For an audience closer to the Bible and biblical literature than a modern one, all of these names resonated with meaning. Milton's point is that the pagan gods were once angels who, in corrupted form, became the false gods of those nations that opposed the Chosen People. The purpose behind the cataloging of demons in Hell and the hierarchy of angels in Heaven is not made clear by Milton, but the two groups are obviously comparable and intended to be so.
Similarly, the different aspects of Hell are usually set up in an ironic contrast with a counterpoint in Heaven. The hierarchy of Hell is not a real arrangement based on superiority and inferiority. Satan has taken control, but in actuality all the fallen angels are essentially the same, a point made clear when they are all turned into snakes and both their importance in the universe and their degrees in Hell vanish.
In Heaven, the hierarchy is real; in Hell, a sham. At the top of Milton's universe is Heaven with God on his throne; at the bottom of this universe is Hell, with Satan on his throne. In between the two is Chaos with his consort Night. Chaos and Night are depicted as characters, but they are actually personifications of the great unorganized chasm that separates Heaven from Hell.
For Milton, relying on earlier writers and thinkers, Chaos was the formless void that existed before creation. It was the abyss, the darkness, and the mighty wind out of which God created first Heaven and, later, Earth.
Chaos also physically demonstrates the profound width of the gap between Heaven and Hell. Not only is Hell at the bottom of the universe in Milton's design, it is at the bottom of an almost limitless and unimaginably disordered space. This journey is long and arduous and is one of the accomplishments of Satan that makes him seem heroic.
In Book II, Satan, with no clear idea of where he is going or how to get there, sets out across Chaos, intent on finding God's new creation. If the reader forgets Satan's motive, to corrupt and destroy, then Satan becomes the heroic individual, pitting himself against the universe. The Earth that is depicted in Paradise Lost is different from the Earth we know today. Milton describes Earth as a creation by God after the rebellion of Satan and his followers.
Raphael tells Adam that God created Earth through the Son to keep Satan from feeling pride that he had "dispeopl'd Heav'n" Earth and Man were created so that Man, through trial, could reach the state of the angels, and Earth could become a part of Heaven. To that end, the Son creates not only Earth but also the heavens surrounding Earth, and all that lives on Earth.
All of these, he suspends from Heaven on a golden chain. The great image in Paradise Lost is of the Son, a celestial architect with a golden compass, plotting out the universe in which Earth will exist. After its creation, Earth, like Heaven and Hell, has a hierarchical arrangement.
Also like Heaven and Hell, this arrangement is understated and vague. On Earth, Paradise — the Garden of Eden — is the paramount place. The hill from which Adam receives his vision of the future from Michael is apparently, though this is not stated, the highest place on Earth. So when Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden, they leave the perfect place on Earth and enter a world that is both flawed and unknown. On Earth, Adam is the superior being.
He was created first, and Eve was created from his rib. Adam is also the paradigmatic Man, the pattern for all who will come later; likewise Eve is the pattern for all women.
But, in relation to each other, Adam is superior both in intellect and ability. Eve is more beautiful, but she has been created as a slightly inferior helpmeet to Adam. Together the two humans are superior to all other living creatures on Earth. Raphael's speech beginning at line in Book V makes it clear that all of the creatures of Earth can be arranged in hierarchical order. The idea that the entire universe is hierarchical was basic to all thought in the seventeenth century. The first serious expressions of the equality of man were still over a century away.
The position of Earth in Milton's universe also reflects a hierarchical arrangement. Heaven is the top of the universe; Hell, the bottom.
Earth is attached to Heaven by a golden chain. Had Adam and Eve not fallen, there is a sense that at least metaphorically the chain would have slowly pulled Earth up to Heaven so the two places could merge. The fall changed the nature of the original plan. The fall, however, did not change the connection of Earth to Heaven. The chain remains, although at the end of Paradise Lost , a wide bridge across Chaos connects Hell to Earth.
Man must either find the difficult way up the chain or stroll across the wide causeway to Hell. The easier pathway is obvious. Authors Authors and affiliations Malabika Sarkar.
This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves. This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.
Kristin A. Pruitt and Charles W. Durham Selingrove: Susquehanna University Press, , p. Google Scholar. Edgar H. Hunter, Jr. Robert M. Durham eds. CrossRef Google Scholar. In the first invocation of Paradise Lost, God is depicted as impregnating Chaos with the seed of a world, suggesting an intricate connection between the creation of the cosmos and reproduction.
If God is impregnating the abyss, the abyss must be feminized in some way. This thesis considers the ways Milton feminizes Chaos as a space and argues that Paradise Lost presents a complicated and often inconsistent attempt to appropriate the language of reproduction and the female body in order to gender Chaos and the multiverse. Focusing on the female womb, and the culturally generated traits such as leakiness and double-formedness associated with the female body, Milton depicts a deterritorialized, grotesque cosmos where the boundaries and distinctions between Heavenly and Hellish spaces and bodies are muddled and intertwined.
Inside this grotesque multiverse, Chaos becomes a kind of feminine Goddess who gives birth to the universes alongside God and the various cosmic spaces and bodies take on a more mutable nature unbounded by the strict laws of the body. Yet Milton also seems to affirm some hierarchies between masculinity and femininity that are prevalent during his time by suggesting that the masculine aspects of his cosmos i.
0コメント