Throughout modern society nothing symbolizes the fall of humankind more than a woman with feminine flowing hair and luscious lips biting into a large apple. While the biblical account evoking such imagery remains the primary authority, John Milton in Paradise Lost enlightens beyond the allegorical, offering a complexity of character and purpose. In this epic, readers are guided along humanity’s fall from grace, contrasting the ideal union of man and wife alongside harsh consequences that emerge from dangerous engendered perspectives.
From its inception, the human race was built upon a singular perception, an outlook based in patriarchal ideals. God, a supreme creator, armored in precision, creates man in his own image. It is inside this divine state that Adam is born, shaped from the Earth, his journey unfolds. Awakening in the splendor of Eden, Adam immediately recognizes his bond with a higher power, asking fellow creatures in the garden to expound upon the glory of his maker, “Tell me how I may know Him, how adore, from whom that thus I move and live” (XIII. 280-281) Outward from the account of his birth, readers are instructed, led toward patriarchy, following the use of a distinguishing pronoun “Him”. Milton throughout the text renders a strict Christian theological perspective, showcasing a phallic authority that spawns from the dawn of creation.
In the garden, a seemingly perfect being, Adam, is aligned within the sphere of God, joined by their dualistic and shared image. Yet as Frye Northrop points out, “In the soul of man, as God originally created there is a hierarchy…the reason… the will, and the appetite” (Northrop, 458). It is with little surprise that such a perfect body does not remain whole, as Adam takes not...
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...lton engages and delights, providing readers with a heightened unique understanding of Adam and Eve’s fall from grace.
Works Cited
Frye, Northrop “Children of God and Nature” Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Gordon
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Lewalski, Barbara “Higher Argument: Completing and Publishing Paradise Lost”
Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Gordon Teskey. New York: W. W Norton & Company,
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Lewis, C.S. “On God” Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Gordon Teskey. New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, Inc, 2005. Print.
Milton, John. "Paradise Lost." Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Gordon Teskey. New York:
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2005. Print.
Waldock, A.J.A. “The Fall” Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Gordon Teskey.
New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2005. Print
Author Jonathan Swift states, “Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others”. Known as the greatest painter of his time, Masaccio, the brilliant artist, produces artwork with purity and language. Through Masaccio’s detailed artwork, The Expulsion of Eden, constructs a painting bursting with emotion that touches the viewer. The story of Adam and Eve depicts two people of opposite gender, and their journey through discovering the root of guilt, and the consequences of knowledge. After Eve (and eventually Adam) eats the attractive forbidden fruit from the tree of life - being tempted by the serpent, Adam and Eve are forever punished from the Garden of Eden, liberating both from innocence. Due to Masaccio's genius paintwork, he portrays the Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden with precise detail and emotion that matches and, in some parts, enhances the actual Biblical story.
Throughout time man has been isolated from people and places. One prime example of isolation is Adam, "the man [formed] from the dust of the ground [by the Lord God]" (Teen Study Bible, Gen. 2.7). After committing the first sin he secludes "from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken" (Teen Study Bible, Gen. 3.23). This isolation strips Adam from his protection and wealth the garden provides and also the non-existence of sin. Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, is able to relate to the story of Adam and the first sin to help her character, the Creature, associate with Adam. The Creature is able to relate because "[l]ike Adam, [he is] apparently united by no link to any other being in existence" (Shelley 124). In other ways the creator of the creature, Victor Frankenstein, also identifies with the tale of the first human, but with a different character, God. "God created man in his own image" (Teen Study Bible, Gen. 1.27) and unlike Frankenstein "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good" (Teen Study Bible, Gen. 1.31). Frankenstein brought a life into the world but did not take the responsibility to lead and guide his creature to benefit himself or the created. Unlike God's creature who did in turn prosper. Instead of prosperity Frankenstein receives a life of loneliness and responsibility of many unnecessary deaths. The Creature, like his creator, lives his life in isolation from society. His only goal is to be loved and accepted by those around him. Through these circumstances the effects of isolation and loneliness are brought to life by the creature and the creator thought their pasts, social statuses, emotions, and dreams and fantasies.
Giacomo’s garden, like Eden, has lush greenery, has borders which keep separate the inside and outside worlds, and has its own version of Adam and Eve, who are, as Oliver Evans argues, Beatrice and Giovanni, respectively (186). Despite similarities to the original, perfect Eden, what makes Giacomo’s garden an inverse-Eden is that it is Fallen, and its Fallen state is revealed through the poisonous nature of Beatrice and the plants within. Giacomo’s garden is also like an inverse-Eden because Beatrice is Adam—for she was created by Giacomo, who appears to be playing the role of God—and Giovanni is Eve, whom Giacomo (God) finds so his Beatrice can have a mate. This gender-reversal of “Adam” and “Eve,” in addition to the poisonous plants make Giacomo’s garden like, but also not exactly like,
In Milton’s Paradise Lost, Milton introduces lust as mankind’s tendency to escape from reality. In book nine, after the couple has committed the original sin, they impulsively seek solace through physical contact, hoping to alleviate the anxiety and avoid the immediate consequences. Milton demonstrates a clear contrast between prelapsarian sex and postlapsarian sex in which the former is an embodiment of love, condoned by God, whereas the latter is a forbidden act. He argues that the postlapsarian lustful sex will never be able to replace the prelapsarian consummation. By constructing a unique depiction of Miltonic love and marriage, Milton condemns lust as one of seven deadly sins. Immediately after consuming the fruit and having sex in what seems to be under an intoxicated state, Adam and Eve attempt to assuage feelings of guilt, ignore their mental anguish, and fill a spiritual voice. The couple’s anxiety is displayed through the speed of which the postlapsarian sex is taking place, the intoxicated state of the couple and heightened sensory perception. Yet when the couple realizes the futility of their attempts, they quickly accuse one another and beg for forgiveness before they can ever experience happiness once again. Postlapsarian, although meant to serve as a source of comfort only causes more corruption.
ABSTRACT: According to Malebranche, Adam should be considered as an occasionalist philosopher. Not only did philosophy originate in paradise, but it in fact originated as Malebranchian occasionalism. It was in order to be able to persist in his occasionalist belief that Adam was given exceptional power over his body, that is, the power to detach the principal part of his brain (i.e., the seat of the soul) from the rest of the body. It was only in continually detaching the principal part of his brain from the rest of the body that Adam was able to persist in his occasionalist belief despite the unmistakable testimony of his sense to the contrary. Having once sinned, he thereupon lost his psychophysical privilege. Whereas pre-lapsarian physiology made Adam's belief in the causal efficacy of God possible, post-lapsarian physiology, in contrast, necessarily engenders and sustains belief in the causal efficacy of bodies. It was only as a result of the post-lapsarian physiology that some of the central problems of early modern philosophy arose. Contingent upon Adam's psychophysical privilege, occasionalism was possible only in paradise.
...t, Stephen, gen. ed. “Paradise Lost.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Vol. 1. New York: Norton, 2012. Print. 36-39.
...nces for straying from God and it is because of this that his mind further and further spirals downward. On the other hand, Adam and Eve manage to realize the scope of God’s power and thus rewarded by God’s grace.
describes Adam and Eve's fall from grace in the Garden of Eden. By giving George
In Book IX of Milton’s Paradise Lost, Eve makes a very important and revealing speech to the tree of knowledge. In it, she demonstrates the effect that the forbidden fruit has had on her. Eve’s language becomes as shameful as the nakedness that Adam and Eve would later try to cover up with fig leaves. After eating the forbidden apple, Eve’s speech is riddled with blasphemy, self-exaltation, and egocentrism.
“Paradise Lost.”* The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt and M.H. Abrams. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. *(page). Print.
Milton. New York: Norton, 1957. Elledge, Scott, ed., pp. 113-117. Paradise Lost: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources.
Milton, John. ‘Paradise Lost.’ 1674. Norton Anthology of English Literature. 7th ed. 2 vols. New York: Norton, 2000, 1: 1817-2044.
Paradise Lost is one of the finest examples of the epic tradition in all of literature. In composing this extraordinary work, John Milton was, for the most part, following in the manner of epic poets of past centuries: Barbara Lewalski notes that Paradise Lost is an "epic whose closest structural affinities are to Virgil's Aeneid . . . "; she continues, however, to state that we now recognize as well the influence of epic traditions and the presence of epic features other than Virgilian. Among the poem's Homeric elements are its Iliadic subject, the death and woe resulting from an act of disobedience; the portrayal of Satan as an Archillean hero motivated by a sense of injured merit and also as an Odyssean hero of wiles and craft; the description of Satan's perilous Odyssey to find a new homeland; and the battle scenes in heaven. . . . The poem also incorporates a Hesiodic gigantomachy; numerous Ovidian metamorphoses; an Ariostan Paradise of Fools; [and] Spenserian allegorical figures (Sin and Death) . . . . (3)
In conclusion, Paradise Lost can be seen through a historically contextual lens that allows us to see the parallels between Milton’s life and experiences during the reign of Charles I, and the predominant themes in his epic poem. Many of the themes in Paradise Lost, from the broader situational occurrences to the behavior of individual character’s and their attitudes toward the situations in which they find themselves can be seen as directly influenced by Milton’s time as a Parliamentarian in 17th century England.
Throughout Paradise Lost, Milton uses various tools of the epic to convey a traditional and very popular Biblical story. He adds his own touches to make it more of an epic and to set forth new insights into God's ways and the temptations we all face. Through his uses of love, war, heroism, and allusion, Milton crafted an epic; through his references to the Bible and his selection of Christ as the hero, he set forth a beautifully religious Renaissance work. He masterfully combined these two techniques to create a beautiful story capable of withstanding the test of time and touching its readers for centuries.