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.

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.

Perspective as a Conceptual Tool in Milton and Newton

2020 ◽  
pp. 132-162
Author(s):  
Erin Webster
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Conceptual Tool ◽  
Infinitesimal Calculus ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Baroque Art ◽  
Art And Architecture ◽  
The Universe

This chapter reads John Milton’s use of vast shifts in perspective in Paradise Lost (1667) in relation to seventeenth-century developments in the mathematics of infinity and infinitesimals. In a period in which telescopes and microscopes promised to extend the eye’s reach indefinitely, this chapter shows that Milton’s use of the epic simile and Newton’s infinitesimal calculus, first published as an attachment to his optical treatise, Opticks (1704), are related attempts to express concepts that continue to exceed the limits of visual comprehension: the infinitely large, the infinitesimally small, and the paradoxical relationship between the two. The chapter places these two writers’ work within the context of baroque art and architecture, which similarly exploits perspective as a means of expressing the concept of an infinite universe held in tension with the limits of human perception. Ultimately, it argues that by requiring his readers to vacillate between multiple perspectives on the same object, Milton contributes to a broader cultural decentring of the earth-bound human perspective as the standard measure of the universe.

LXIII. “A Double Janus” (Paradise Lost XI. 129)

PMLA ◽  
1939 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 1026-1030
Author(s):  
Allan H. Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Garden Of Eden

According to the seventeenth-century interpretation of Ezekiel i and x, the cherubim were beings with four faces, as Milton indicates in describing the “Chariot of Paternal Deity”convoyed By four Cherubic shapes, four Faces each Had wondrous (P. L. vi. 752-754).This is repeated later, when Michael in his descent to the Garden of Eden is accompanied bythe Cohort bright Of watchful Cherubim; four faces each Had, like a double Janus (P. L. xi. 127-129).

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.

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.

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.

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