possible to understand whether our admiration of bad characters is a reflection of the darkness within us.

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