MI LTON AND ECOLOGY

In Milton and Ecology, Ken Hiltner engages with literary, theoreti-

cal, and historic approaches to explore the ideological underpinnings
of our current environmental crisis. Focusing on Miltons rejection of
dualistic theology, metaphysical philosophy, and early modern subjec-
tivism, Hiltner agues that Milton anticipates certain essential modern
ecological arguments. Even more remarkable is that Milton was able
to integrate these arguments with biblical sources so seamlessly that his
interpretative Green reading of scripture has for over three centuries
been entirely plausible. This study considers how Milton, from the
earliest edition of the Poems, not only sought to tell the story of how
through humanitys folly Paradise on earth was lost, but also sought to
tell how it might be regained. This intriguing study will be of interest
to eco-critics and Milton specialists alike.
ken hi ltner has publishedwidely onMilton. His articles have been
published in Milton Studies, Milton Quarterly, and English Language
Notes.
MI LTON AND ECOLOGY
KEN HI LTNER
caxniioci uxiviisir\ iiiss
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, So Paulo
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cn: :iu, United Kingdom
First published in print format
isbn-13 978-0-521-83071-3 hardback
isbn-13 978-0-511-48363-9 OCeISBN
Ken Hiltner 2003
2003
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521830713
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of
relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place
without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
isbn-10
isbn-10 0-521-83071-0 hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
uiis for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not
guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
isnx-:,
isnx-:,
isnx-:c c
,
Contents
Acknowledgments page vi
Preface vii
Introduction 1
part i : havi ng place
1 Place dened: the ecological importance of place 11
2 Place given: Eve as the gardens spirit of place 30
3 Place lost: Eves Fall as an uprooting 43
4 Place regained: Sabrina puts down roots 55
part i i : the underlyi ng i mportance of place
5 The New Testaments call to place: Pauls and Luthers
deconstructions 75
6 Rejecting the placeless ancient doctrines: confusing
Paradise Regained 86
7 The Old Testaments call to place: Jobs wisdom in
Miltons poetry 102
8 The inuence of time on place: forbidding unripe fruit 113
9 Place, body, and spirit joined: the EarthHuman wound
in Paradise Lost 125
Notes 135
Select bibliography 156
Index 163
v
Acknowledgments
I owe an enormous debt of thanks to Diane McColley, not only for her
generous guidance throughout this project but for suggesting what at rst
seemed outrageous, though now seems utterly obvious: that Milton might
be read Greenly. Without her support, this book would not have been
possible. Certain chapters also beneted greatly from the readings given
them by Albert Labriola, Richard DuRocher, and Jeffrey Theis.
Portions of my second and third chapters appeared, in somewhat differ-
ent form, under the title The Portrayal of Eve in Paradise Lost: Genius at
Work as chapter 4 of Milton Studies 40, ed. Albert Labriola (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001). Sections of my nal chapter were rst
published as Place, Body, and Spirit Joined: The EarthHuman Wound
in Paradise Lost, Milton Quarterly 35 (May 2001). Additional material was
also drawn from my A Defense of Miltons Environmentalism, which is
forthcoming in English Language Notes.
vi
Preface
Why consider the role of place in Miltons poetry? A few years ago, while
attending a seminar conducted by Diane McColley on the relation of na-
ture to culture in the literary history of the natural world, I found myself
returning again and again to the same question: what happens when cul-
ture is privileged over place? No mere academic question, as the last acres
of the place my family had farmed for generations had given way to bull-
dozers the year before, I found myself feeling that I had somehow lost my
place in the world. What was most startling about this development was
the total disregard for the place: the great homogenizing culture of late
twentieth-century America had seen my familys farm as merely space in
which to develop itself. In order to make this space into the current sub-
urban dream, nearly every aspect of the landscape was altered, with whole
lakes appearing overnight. That this space developed was once a remarkably
self-contained place, which offered food, fuel, water, shelter, and life, was
lost with the place.
In one sense, the answer to my question of what happens when culture is
privileged over place was appallingly clear: if a human culture has enough
resolve, technology, and belief in its destiny, it can literally landscape every
last feature of a place to conformto its vision of itself. To such a culture to
what is now our culture place is all but irrelevant. To be clear, the farming
practices of my family may have also done some violence to the place, but
underlying our habitation of the land was an ancient peasant pact between
the place and the culture dwelling upon it an acknowledgment that, as
part of the place, our lives were inexorably caught up there.
In another sense, as it became increasingly clear to me, my question of
what happens when culture is privileged over place has another less obvi-
ous answer: in the two decades which saw my familys farm give way to
our cultures need to spread itself out in space, there was coincidentally an
extraordinary interest in certain circles being directed towards culture
which in many quarters became the academic buzzword. That culture has
vii
viii Preface
come out of the margins of academic discourse is no doubt positive, but
what if the focus on culture has marginalized something else? As our pre-
occupation with culture had utterly destroyed the place that was my home,
so too our privileging of culture in less literal elds the eld of literary
study, for example might marginalize place as well.
In comparison to culture, place, as place on the Earth, is rarely found in
academic circles. Though Edward Casey has recently written the rst book-
length account of place, the environmental importance of place is hardly
to be found in the work. With place having such a comparatively small
role in academic discourse, it was with some surprise that I rst read Diane
McColleys writings onMilton. By drawing attentionto the place Adamand
Eve dwelled through their relation to the Garden, McColleys work marks
a crucial shift in Milton studies as she restores Miltons own emphasis on
place: not only is Paradise Lost lled with astonishing descriptions of the
Garden place (so much so that we, like Satan, might be struck speechless
at rst encountering the immense fertile beauty of the place), but the epic
itself is the story of a place, called Paradise, lost.
To my surprise, my question of what happens when culture is priv-
ileged over place was also asked by Milton in Paradise Lost: when we,
like Eve (tempted by the thought of what we might become) forget, even
for a moment, that we still need our roots to run deep into our place
on Earth, what happens to the place? Miltons answer is that the place
will surely suffer as Earth feels the wound of our uprooting. This is not
merely an environmental ethic, but a reclaiming of the original sense of the
Greek ethos, which was not only a custom or habit but also an accustomed
(a-customed) place. Ethical behavior is to act well towards not only the
human beings in our place but also towards the plants and animals found
there as well as the place itself. To act ethically is to be in the habit of
the place we dwell. For just a moment Miltons Eve, the poets shinning
paradigm of Christian ethical behavior (who should be an ecological ex-
emplar for us as well) is tempted to uproot herself from her place on Earth.
In many respects the epic Paradise Lost is an answer to a simple, though
rarely asked, question: howdoes one consider the allegory of the Fall, which
introduces the Judeo-Christian ethos, without pondering our own place on
the Earth?
If in reading Paradise Lost (or any work of literature for that matter) we
give in to the temptation to dwell on culture, what happens to the place
on Earth where we dwell? This same question concerning the relation of
culture to place, whether asked regarding the eld of literary study or the
elds of a family farm, elicits the same answer given by Milton: it is not
Preface ix
only our place on Earth which suffers from our marginalizing of it, but,
as Eve laments when she is exiled from her place, it will also be felt by
us as an unexpected stroke worse than death a startling and altogether
chilling prophecy on Miltons part that is now being felt in innumerable
places across the Earth. This is as much an ethical matter for Eve as it is
for Milton who tells her story: for the poet not to tell the story of Paradise
(place) lost would also be to forget his deep roots in the Earth.
This is also an ethical matter for those in the eld of literary study: to
marginalize place as culture becomes central to our readings may do as
much violence to place as those bulldozers did to my familys farm. In
contrast to this violence, Paradise Lost is a call to regain our lost place on
Earth. As I understand the work of Diane McColley and others who seek
to read Milton Greenly, theirs is an effort to recognize and repeat the
poets call to regain lost place. This is not merely the calling of those who
would explicate Miltons works, but a call to anyone sympathetic to the
Earths places.
Introduction
The hardness and smell of the oakwood began to speak clearly of the
slow and lasting way in which the tree grew. The oak itself proclaimed
that all that lasts and bears fruit is founded on such growth alone; that
growth means to lie open to the span of the heavens and, at the same
time, to have roots in the dark earth, that everything real and true
only prospers if mankind fullls at the same time the two conditions
of being ready for the demands of the highest heaven and being safe
in the shelter of the fruitful earth.
Martin Heidegger
1
Place is of profound environmental importance. Indeed, if we all acted
well towards our individual places on Earth, from our bodies to the earth
beneath our feet, the Earth would not be experiencing global devastation.
We in the modern West have all but forgotten that many of our peasant
ancestors were once so thoroughly bonded to their places on Earth that
separation from place seemed a fate worse than death. To a people who, on
average, transplant ourselves and our households twice a decade, emphasis
on place may seem altogether misguided. But along with this idea of being
rooted in the earth comes a deep commitment to place and to the Earth.
In what I nd the most moving lines of Paradise Lost, when a confused
Eve learns that she is to be exiled from her place (the Garden), she cannot
help but emote the bond she has with her place: O unexpected stroke,
worst than of Death! / Must I leave thee Paradise? thus leave / Thee Native
Soile?
2
To our modern sensibilities, Eves response to the news of her exile
may seem more the reaction of a plant faced with being uprooted than a
human being confronting the prospect of moving. But it is these modern
(which were forming in the seventeenth century) sensibilities which reject
thinking of ourselves as planted in place, to which I shall argue Miltons
poetry speaks or more accurately, rebuffs.
Although there is a temptation to see profound ecological change as a
modern phenomenon, the history of seventeenth-century England sadly
1
2 Introduction
argues otherwise. In Miltons era Englands old-growth forests were almost
completely destroyed, not only because of a boom in housing and ship
construction but to fuel such emerging industries as cooper smelting and
glassmaking.
3
Enormous agricultural changes, in part brought about by
enclosure and engrossing, also radically altered the English landscape. Fol-
lowing the 1523 publication of the Boke of Husbondrye by John Fitzherbert,
a century of works by Thomas Tusser, Barnabe Googe, Andrew Yarranton,
and others propounded the theme that changes in agricultural practices
could lead to dramatic increase in crop yields.
4
Not only did this rad-
ically alter existing cropland, but the desire to make previously unpro-
ductive lowlands arable led to the substituting of indigenous plants with
ryegrass, clover, trefoil, carrots, turnips, and sainfoin.
5
Moreover, increased
demand for meat, tallow, and wool led not only to overgrazing but also
contributed to the draining of fens, marshes, and wetlands for pasture and
cropland.
Mining, not only for metals but increasingly for coal (as Sir WilliamCecil
notedin1596, Londonandall other towns near the sea . . . are mostly driven
to burn coal . . . for most of the woods are consumed
6
), also took its toll on
places. (Aghast at mining practices, inParadise Lost Milton describes human
beings who with impious hands / Rid the bowels of thir mother Earth /
For Treasures better hid [1.68688], as having been taught the practice by
the epics devils.) Moreover, the advent of proto-industrial practices not
only pushed urban development into new places but also increased reliance
on imported goods; especially grain,
7
as subsistence gardening no longer
supported a broad swath of the population. Aside fromsetting policy for the
exploitation of undeveloped (and what was perceived as under-developed)
places, the Commonwealth itself, having conscated land from Church,
Charles I, and private royalists, was pressured to develop formerly unused
land to service its own debts.
8
With each of these changes in practices came
the loss of places that had otherwise been unchanged for thousands of
years. While it may seem that the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had a
monopoly on the rampant development of largely unmolested places, the
history of Miltons era sadly proves otherwise.
Not surprisingly, these massive ecological upheavals fueled public de-
bate. Consider the example of deforestation: in 1653 Sylvanus Taylor baldly
stated that deforestation had become a central issue for all of England,
that all mens eyes were upon the forests.
9
Although discussed earlier, the
issue exploded in April 1649 with the scandal that royalists had nearly deci-
mated the Forest of Dean. Accordingly, the 1649 Act for the Sale of Crown
Lands temporarily excluded forests as debate on woodland management
Introduction 3
continued through the next decade. While not expressly environmental
(the Commonwealth was actually hoping to preserve a supply of timber
for ship construction), the debate nonetheless centered on the issue of
sustainable yield, with Taylor enthusiastically suggesting that two trees be
planted for every one cut down. A report prepared by Dr. John Parker
and Edward Crasset encouraging mass deforestation carried the day and
resulted in November 1653 in the passing of the Act for the Deforestation,
Sale, and Improvements of the Forests.
10
While debates like these raged, Milton was writing his poetry. Indeed,
in 1664, when the poet was likely nishing his Paradise Lost, John Evelyn
published his enormously well-known Silva, a sentimental and unabashed
plea for the preservation of forests. Underpinning my current inquiry is
a desire to understand how the ecological upheavals of the seventeenth
century appear in Miltons poetry. Eco-critic Robert Pogue Harrison has
argued that with this loss of woodlands came a remarkable inversion
as early as the sixteenth century, in which the representations of forests
in literature begin to shift from sinister to become instead innocent,
pastoral.
11
If Harrison is correct in holding that even works written in
Shakespeares day were works of nostalgia,
12
wistfully harking back to an
improbable past of innocent pastoral, then Miltons poetry may be the most
nostalgic of all, nding in our past an unrivaled Paradise, lost through our
own folly. Read this way, Paradise Lost is indeed a retelling of the biblical
story of the loss of Eden, but, told in an early modern age witnessing the
passing of a once-pristine landscape, the epic brings fresh new meaning to
the notion of losing a Paradise.
The present inquiry is not largely historical although such an investi-
gation is not only possible but sorely needed. Fortunately, Diane McColley
has recently completed the rst book-length eco-critical treatment of the
early modern era, which is rmly historical in its approach. Something of a
complement to McColleys work, I instead draw attention to Milton grap-
pling with issues of theology and philosophy in his Green Reformation
of Christianity and early modern thinking. For example, while medieval
theology often interpreted the Fall as humanity giving in to the temptation
of the earthy esh and in so doing cast much that is of the Earth as
not only inferior and suspect but evil Milton offers a startling reading
of scripture which nds Eve falling as she attempts to pull away from the
Earth. Not surprisingly, such an Earth-friendly approach puts Milton in
the company of some very modern environmentalists.
In my opening chapter I note how a group of environmental thinkers
known as Deep Ecologists have since the late 1960s sought to rethink the
4 Introduction
relation of human beings to the places on Earth we inhabit. Drawing from
a wide range of disciplines, Deep Ecologists eschew the traditional subject
object distinction of Western thought for a view that human beings are as
much a part of the places we inhabit as those places are a part of us. As the
subjectivism these ecologists are railing against can principally be traced
back to Descartes, Miltons much-noted rejection of Cartesian mindbody
(and accordingly mindplace) dualism has profound environmental im-
port. Those ambivalent to place in Paradise Lost are always devils. Either
the epics devils see place as objectively that which can be consumed and
developed, or like Satan, boast they have attained the subjectivists dream
of being a mind apart from both body and place that mind is its own
place. In contrast, Adam and Eve are found to be thoroughly rooted in
the Earth; understanding their garden place (in particular the Bower) not
as dead re-sources to be utilized, but rather as the very source which makes
life in the Garden possible. Before the Fall Adam and Eve are never subjects
who view their place as an object. When Satan nally realizes the horrid
truth that being without place is Hell itself, the tragedy of Paradise Lost
ensues as he tempts Eve to uproot herself from her own life-giving place.
In chapter 2 I consider howa close reading of the major works of the 1645
Poems together with Paradise Lost reveals a remarkable similarity between
humanity in the epic and the spirits or guardians of the place (genius loci)
of the early works. Many of Eves characteristics were rst pennedto describe
the early genius gures. This is especially clear in the case of the Genius of
the northern Wood from Arcades: both Eve (with Adam) and the Genius
are given dominion over their particular place, live in a Bower, nurse
the plants in their place, see to the bounty and beauty of their place, protect
the place from nightly ills, attend to their place with morning haste,
number the ranks of the plants, visit the plants in their domain, and
are as attentive to a spiritual realm as they are to the Earth. While certain
medieval Christian thinkers considered human beings as merely visitors
here on Earth, as essentially spirits without place, in Paradise Lost Milton
has Adam and Eve not only moored to the Earth, but actively attending
to the place which makes their lives possible. As will become apparent in
upcoming chapters, this reunication of human beings and place is nothing
less than a deconstruction of medieval theologys dualistic representations
of Christianity.
Miltons reverence for place is made especially clear, I argue in chapter 3,
when we consider the wound Earth receives at the Fall in Paradise Lost. This
very unusual wound is not caused by something striking at the Earth, like
a st or spear, but instead something struck from the Earth humanity.
Introduction 5
Paradise is lost as a dualistic theologian (in devils clothing) momentar-
ily dupes Eve, the genius of the Garden, into believing that she should
uproot herself from her place on Earth. Like some great tree which had
simply reached too high for its roots in the Earth to support it, Eve falls
and leaves a massive open wound in the Earth. With this extraordinary
though entirely plausible interpretation of the biblical Fall, Milton de-
livers Christianity to the fold of environmentalists who hold that our own
foolish acts have brought ecological devastation to the Earth. But Milton
goes further in suggesting that this foolish uprooting of ourselves from our
place on Earth was the pivotal human act and the source of our current
sorrow. However, because the wound is the site of the separation, human-
itys greatest opportunity to renew a precious bond we once had with the
Earth is to allow ourselves to feel this shared wound at once for ourselves
and for the Earth (as Miltons sentient Earth felt the wound, at once for
herself and for humanity).
While Paradise Lost tells the story of how humanity was uprooted from
its place on Earth, the much earlier Ludlow Mask rewrites the role of the
genius loci Sabrina in a traditional British founding myth to tell the story
of how humanity might restore the HumanEarth bond. In chapter 4 I
suggest that, in a rather circular way, one could say that Sabrina is both
mother (along with the other genii of the 1645 Poems) to Eve, as Paradise
Losts heroine inherits many of the characteristics Milton rst penned in the
Mask, but also daughter to Eve as Sabrina takes up the mother of humanitys
postlapsarian task of re-rooting humankind in a new place on the Earth.
Through the inclusion of three spirits in the Mask (Sabrina, Comus, and
the Attendant Spirit), Milton introduces a ternary structure which makes
problematic medieval theologys either of the Earth (earthy, like Comus)
or not of the Earth (spiritual, as in the Attendant Spirit) dilemma. While
medieval theology generally favored the not of the Earth horn of the
dilemma (at the cost of marginalizing the Earth), through Sabrina and
Eve Milton enacted a deconstruction bent on revealing what is arguably
the original Judeo-Christian understanding of Adam and Eve as spirits
thoroughly of the Earth rst expressed by Milton in the bio-regional
terms of the Mask as spirits of place, genius loci.
The observant reader no doubt will have noticed (perhaps even winced
at) my passing use of deconstructioninconnectionwith Milton, yet the link
is not as tenuous as it might rst appear. Chapter 5 considers howPauls rst
letter to the Church at Corinth and Luthers theologia crucis are not only,
as recent scholarship has disclosed, sources for (Heideggers early formula-
tion of ) modern deconstruction, but direct attempts to undo Christianitys
6 Introduction
fusion with the Greco-Roman-exalted Judaic traditions. According to both
Luther and Paul, by substituting a physical for a meta-physical God, a
manifestly weak God-Man for an all-powerful transcendent God, an ab-
sent (as Christ is until the Parousia) God for an eternally present God,
and celebrating weakness over strength, Christianity from the very start
attempted to destabilize the Greco-Roman tradition a tradition which
has brought horric environmental consequence to the Earth. Paul, Luther,
Kierkegaard, and the young Heidegger all argue for a Christianity rmly
rooted in place on Earth. Ironically, however, through the inuence of the
ancient traditions (especially Greek), what became orthodox Christianity
actually reversed its position on the importance of place on Earth to human
beings.
1 Corinthians also had an enormous inuence on Paradise Regained.
Chapter 6 places Milton in the company of Paul, Luther, and Heidegger
in their deconstructive enterprises as Paradise Regained can be considered
a confusing text precisely because it con-fuses (stands against the fusion
of ) those born into a fusion of the Christian, Greek, Roman, and exalted
Judaic traditions. In looking past the crucixion (the source of the decon-
struction conceived by Paul and Luther) to Jesus temptation in the desert,
Milton radicalizes the approach by holding that Jesus himself countered the
prevailing Greco-Roman-exalted Judaic juggernaut; represented in Paradise
Regained through the corresponding central temptations of Greek learn-
ing, Roman power, and the glorious Throne of David. In Paradise Regained
we can actually see in the Son the emergence of the paradigmatic Chris-
tian Self as a counter to Greek and Roman values: not until Satan offers
distrust, power, glory, and a kingdom here does the Son understand he
must privilege trust, weakness, humiliation, and a kingdom not here. In
this view, Christian values are themselves con-structed to deconstruct the
Greco-Roman-exalted Judaic world-view, though the fact that Christianity
has again and again (such as in medieval theology) been fused with the very
traditions it was constructed to oppose is not only one of historys great
ironies, but the reasonMiltonmay have felt compelledtopenthe con-fusing
Paradise Regained. While this deconstruction has profound environmen-
tal signicance, as it places Christianity in the company of such place-
friendly approaches as Native American spiritualism, the understanding of
Christianity put forth in Paradise Regained has the added characteristic of
actually being tailor-made (con-structed) to counter the Greco-Roman-
exalted Judaic mindset. To Milton, Christianity is not a disease infecting
the Earth, it is a well-crafted cure.
Introduction 7
Although critical of the exalted Judaic mindset in Paradise Regained,
Milton also argues that it is a mistake to consider Christianity apart from
Judaism as an environmental cure, as my chapter 7 suggests. The Book of
Job, and the wisdom contained in it, had a remarkable inuence on both
the form and content of Paradise Regained. However, if Jobs wisdom is
Hellenized, as is often done by Milton scholars, it is possible to completely
miss the wisdom of Paradise Regained. In light of thinking by Kierkegaard,
Heidegger, and Derrida, it becomes clear that to Milton wisdom(sapientia)
in the postlapsarian world is not Augustines quiet knowledge and vision of
his God, but rather Jobs fear and trembling before a God neither knownnor
seen. By directing our thoughts back to the here-and-now of our existence
on Earth, Milton rejects the Greek notion of quiet contemplation of an-
Other realm. This point is also made abundantly clear in Paradise Lost:
while Adam and Eve fully experience the terror of their fallen existence, the
devils in the epic immerse themselves in speculative theology in order to
avoid confronting the horror of their condition.
Chapter 8 considers how the concept of appointed time (as the New
Testament Greek kairos and the Hebrew zem-awn ) is constantly at work
in Miltons work. Without taking kairos into account, the central tempta-
tions in Paradise Regained, Paradise Lost, and the Ludlow Mask cease to be
temptations at all. Satan and Comus do not tempt the Son, Eve, and the
Lady of the Mask with what they should never have, but rather with what,
in the best of possible futures, they each will have: the Throne of David,
the attainment of Heaven, and a sensuous and sensual life, respectively.
Whether the Son, Eve, and the Lady act fully to realize their destiny or
act to squander it, is all a question of kairos. As kairos arguably forms the
basis of the late Heideggers environmental maxim of standing reserve
(Bestand), it is possible to use Heideggers postmodern thought to explicate
the environmental implications of kairos on place. By having his protag-
onists tempted with the prospect of appointing their own time, thereby
ignoring kairos, it can be argued that Milton is suggesting that the Earths
places should not stand in reserve for human needs, but quite the con-
trary, human beings should stand in wait for the Earths places to present
their gifts in the Earths (Gods) time. Milton claries the environmental
importance of time on place through his clever reformulation of medieval
thought: what the Earth has to offer is only forbidden fruit when it is not
yet ripe.
Because Milton has placed the wounding of the Earth in Paradise Lost
where we might have expected the wounding of the Son, my nal chapter
8 Introduction
considers the typology surrounding Christs wound as well as the wound
opened in Adams side during the Creation of Eve. Christs, Adams, and
the Earths wounds are all quite unusual, as something of consequence
actually emerges from them to connect the wounded and what emerges
from the wound in a mystical way. However, for this bond to remain intact
the wound must be continually felt. The typological tradition describes
the bond between the wounded and what emerges fromthe wound in three
ways: as a sort of birth, as a relation among parts of the body, and as the
relation of roots to a tree. Milton uses each of these three approaches to
portray howthe Earth is wounded at the Fall. Through this use of typology,
Milton suggests that our relation to Mother Earth is not only that to a
mother who gave birth to humanity, but also to the earth we must
be deeply rooted in if we are to grow towards Heaven. Furthermore, in
Miltons poetry this mystical bodily connection we share with the Earth
runs as deep as our bond to Heaven rises above it.
Finally, it should be noted that throughout the work I make what
may seem heavy-handed use of some very modern thinkers: Kierkegaard,
Nietzsche, and especially the young Heidegger. Considered together, I ar-
gue that the common enterprise of these philosophers can be seen in part
as a radical reformation of Christian thinking: Kierkegaards avowed mis-
sion is the unsettling of the Church (Christendom); Nietzsches own
reform project, although more hostile, is undertaken with near-constant
reference to Christianity; and the young Heidegger, who considered himself
a Christian theologian, undertook (then quickly concealed and disavowed)
a radical reformation of the Western tradition through his secularization of
early Christian thinking. My approach is not simply to use these thinkers
to explicate Miltons work, but rather to argue that Miltons poetry con-
tains an early modern anticipation of many of the ideas key to this second
Reformation. My larger aim, however, is to explore the ecological impli-
cations of Miltons strikingly modern efforts to reform Christianity.
part i
Having place
1
Place dened: the ecological importance of place
All that any of us may know of ourselves is to be known in relation to
this place.
Wendell Berry
1
O unexpected stroke, worst than of Death!
2
When Miltons Eve learns
that she and Adam are to be uprooted from the Garden, she not only
cries out that it is a fate worse than Death, but in a surprising turn of
events, she looks not to Gods messenger, Michael, for further conrmation,
but instead directly questions the Garden: Must I leave thee Paradise?
(11.269). This is one of the few occasions in Paradise Lost where the Earth is
addressed, though earlier, after surveying Hill, and Vallie, Rivers, Woods
and Plaines . . . Rocks, Dens and Caves, a bitter Satan remarked to the
Earth, but I in none of these / Find place or refuge (9.11619). In contrast
to Satan, who surveyed the entire Earth to nd his place, Eves attention
next drops to where she is particularly placed the very earth beneath her
feet to which she echoes her question in disbelief: thus leave / Thee
Native Soile? (11.26970). Satan searched the whole of the Earth in vain
for what has been lost by Eve, which has been right under her feet all along:
place, now the paradise lost.
Christopher Fitter has aptly noted of the above passage that the ut-
most weight of the tragic vision in Paradise Lost falls here, in what must
accordingly be one of the most crucial and carefully mediated experiences
of the epics imagination,
3
as this is when both Eve and Adam learn what
they have lost is not only as is so often noted sin-free life, but in that
unexpected stroke, the place itself. While Jon Whitman has considered
general theories of place in Paradise Lost, and Diane McColley, Wendell
Berry, Richard DuRocher, and others have been reading the epic Greenly
for years,
4
the purpose of the present chapter is to consider how place and
ecology are related in Miltons account of our lost paradise.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, Lynn White, Paul Shepard, Gary Snyder,
Arne Naess, and others published a number of enormously inuential essays
11
12 Part I: Having place
laying out what has become known as the ecocentric or, more commonly,
the Deep Ecology platform.
5
From the very start Deep Ecology has given
extraordinary emphasis to place. As Delores LaChapelle boldly states it,
the quality of a culture depends on the depth of the relationship of the
human beings to their place [her emphasis].
6
Key to this approach is the
idea of relationship more specically, the types of relationships human
beings have to their place. Arne Naess claries by considering a statement
made by an indigenous Laplander of Norway, who claimed that part of
the river that owed through his place was part of himself :
We may try to make the sentence this place is part of myself intellectually more
understandable by reformulation for example, My relation to this place is part
of myself ; If this place is destroyed something of me is destroyed; My relation
to this place is such that if the place is changed, I am changed . . .
One drawback of these formulations is that they make it easy to continue think-
ing of two completely separable, real entities: a self and the place, joined by an
external relation. The original sentence conveys that there is an internal relation of
sorts.
7
Perhaps because this passage appears in an essay written for a general audi-
ence, Naess does not further expound on the nature of an internal relation.
But Naess, who years before helping to launch the Deep Ecology movement
gained recognition as a scholar of Heidegger and Wittgenstein,
8
knows full
well that while Wittgenstein would take the extreme position that all rela-
tions are internal,
9
Heidegger held that we beings in the world, though
in the midst of (internal) relations, can fall out of these internal relations
to understand ourselves as viewing subjects who perceive objects an ex-
ternal relation. (The title of Naesss essay in question, Self-Realization: An
Ecological Approach to Being in the World, is a not so veiled reference
to Heideggers Dasein.) Simply put, when we are in an internal relation we
do not objectify that which is in the relation with us, so rivers, mountains,
plants, and animals are not apart from us as some-thing (in Naesss apt
phrase a self and the place), but rather, as existing in the same place we
do, part of our-selves.
Freya Mathews unfolds the ecological signicance of an internal relation:
It becomes apparent that the individual denoted by I is not constituted
merely by a body or a personal ego or consciousness. I am, of course,
partially constituted by these immediate physical and mental structures,
but I am also constituted by ecological relations with the elements of my
environment relations in the image of which the structures of my body
and consciousness are built. I am a holistic element of my ecosystem.
10
Place dened 13
It is noteworthy that Mathews also frames the discussion in psychological
terms of ego boundaries. While the view from Freud onward is that ego
boundaries form in infancy, and so differentiates the Self as ego from all
Others, Deep Ecology has taken the position that perhaps these boundaries
could be expanded outward so that human beings might not think of the
rest of the Earth as something other than the Self. The further implication
here is that harming our place on Earth is equivalent to harming our Selves:
as Naess states it, Our positionis . . . that the destructionof Nature (andour
place) threatens us in our inmost self [Naesss parenthetical comment].
11
However, as the body is generally held to be the bounding region of the
Self, if our ego boundaries are to be extended outward this might necessitate
that we begin thinking of the body in broader terms which is precisely
what Paul Shepard suggests we do:
If nature is not a prison and earth a shoddy way station, we must nd the faith
and force to afrm its metabolism as our own or rather, our own as part of it.
To do so means nothing less than a shift in our whole frame of reference and life
itself, a wider perception of the landscape as a creative, harmonious being where
relationships of things are as real as the things. Without losing our sense of great
human destiny and without intellectual surrender, we must afrm that the world
is a being, a part of our bodies.
12
Bill Devall builds on this notion to connect the body to a particular place on
Earth: If a person can sincerely say after careful self-evaluation and prayer
that this Earth is part of my body . . . that . . . if this place is destroyed,
then something in me is destroyed, then that person has an intense feeling
of belonging to the place.
13
The general thinking of Maurice Merleau-Ponty is also instrumental
regarding the connection of body to place. In response to Descartess no-
tation of the body as merely res extensa, extended matter which could exist
in any space, Merleau-Ponty proposed le corp vecu. In the succinct words
of Edward S. Casey, through le corp vecu Merleau-Ponty assures us that
every activity of the body is closely attuned with its circumambient world:
indeed, my lived body is said to be the potentiality of [responding to] this
or that region of the world . . . a mooring in the world not simply homoge-
neous and isotropic but regionalized in advance into a series of familiar set-
tings. These settings are none other than lived places [emphasis Caseys].
14
In Merleau-Pontys pithy statement: I already live in the landscape.
15
Simply put, in response to Descartess notion that the body is extended in
space (any space will do), Merleau-Ponty maintains that a body is forever
moored to a particular place.
14 Part I: Having place
This idea that human beings are connected to a particular place on the
Earth is often referred to as bioregionalism, which, as Jim Dodge argues,
has been the animating cultural principle through ninety-percent of hu-
man history and is at least as old as consciousness
16
because indigenous
people of a region generally have been placed there for quite some time.
Consequently, as Gary Snyder notes, People developed in specic ways
to be in each of those niches: plant knowledge, boats, dogs, traps, nets,
shing the smaller animals and the smaller tools. From the steep jun-
gles of Southwest China to coral atolls to barren arctic deserts a spirit of
what it was to be there evolved, that spoke of a direct sense of relation to the
land which really means, the totality of the local bio-region system, from
cirrus clouds to leaf-mould [Snyders emphasis].
17
This spirit of what it
was to be there, or spirit of the place, is crucial for a people not only to
know their place, but to know their own selves (spirits), for, in Devalls
words, The more we know a specic place intimately know its moods,
seasons, changes, aspects, native creatures the more we know our ecolog-
ical selves.
18
And, LaChapelle adds, it can only be a particular place,
because the needs of a particular soil . . . are going to be totally different
than the needs . . . [of another soil.] . . . Such an ethic strives for a balance
in the relationship between all the beings of the place, so that all beings
may ourish [emphasis LaChapelles].
19
Poet, farmer, and English professor Wendell Berry also calls our attention
to place, specically the Kentucky hill where he was born: I came to see
myself as growing out of the earth like other native animals and plants. I
saw my body and my daily motions as brief coherences and articulations
of the energy of the place, which would fall back into it like leaves in the
autumn.
20
As mystical as this may seem, it is important to note that to
Berry and other ecologists this sense of place is thoroughly rooted in
everyday practices, like the way a people make their shelter in a place. Such
a habitat mirrors the place as much as the people who made it, indeed,
it could be argued that the place makes the habitat even more than its
inhabitants one could hardly build an igloo in the southwestern United
States, or an adobe pueblo in Greenland.
What should trouble us all is that the notion of the Earth covered with
particular places has almost completely given way to an understanding of
the Earth as space. Again with respect to our habitats, this is now abun-
dantly clear. While indigenous people inhabited particular places which
had, as Devall notes, their own moods, seasons, changes, aspects, [and]
native creatures,
21
the dominant Western viewis to see such undeveloped
Place dened 15
places as wide open space onto which a grid of streets, wires, and pipes
can be imposed entirely irrespective of the character of the place already
situated in this space. The notion that the place itself could provide for its
inhabitants is lost. In our time this is particularly clear in the northeastern
United States, where innumerable places (even into this century) provided
a remarkable bounty of food, water, and shelter without the need for ir-
rigation, infrastructure, or fertilization of any sort. Yet these places were
unfortunately situated in the space in which the industrial northeast in the
last two hundred years has sought to expand itself. The result has been the
loss of all these fertile places to one vast industrial complex stretching from
Atlanta to Boston and beyond. Consequently, the colonized space of the
northeast has to import its water across hundreds of miles, its food across
the continent (and the equator), and its energy across the Atlantic even
though the long forgotten and abused places beneath this colonized space
once freely offered all this and more.
In order to put the distinction between place and space into the theore-
tical context of the seventeenth century, Edward S. Casey has argued that in
1687, with the publication of the Philosophiae naturalis principia mathemat-
ica, the manifest triumph of absolute space [occurred] in Newtons mas-
terwork, [making] it perhaps surprising that place survives at all.
22
In this
sense, Newtons Principia was the triumph of a centuries-long movement:
as Jon Whitman remarks, in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance . . . the
prevailing model of a nite cosmos . . . [was] gradually displaced by theories
of an indeterminate universe extended in a uniformity of space. Though
Whitman proceeds to understand the escalating inuence of these theories
of space in Miltons works by contrasting them to place in Aristotelian
(topos), Platonic (khora), and, interestingly, Hebraic (Makom) terms, I
propose instead to use the thinking of the aforementioned ecologists to
approach the question of place in Milton. My approach is also a departure
from Caseys general assessment of space (astonishingly, the only philo-
sophical account of place . . . in a comprehensive [book-length] format
to be written to date
23
), which does provide an explication of the Earth
World relation in Heidegger, but nonetheless remains largely silent on the
environmental issue of place. To proceed, it will be helpful rst to con-
sider how the burgeoning seventeenth-century theory of featureless space
is portrayed in Paradise Lost.
The space Satan must cross from Hell to Earth is clearly featureless
space: a dark / Illimitable Ocean without bound, / Without dimension,
where length, breadth, &highth, / And time and place are lost (2.89194).
16 Part I: Having place
Perhaps the only way to characterize this timeless, featureless space in Par-
adise Lost may well be to say that it simply lacks places of any sort. Shortly
after the Fall the devils in the epic approach this space in the same way
that England was approaching unused space in Miltons time: they set
about to develop the dark / Illimitable Ocean without bound (2.891
92). Beginning with a massive ocean-dredging operation, the devils toss up
what they met / Solid or slime (10.28586) to form the base for a bridge,
a passage broad, / Smooth, easie, inoffensive down to Hell (10.30405),
a Monument / Of merit high to all th infernal Host (10.25859). What
the devils dredge up is viewed as merely material for the making of the
bridge, and just in case this soil is living, The aggregated Soyle / Death
with his Mace petric, cold and dry, / As with a Trident smote, and xt as
rm / As Delos oating once (10.29396). It is difcult to imagine how
the development of space could be described in more horric terms than
to have petric Death touch everything in the place where the expansion
is to occur.
What soil Death did not petrify was Bound with Gorgonian rigor
not to move, / And with Asphaltic slime; broad as the Gate, / Deep to
the Roots of Hell the gathered beach / They fastened (10.297300) the
bridge. Setting aside the fact that development nowadays is also paved with
Asphaltic slime, these lines introduce disturbing images of the place being
held in bondage: Bound . . . not to move . . . fastened. This sublimation
imagery continues: And Chains they made all fast, too fast they made / And
durable (10.31920), as they constructed a sort of suspension bridge. What
could not be killed by Deaths Mace petric (10.294) is to be chained into
bondage. The most negative modern portrayal of the development of open
space can hardly approach the kill or enslave mandate Milton gives his
devils.
The work of Miltons devils echoes two massive assaults on space made in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. First, the work of the devils, which
Milton compares to the mythical continent-spanning bridge the Persian
King Xerxes . . . Europe with Asia joynd (10.30710), echoes the greatest
expansionintoearthly space inhistory, the movement tocolonize the New
World. In the words of the devils: perhaps over this Gulfe / Impassable,
Impervious, let us try / Adventrous work . . . to found a path / Over this
Maine from Hell to that new World (10.25357). In playing on Maine
as both an expanse of ocean and as part of the territory granted to the
Plymouth Company in 1606, Milton paints a picture of a mythical bridge
being built from England to the easternmost part of that new World
it had claimed. One can hardly imagine a more scorching indictment of
Place dened 17
the colonization of open space than Miltons portrayal of the Adventrous
work as rooted in the sin-craving desire of devils.
The workof Miltons devils alsoinvokes images of reclaiming the unused
space of fens and marshes along the English coastline lands which were
drained in order to yield productive cropland. Through a scheme not unlike
Miltons devils, beginning in the sixteenth century, workers tossed up what
they met / Solid or slime (10.285) in order to build earthen dams and
causeways to hold back the waters. Enormously controversial, the people
who lived in the places under assault argued that, essentially, this space
being reclaimed consisted of already valuable places. Through a series of
riots and lawsuits they made a case that, in the words of historian Joan
Thirsk, Fish and Fowl were disturbed in their traditional habitats by the
drainage, wetland that had afforded lush pasture in summer was drained
dry and robbed of the nutrients it had formerly received annually from
winter ooding, and, in addition to this all, the commons were reduced to
one-half to one-third of the former size.
24
In short, in draining the fens
and marshes, Death with his Mace petric (10.294) touched sh, fowl,
pasture, and the people who had lived there with them.
In a coincidence of insight, ecologist Wendell Berry also considers the
effect not of building a bridge over space but of the late eighteenth-century
road builders in Kentucky:
I think that the comparison of these road builders with the Indians, on the one
hand, and the Old World peasants on the other, is a most suggestive one. The
Indians and the peasants were people who belonged deeply and intricately to their
places. Their ways of life had evolved slowly in accordance with their knowledge of
their land, and of its needs, of their own relation of dependence and responsibility
to it. The road builders, on the contrary, were placeless people. . . . Having left
Europe far behind, they had not yet in any meaningful sense arrived in America,
not yet having devoted themselves to any part of it in a way that would produce the
intricate knowledge of it necessary to live in it without destroying it. Because they
belonged to no place, it was almost inevitable that they should behave violently
toward the places they came to. [emphasis Berrys]
25
Perhaps too it was almost inevitable that Miltons placeless devils would
behave violently toward the places they came to.
But this is how the exiled devils have proceeded from the start: in Hell
There stood a Hill (1.670), a particular place, which the devils ransacked
to create Pandemonium. Like an army shouldering weapons, A numerous
Brigad hastend. As when Bands / Of Pioners with Spade and Pickax armd /
Forerun the Royal Camp, to trench a Field, / or cast a Rampart (1.67578).
Poised for their attack on the hill, Mammon and his crew/ Opnd into the
18 Part I: Having place
Hill a spacious wound (1.68889). In their pillaging of the hill the devils
are a marvel of modern efciency, putting to shame the development of
the ancient world:
And here let those
Who boast in mortal things, and wondring tell
Of Babel, and the works of Memphian Kings
Learn how thir greatest Monuments of Fame,
And Strength and Art are easily out-done
By Spirits reprobate, and in an hour
What in an age they with incessant toyle
And hands innumerable scarce perform.
(1.69299)
Whether the open space of chaos, or the distinct place of a hill, the devils
saw nothing but space to attack, kill, or enslave.
Compare this approach to a hill to that of Wendell Berry in the afore-
mentioned passages from his essay A Native Hill, in which he describes
his familys relation to a hill in Kentucky where they have lived and farmed
for generations: All that any of us may know of ourselves is to be known
in relation to this place; I humble myself before a mere piece of the earth
and speak of myself as its fragment.
26
While Berry clearly sees the hill as
a part of himself to cherish and keep, the devils had to make a place for
themselves, Built like a Temple (1.713) to themselves, by destroying the
hill. Though we might hold the devils approach to be the consolidated
attitude of the West as the truest expression of Genesis 1:28, where hu-
man beings are given dominion over the Earth nonetheless in Genesis
2:15 human beings are put into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep
it (echoed in Paradise Lost: This Paradise I give thee, count it thine /
To Till and Keep [8.71920]). As Miltonist Jeffrey Theis has noted, to
dress (in Hebrew bd) means to serve and to keep (smr) is an act
of protection.
27
Berry and his family, though making their home on the
hill, have nonetheless taken upon themselves the solemn responsibility of
protecting and preserving the hill as part of themselves as they learn a par-
ticular knowledge of the life of the place one lives in and intends to continue
to live in [Berrys emphasis].
28
To destroy the hill, as the devils had done,
would have been to destroy something of themselves. Put another way,
Berrys family desperately wish to keep their hill, while in order to build
Pandemonium, Miltons devils were happy to discard their hill.
Berry himself, perhaps not surprisingly, directly quotes fromParadise Lost
in order to make this type of environmental distinction clear. He begins by
describing the heroic type of person who seeks to stand far outside of any
Place dened 19
direct relation to a place in order to bring about some change there even
if it is as noble as to make a breakthrough that will save the world
from some crisis (which now is usually the result of some previous
breakthrough).
29
The best example we have of this kind of hero, I
am afraid, is the fallen Satan of Paradise Lost Milton undoubtedly having
observed in his time the prototype of industrial heroism. . . . His heroism is
of the mind only escaped as far as possible fromdivine rule, fromits place
in the order of creation. With this Berry cites Satans oft-quoted observa-
tion regarding place: The mind is its own place, and in it self / Can make
a Heavn of Hell, a Hell of Heavn (1.25455). Berry continues, But per-
haps we cannot understand this secular heroic mind until we understand
its opposite: the mind obedient and in place [emphasis added]. Berry next
quotes from Raphaels instruction to Adam not to know at large of things
remote / From use, obscure and suttle, but to know / That which before us
lies in daily life (8.19193). Berrys point is clear: when we stand outside
of our place, even if not to harm it as did the devils, it is nonetheless an
act of hubris, which Satan justies by a compellingly reasonable theory.
On the other hand, if we stay rmly in place and look to That which lies
before us in daily life (8.193), we avoid not only hubris, but environmental
devastation.
In Eves painful postlapsarian lament on learning she must leave her
place, she speaks not only to the place directly, but to owers (O ours /
That never will in other Climate grow [11.27374]) and to the Bower itself
(Thee lastly nuptial Bowre . . . [11.280]). This is Eves second (the rst
being when she addressed the forbidden tree [9.745802]) and last address
to the place. In both cases she is standing outside of her relation with
the place to address what she has been part of as a speaking subject to an
object. This reication continues in Adams postlapsarian speech, which, as
Christopher Fitter has noted, is lled with objectifying substantives this
happy place, our sweet recess . . . this mount . . . this tree . . . these pines
[11.30321]. As Fitter continues, Adampleads a love for Eden not as native
soil but as holy ground.
30
In Adams own words concerning place: here
I could frequent, / With worship, place by place where he vouchsafed /
Presence divine (11.31719).
Outside of his relation with his place, Adam can only stand back and
view the place as some sort of sacred ground. Though this would seem
completely counter to Eve, who viewed the forbidden tree immediately
after her Fall as some-thing to be consumed (and also counter to the devils
who viewed a place, the hill in Hell, as mere material to bring about their
ambitions); nonetheless these relations are those of a subject to an object.
20 Part I: Having place
As Adam makes clear the problem: all places else / Inhospitable appear
and desolate, / Nor knowing us nor known (11.30507). This reciprocal
relation of knowledge, to say nothing of the fact that the place is understood
as knower of its inhabitants, makes clear what Adamand Eve have lost with
Paradise: that a horric change in their relation to the place has occurred.
After the Fall, even when inside the Garden, Adam and Eve are still outside
of their relation with the place simply put, they no longer enjoy what
Arne Naess calls an internal relation with the place.
From this is has been concluded by Christopher Fitter that this state of
being placeless is the condition of humanity after the Fall. Fitter does
make a provocative case for the existence of an approved topos of exile
consolation (p. 148) which inuenced Milton, and has the signicant
insight that for Milton, the commitment to earthy location is valid at the
human level, actualized in the case of Eve, through the bonds of geography
and cultivation (p. 160). However, Fitter undercuts this insight by focusing
on the passage mind is its own place (1.254), suggesting that geography
and cultivation are set aside as at the highest level we learn the primacy
of universal goodness over geographic sentiment (p. 160).
Unfortunately for Fitters thesis, the exposition of the truth that the
mind is its own place (p. 159) is Satans truth, as the recently dis-placed
angel is desperately hoping for refuge in some place, any place, other than
Hell. That this is Satans hope is clear fromthe continuation of this line (left
unquoted by Fitter): The mind is its own place, and in it self / Can make
a Heavn of Hell, a Hell of Heavn (1.25455). This is mighty wishful
thinking on Satans part, but as he himself comes to realize later in the
epic, there is no such place: Which way I ie is Hell; my self am Hell
(4.75).
Fitter continues by looking to Michaels response to Eves lament at
losing her Native Soile (11.270). The angel suggests, as an alternative to
the native soil of the Garden, that Eve should think of Adam: where he
abides, think there thy native soile (11.292). Prompting Fitter to conclude,
For the forfeit native soil of Paradise, Michael suggests compensation in
the native soil of Adams presence (p. 159). But, as Michael continues to
Adam regarding Eden: this preeminence thou has lost, brought down / To
dwell on eeven ground now with thy Sons: / Yet doubt not but in vallie and
in plaine / God is as here, and will be found alike / Present (11.34751).
While Fitter nds this merely a consoling statement(p. 151) on Michaels
part, it is clear from the context that Adam is being instructed that there
are other places (described earlier as tter soile [11.262]) where he is to
reroot himself and Eve which Eve is to then consider native soile. The
Place dened 21
instruction to Eve does not take the form of where [ever] he abides [at any
given time], think there thy native soile (11.292), but rather, in the specic
place Adam nally settles, where he abides, think there thy native soile.
31
Had Milton not intended this meaning, he surely would have chosen a
more transitory verb than abides.
32
In direct contrast to Fitters conviction that Paradise Lost contains The
exposition of the truth that the mind is its own place (p. 159), both John
S. Tanner and Wendell Berry have read Milton as warning of the dangers
in such a conviction in Berrys assessment, profound ecological danger.
To understand the risk in making the mind its own place, it will be helpful
to consider the last few hundred years of Western philosophy, here nicely
summarized by Piotr Hoffman:
Modern philosophy turns away from things of the world and zeroes in on the
human self that grasps them in thought and transforms them in action. The self
becomes the repository of both their truth and their ultimate purposes. By the
same token, the human self is given the status of the self-grounding ground of
reality. In this new and exalted status, the self ceases to be viewed as part and
parcel of some independent order of things. Beginning with Descartess cogito,
the self withdraws from the world and falls back on its own experiences and
thoughts.
33
With the 1637 publication of Discours de la methode, Descartes gave a
tremendous boost to the subjectivist tradition Hoffman describes. In some
sense as momentous as the Copernicanrevolution, the Cartesianinnovation
was to put not the sun but the human mind at the center of the universe.
Not merely to know the things of the world but, as Hoffman rightly notes,
to transform them in action, to know their ultimate purposes. With
Descartes, the human mind nds itself in a remarkably empowered, indeed
godlike, position. Indeed, as Robert Harrison has noted, on the basis of its
[the human minds] certainty Descartes presumes to prove the existence of
God. . . . The certainty of the subjective existence of the cogito becomes the
ground for the certainty of Gods existence, not the other way around.
34
The threat posed to place by this exalted subjectivist position is made
quite clear in Paradise Lost. In Tanners words:
Satan becomes a paradigm [and a parody] of radical individualism . . . ontolog-
ical individualism . . . Not situated in place and time, the self must constantly
invent itself out of its mind. Satans claim to possess such freedom presupposes two
dubious premises that were to become common after Descartes: (1) the sharp rift
between subject and object, and (2) the priority of subject to object. In this view,
being is located in a mind not constituted by the world but itself constituting the
world a mind that is its own place, and in it self / Can make a Heavn of Hell,
22 Part I: Having place
a Hell of Heavn (1.25455). Satanic individualism is thus rightly called ontolog-
ical and identied with other forms of subjectivism. For Miltons antihero tries
to live out the subjectivists dream that one is god of ones universe (now cotermi-
nous with ones mind) and hence empowered to legislate the conditions of that
universe.
35
Like the dualistic theologians (which Milton, as a monist, rejected) who
desired to be free of any place on the Earth, beginning with Descartes (per-
haps earlier) a new dualism emerges in subjectivism splendidly portrayed
in Paradise Lost through Satans boast that mind is its own place. Separate
and apart from any place, indeed believing he can actually, through sheer
act of will, make a place whatever he pleases (even a Heavn of Hell, a
Hell of Heavn), Satan clearly claims in Book I of Paradise Lost that he has
realized the subjectivists dream.
Before continuing with Satan, it is worth unfolding Tanners suggestion
that in the viewof subjectivismbeing is located in a mind not constituted
by the world. Originally the Greek word for being (ousia the partici-
ple form of the existential eimi verb) also carried the meaning of ones
substance, property,
36
or, in the context of Herodotus, household, includ-
ing house and land. Only in Plato does ousia come to mean the essence
of a discrete thing. Thus the original Greek sense of being denoted the
immediate surroundings of the Self (its place) every bit as much as it did
the Self. Simply put, as ousia, our being was not only inexorably linked to
our place, but was our place. What Descartes brought about was a radical
consolidation of the being of the individual into just mind separate and
apart from not only body, but from all else, including the surrounding
place. Clearly, the view of traditional peoples who considered the Self as
part of the place (as Deep Ecologists and Berry have noted and endorsed)
was under assault from Descartes and from Miltons Satan.
When Satan rst arrives on Earth the narrator observes that for within
him Hell / He Brings, and round about him, nor from Hell / One step
no more then from himself can y / By change of place (4.2023). The
dark underside of Satans subjectivist boast that mind is its own place
becomes clear as Satan has indeed separated himself from all place but
the placeless state he occupies is Hell itself. What Tanner has noted is clear
here: in comparison to Dantes Hell damnation in Paradise Lost is primarily
aninwardcondition, whichleads to the horrible consequence that Satanic
freedom is really slavery that entraps the self in itself.
37
This is a scorching
indictment of subjectivism: far from the freedom the subjectivist Satan
had imagined, free from any restraint holding the mind back (holding
the mind in place), he is nonetheless constrained by the mind itself. As
Place dened 23
mentioned in my opening remarks, once Satan comprehends his horrid
lack of place, he searches the entire Earth, Hill, and Vallie, Rivers, Woods
and Plaines . . . Rocks, Dens and Caves, for a place, only to conclude
sullenly but I in none of these [nor in his own mind] / Find place or
refuge (9.11619).
The general danger in Satans subjectivist position (as it applies to any-
thing other than the power-seeking mind itself ) is, as Tanner notes, that
Dominationof the world, not cooperation, mutuality, reciprocity, or grate-
ful acceptance, becomes the only way of connecting the self to the other.
38
Once the rift between subject and object is opened, every-thing other than
the Self is seen as just that a thing to have and possess. The danger to
our place on Earth implicit in Satans subjectivism is made clear by Berry,
who baldly states, And now we are surrounded by the most insistent ev-
idence that a mind that elects itself a place maintains itself as such by the
ruin of earthly places. One cannot divide ones mind from its earthy place,
preferring the inner to the outer, without denying the minds care to the
earthy places.
39
In a sense, this is a return of the danger inherent in du-
alistic theology, though in the subjectivists version it is not some Other
super-sensible realm which is privileged over the Earth, but an inner realm
of the mind which, in the most extreme versions of subjectivism, such as
Satans, becomes the Other realm: Hell.
Were Satans desires to renounce place the extraordinary ambition of
an other-than human being, we could easily dismiss Miltons indictment
of subjectivism; after all, why would anyone wish to be utterly devoid of
place? Clearly Satan, cast into Hell, might wish to be placeless, but how
could any mere human condition elicit such a desire? But, as Tanner notes,
the appeal of Satans subjectivist freedom was widely felt: These grand
claims for individual freedom are not without heroic overtones. Indeed,
at least since the Cartesian revolution, they have supplied the very grist of
Western heroism. We can recognize versions of Miltons Satan in both the
Romantic and Existential hero.
40
And we can also recognize the danger
to the Earths places posed by the Romantic hero.
Of all the Romantic poets, Berry nds Shelley the most dangerous, as
Miltons most blasphemous lines are quoted approvingly in [Shelleys] A
Defense of Poetry: The mind is its own place, and in it self / Can make a
Heavn of Hell, a Hell of Heavn (1.25455).
41
What had been the view of
an errant and fallen angel in Milton becomes in Shelley the highest of heroic
visions. To Berry, that this heroic dream of the Romantic poets (which was
a nightmare set in Hell in Paradise Lost) has had such inuence on our
present world is especially worrisome: we cannot ignore Shelley, cannot
24 Part I: Having place
afford to ignore him . . . we have fully inherited his faults; his egotism,
his rebellious individualism, his compulsion to divide reality into discrete
parcels, his inclination to make a place of the mind. That last of those faults
seems to be the greatest [emphasis Berrys].
42
In contrast to this sort of environmentally dangerous dualism of mind
and place, Berry lays out a different sort of mindplace relation:
The human mind, then, within its limits, does have a power that is fearful and
wonderful. It is not its own place; it cannot make a Heavn of Hell, a Hell of
Heavn; it can do little in itself. But depending on its ability or inability to see
and preserve what is good, it can make a good place into a bad place or bad place
into a good place; it can be the disease of a place or its healing and health.
43
Unless we subscribe to Satans subjectivism, which proves to be a prison
from which we cannot escape By change of place (4.23), we cannot deny
the internal relation between place and mind. The irony in Satans situa-
tion is that, though he sought freedom from place, his placeless condition
becomes a Hell from which he cannot escape.
It is worth pausing for a moment to consider the signicance of Miltons
reproach of subjectivism. Though Stephen M. Fallon has considered in
some depth Miltons rejection of mindbody (and spirit/esh) dualism,
44
in suggesting that the belief that The mind is its own place (1.254) is
awed, Milton is not only scofng at the notion that mind is separate from
body but also that mind is separate from place. What Delores LaChapelle
has said about place could certainly then apply to Paradise Lost: The
quality of a culture depends on the depth of the relationship of the human
beings to their place [her emphasis].
45
On the one hand, like Satan, the
culture of the devils in the epics sought to deny completely the value of
place through subjectivism, and, on the other hand, like Mammon and his
crew, to attack the place as if it were featureless space which they could
develop into something they could use (a bridge to Earth) or a monument
to themselves (Pandemonium).
In this remarkable portrayal of the two-pronged attack on place in
Paradise Lost, Milton gave a formulation of the now common view in envi-
ronmental circles that Protestantism, in a seeming paradox, both sought to
rise above place and at the same time viciously ransacked the Earths places.
Max Weber noted this same paradox early in the twentieth century in his
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: since asceticismundertook
to remodel the world and to work out its ideals in the world, material goods
have gained an increasing and nally an inexorable power over the lives of
men as in no previous period in history.
46
Not only does Protestant John
Place dened 25
Milton escape this indictment of Protestantism, he formulated it centuries
before Weber.
In direct opposition to Satans truth that The mind is its own place,
and in it self / Can make a Heavn of Hell, a Hell of Heavn (1.25455),
when faced with exile from her place, Eve wonders not only how she will
wander down / Into a lower World (11.28384), but how she and Adam
will breath in other Aire / Less pure (11.28586). Whereas Satan boasted
he could make a heaven of Hell, Eve fears life in a new place will not
even be possible. Satan represented that place was nothing; Eve fears that
it is everything. In contrast to Miltons Hell, before things went wrong in
Paradise, the culture of the place, as best represented by Eve, was to be so
rooted in place that separation from place seemed a stroke, worst than of
Death (11.268). To understand this further, it will be helpful to consider
the most particular place Adam and Eve inhabit in Paradise Lost before the
Fall: the blissful Bower (4.690).
Miltons inclusion of a Bower in his poetry is hardly new, though the
poets blissful Bower may be most closely related to Spensers Bowre of
Blisse:
the Bowre of Blisse was situate;
A place pickt out by choice of best aliue,
That natures work by art can imitate:
In which what euer in this worldly state
Is sweet, and pleasing vnto liuing sense,
Or that may daintiest fantasie aggrate,
Was poured forth with plentifull dispence,
And made there to abound with lauish afuence.
47
Though the outward similarities between these two bowers are many, their
role in their respective works is fundamentally different. Vividly contrasted
with the Garden of Adonis, Spensers Bowre of Blisse is rst and foremost an
enchanting temptation, perhaps as much for readers as for Guyon. Miltons
blissful bower, though pleasant, is in no sense a temptation though it is
conspicuous that we nd this holdover from Spenser and Arcadian poetry
in Eden.
Before moving directly to the description of Miltons bower, it will be
helpful to recall that while dominion (which is the word Milton and
the Authorized Bible use where human beings are given dominion over
the Earth) does derive from the Latin domus (which is simply a house
hence domicile), it has been suggested that it may also have a root in
the Greek demein, which is to build.
48
By considering just what type of
26 Part I: Having place
building Milton interprets dominion to be, we may get a glimpse of his
ecology as ecology is literally the account (logos) of the house (oikos).
With dominion and ecology understood in this way, let me cite historian
Oswald Spengler, who gives a beautiful account of a house rooted in the
Earth:
And as completed expression of this life-feeling, we nd everywhere the symbolic
shape of the peasants dwelling, which in the disposition of the rooms and in every
line of external form tells us about the blood of its inhabitants. The peasants
dwelling is the great symbol of settledness. It is itself plant, [which] thrusts its
roots deep into its own soil.
49
What is perhaps most signicant about the above passage is the idea that
the house is at root a planted plant.
The house inParadise Lost is the Bower built for Adamand Eve by God.
Though built is a correct word here since (as the following quotation will
show) God does frame the Bower, the distinction between builder and
planter is blurred with intertwining images of the house both as framed
and grown:
Thus talking hand in hand alone they passd
On to thir blissful Bower; it was a place
Chosn by the sovran Planter, when he framd
All things to mans delightful use; the roofe
Of thickest covert was inwoven shade
Laurel and Mirtle, and what higher grew
Of rm and fragrant leaf; on either side
Acanthus, and each odorous bushie shrub
Fenced up the verdant wall; each beauteous our.
Iris all hues, Roses, and Gessamin
Reard high their ourisht heads between, and wrought
Mosiac; underfoot the Violet,
Crocus, and Hyacinth which rich inlay
Broidered the ground, more colourd then with stone
Of costliest Emblem: (4.689703)
The Bower is a living planted house rooted in place, which makes literal
Spenglers words: It is itself plant, [which] thrusts its roots deep into its
own soil (p. 90). It is a prelapsarian image not of a house built of the
places resources (as resurgere, to rise again), but as a living house still
in its act of rising out of its place, it is still a source of life. The distinction
here is rather like the two ways one may think of a forest: considered as a
re-source, the forest is a great stockpile of material that can be taken from
the place (uprooted) so as to rise again (resurgere) in some contrivance of
Place dened 27
human creation such as a house framed of the forests dead wood. (As
this occurs in the epic, the devils ransacked the hill to take from deep in
the place minerals, as re-sources, in order that those minerals would rise
again [resurgere] as Pandemonium.) Considered as a source (as surgere, an
original rising a surging forth), the living forest provides oxygen, food,
and shelter (such as the Bower or animal houses), not only for humans
but for all varieties of life. The Bower is not a fallen house, in that not
a single tree or plant was felled (or, to put it another way, like Eve after
her Fall, made to Death devote [9.901]) by an ax to frame it. Instead
it was a place framed by the the sovran Planter out of the still standing
(un-Fallen) life that surged forth in the Garden. As we shall see, like Eve
before the Fall, the Bower is rmly rooted in its place on the Earth.
Given Miltons prelapsarian ecology (account of the house), it might
be more than idle speculation to consider just how Adams and Eves future
generations would have inhabited their place if there had been no Fall.
To do this, we need to consider what the unrealized connection between
house raising and child raising would have been like in the prelapsarian
Garden. Though we know that the Garden was Planted, with Walks,
and Bowers (8.305), we still can imagine the need for new Bowers to
house all the humans that will ll the Earth (7.33) in its many places.
Laurel and Myrtle, the large framing of Adam and Eves Bower, are not
especially fast in their growth. (Having myself been raised in a place called
Mount Laurel, I know this to be true.) While a forester intent on using
the Laurels dead wood as a re-source would grow impatient waiting on
the slow-growing plant (consequently, Laurel and Myrtle wood have not
seen much use commercially, as a re-source, which is perhaps why Milton
choose these useless woods for his Bower), its growth would be not only
commensurate with a childs but a source of constant change and emergence
unfolding about the youngster, since we humans, as far as animals go, are
rather slow growing ourselves. Therefore, for a new Bower to be raised
as the home (place) for a child, it would have to be planted when the child
was quite young to be fully raised when the child was fully raised. When
the Laurel and Myrtles deep bow had turned to an embrace as they met
and intertwined over the place they surrounded, not only would a Bower
have been grown in the place but a person as well.
So we can imagine the rst young child (lets assume this prelapsarian
child was also a boy named Cain) being led by Adamand Eve to a particular
place in the Garden which he would be told would be his domicile, where
he would have dominion. At this the raising would begin, not only the
raising of the Bower through planting, but also the raising of Cain as he
28 Part I: Having place
became educated (as in educere, which carries the meaning of to raise up)
as he was apprenticed to the peasant vocation of his parents. So each day
we would see all three as
On to their mornings rural work they haste
Among sweet dewes and ours; where any row
Of Fruit-Trees overwoodie reached too farr
Thir pampered boughes, and needed hands to check
Fruitless imbraces: or they led the Vine
To wed her Elm; she spousd about him twines
Her marriagable arms, and with her brings
Her dowr thadopted Clusters, to adorn
His barren leaves. (5.21119)
This would not be idle busy-work (as some might read this peasant vocation
in Paradise Lost), but the exercise of humankinds dominion over their place
in the Garden as a building (understood as planting) which would see
the place not as space to develop (as the devils in Hell saw everything, as
merely dead re-sources) but as the living source of life which in that one
place in particular was being raised together with a child.
The house would grow with the child, around the child, and through the
childs hands as the two literally grew together. As Adam and Eve carefully
guided tiny hands to small limbs, it would not be to hold the Earth down
submissively but quite the contrary, to raise it up with a child who cared for
the place, as the place (as a lovingly crafted domicile) cared for the child and
the adult he would become. As the growing place where the person would
be rooted, the house itself would become a living expression of the peasant
pact between the person and the place. And too, perhaps growing up with
the Bower this young Cain, whose true genius would come from the fact
that he was a genius grown in the place, would have learned fromthe Bower
that we cannot force our rise, but must slowly grow from the place which
grows around us. This image of the Bower, as a place where both nature and
a child are raised, is a literal expression of what Diane McColley has noted:
The Gardening of Adam and Eve [in Paradise Lost] . . . is literally the care
and cultivation of nature; morally the cultivation of virtue in response to
Gods laws, both natural and revealed; ethically, the nurture of marriage
and children.
50
This Miltonian account of the house (ecology) is so astonishingly
intertwined with humankind and place that it begs us to reconsider just
what it is we mean by ecology, especially if ecology is merely understood as
saving the Earths re-sources. Miltons ecology is far deeper in that the Earth
is understood as an original source which saves us as much as we save her.
Place dened 29
Milton has also, perhaps as much as might be possible, portrayed a human
habitat like an animal dwelling. Berry makes clear the signicance of this
maneuver: In spite of all his [humankinds] technical prowess, nothing he
has built or done has the permanence or congeniality with the earth, of
the nesting instincts of birds.
51
To counter the belief that our signicant
accomplishments far outstrip those of any other living thing inhabiting
the Earth, Milton looks not to some grand edice (like Pandemonium)
but instead to the in-habitation of birds and animals for an exemplar of
a dwelling, thereby bringing about a radical destabilization of accepted
notions of how we should dwell on the Earth.
In many respects Miltons portrayal of Adams and Eves relation to
their place is a reversal of biblical interpretation that many consider the
only reading of scripture: in the words of William Leiss, the rst chapter of
Genesis contains the idea that man stands apart fromnature and rightfully
exercises a kind of authority over the natural world.
52
But Milton does
not have human beings standing apart from the Earth in some sort of
external relation. Instead Paradise Lost contains a remarkable expression of
an internal relation which has human beings so rooted in place that, as
our roots grow deeper into the place, the place (as Bower) grows around us
through the work of our hands which is precisely why we growdeeper into
the place. And the authority Leiss mentions is not given to humans but
rather remains in Gods signature upon the pact between humans and the
place which gives us dominion (understood as a building/planting that
sees the place not full of re-sources but as the original source of ever-surging
life) over our place on Earth.
The stark contrast of Pandemonium to the Bower in the Garden claries
Miltons understanding of place and the account of the house in Paradise
Lost as these habitats reveal two very different ways of in-habiting a place.
But, more importantly, as I shall argue in the next two chapters, place is of
central importance to Paradise Lost as it is the desire to stand apart from
our place on Earth that brought about the Fall itself. Through Miltons
remarkable portrayal of Eve a spirit of what it was to be there (in Snyders
words)
53
rmly rooted in place on the Earth, is beautifully depicted. As we
shall see, Eve is the spirit of the place called the Garden.
2
Place given: Eve as the gardens spirit of place
Why has man thus rooted himself rmly in the earth, but that he may
rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
1
In this section I intend to argue that Milton deconstructed medieval the-
ologys dualistic representations of Christianity. To suggest that Milton
deconstructed anything (let alone Christianity) may seem little more
than a thinly veiled attempt to attach this work to an inuential move-
ment; nonetheless, I hope not only to bring attention to recent scholarship
that has traced deconstruction from Derrida (through Heidegger) to a sur-
prising Reformation antecedent in Luther but also to approach Miltons
monism ina newway.
2
I shall argue that this monismmay be seenas the re-
sult of Miltons de-structuring of medieval theologys dualistic Christianity,
Christianity understood as being con-structed within what I am terming
the Christianpagan dyad.
Of course, it will not be suggested that Milton simply inverted the
structure to privilege the pagan or Earthy; on the contrary, I shall argue
that Milton suggests an origin of the Christianpagan dyad in a scripturally
sanctionedChristianity rooted inthe Earth whichunderstands humanbeings
as Spirits rooted in the Earth or Spirits of place. Seen in these terms,
Miltons deconstruction may seem a risky business indeed, in that he is
unabashedly embracing that Earthy aspect of Creation that a thousand
years of Church doctrine had sought to cleave off from the Spirit. But
perhaps the risk may be smaller than anyone would be likely to suppose: if
Milton can integrate this Christianity rooted in the Earth so thoroughly
with biblical sources that his interpretative retelling of scripture in Paradise
Lost can be read as orthodox Christianity, then there may be no risk
at all. Indeed, because Paradise Lost for hundreds of years was read as
orthodox Christianity, the greater risk may be that we shall continue to
allow the dualistic thinking of medieval theology to cover over something
30
Place given 31
more original, in this case, an environmentally friendly Christianity rooted
in the Earth. But rst, on to Milton as deconstructor of Christianity.
Derridas deconstruction was not only derived from Heideggers
destruction (Destruktion) but, as the translator of Of Grammatology tells
us, deconstruction was originally so similar to destruction that in the
rst published version of De la grammatologie, Derrida uses the word de-
struction in place of deconstruction.
3
Though Derridas deconstruction
would come to be associated with the belief that signiers are so freely (per-
haps mischievously) at play within texts that all authority is undermined,
destructions counter aim, as Heidegger denes it in Being and Time, is an
effort to stake out the positive possibilities of . . . tradition and not (as in
deconstruction) to succumb to a vicious relativizing of . . . standpoints
4

a remarkable 1927 preguring of Derridas deconstruction on Heideggers

part.
Simply put, when confronted with dualistic thinking in the form of bi-
nary structures in opposition, such as subjectivityobjectivity, Heidegger
sought to de-structure the structure to arrive at the origin of the structure
itself; in the case of subjectivityobjectivity, this origin was Heideggers
much celebrated Dasein. The origin not only because both halves of the
dyad are derived from this source but, as Heideggers analysis was histori-
cal after the hardened tradition was loosened up and the concealments
which it [the tradition] brought about were dissolved,
5
it would be
found that the dyadic structure was historically preceded by the origin
(Heidegger generally held that subjectivityobjectivity had yet to emerge in
pre-Socratic thought). It is worth remembering that while destruction has
a negative aspect in that it destabilizes the binary structure, as does decon-
struction, its aim is nonetheless resoundingly positive because it attempts
to recover something precious (concealed by the dyadic structure) that the
tradition no longer sees.
The relevance of all this to Milton studies becomes clear when we look
for a historical precedent to Heideggers destruction. Because Heidegger
destroyed many of his early notes, this precedent had been something of
a mystery. Though some scholars suggested Nietzsche as a source, recent
scholarship by Edward John Van Buren and others
6
into Heideggers pre-
viously unavailable early lecture notes discovered a surprising Reformation
origin for destruction. As John D. Caputo succinctly puts it, the young
Heidegger, who identied himself . . . as a Christian theologian, had
as model in this project of destruction none other than Martin Luther,
who even used the word destruction to describe his project of recovering
32 Part I: Having place
an authentic Christianity beneath the conceptual scaffolding of medieval
theology.
7
Like Heidegger centuries later, Luther found himself mired in a tradition
of duality, particularly with respect to the spiritesh dyadic structure pro-
pounded by the Church. As Luther puts it with characteristic directness,
Metaphysical theologians deal with a silly and crazy ction when . . . they
invent the notion that the spirit, i.e., reason, is something absolute or sepa-
rate by itself and in its own kind an integral whole and that, similarly, oppo-
site to it also sensuality, or the esh, constitutes equally an integral whole.
8
For Luther the spiritesh structure, as a mutually exclusive dichotomy,
was con-structed by medieval theologians and was without scriptural sup-
port, since it was largely through their reading of Aristotle (who Luther
once said was sent by God as a plague upon us on account of our sins
9
)
that Christianity had lost sight of the whole man, whom Luther sought
to see again after the destruction of the constructed spiritesh structure.
Surprisingly, Luther himself adopts the name and idea of destruction
from an interpretative reading of 1 Corinthians, in which God declares I
will destroy the wisdomof the wise [emphasis added] (1:19). As Van Buren
puts it, Fatefully for the young Heidegger, Luthers Theses 19 and 20 [of
the Heidelberg Disputation] translate the term destroy in 1 Corinthians
into the Latin destruere [cognate for the German Destruktion], to pull down,
to dismantle, to de-stroy, to deconstruct. This is an important passage for
Luther because it suggested to him that the spirits desire to pull free of the
body, especially for the purpose of abstract theoretical thought, amounts
to a very dangerous sort of pride that, as Van Buren states it, willfully
and hyperbolically oversteps its limits, and elevates itself into the Beyond
(super) of its speculative visions, and thereby seeks to satisfy its desire for
dominion (dominium), power (potestas), empire (imperium).
10
As I shall
argue, Luthers suggestion that understanding human nature as a spirit
esh dichotomy tempts the spirit to overstep its limits and to elevate itself
(which comes from a desire for dominion and power) will be important
in helping us understand the Fall in Paradise Lost. While it is beyond the
scope of this work directly or indirectly to link Luthers destruction with
Milton, I do intend to suggest that the mature Miltons monism may be
seen, in light of Luthers enterprise, as the result of Miltons de-struction
of dualistic (as being of the Earth or not of the Earth) Christianity into a
Christianity rooted in place on the Earth.
Before moving directly to Milton, however, I shall explore the Christian
pagan dyad through a type of etymological destruction of the word pagan
in order to arrive at its historical origin. To do this task, I cite the historian
Place given 33
Oswald Spengler, who, though more interested in our Decline than our Fall,
does have an interesting viewpoint on our original relationship to our place
on the Earth. He explains how a deep transformation occurred in human
beings when we rst entered into a relationship with the Earth, not as
hunters or gatherers, but as planters:
To plant implies, not to take something, but to produce something. But with this
man himself becomes plant namely, as peasant. He roots in the earth that he tends,
the soul of man discovers a soul in the countryside, with the new earth-boundness
of being, a new feeling pronounces itself. Hostile Nature becomes the friend; earth
becomes Mother Earth. Between sowing and begetting, harvest and death, the
child and grain, a profound afnity is set up. A new devoutness addresses itself
in chthonian cults to the fruitful earth that grows up along with man. [Spenglers
italics and capitalization.]
11
What I nd most fascinating about this account of our beginning is the
connection of plants and peasants. Though Spengler does not expound
further on this link, an etymological consideration of our English word
peasant will help us to understand peasants as plants. Peasant derives
from the Latin pangere (and, as we shall see, so does pagan), which is
literally to place something into the Earth, to x it there, establish it, join
and unite it (with the Earth), or simply, to plant inthe Earth.
12
As it carries
the meaning of something joined together, pangere has a common root
with pax, from which our words pact and peace derive, since people at
peace with each other are, by way of a pact, joined together. Peasant
then means (as Spengler noted) not only to be planter, but at the same
time to be rooted in a specic place on the Earth ourselves, literally to be
connected there by a pact between the peasant and the place in which each
is at peace. A pact, as Spengler puts it, is not to take something, but to
produce something (p. 89).
Pagan (the idea and the meaning attached to pangere) was brought
about by an early interpretation of Christianity
13
that sought to construct
itself in opposition to what Spengler called chthonian cults, and in so
doing, created the Christianpagan dyadic structure and a thoroughly du-
alistic state of affairs. In essence, the pagans became those who, as rooted
in and connected to the Earth, were thoroughly Earth-bound, whereas
Christians, who had the capacity to transcend the Earthy shell, suffered
no such bondage.
14
The Earth and Spirit (as well as body and mind) were
separate, and Christianity ran the risk not only of seeking a divorce of
soul and body but at the same time of undoing that blessed union between
human beings and the Earth that typies peasants. If Milton is to overcome
34 Part I: Having place
this dualism, he must undertake the de-struction of the Christianpagan
dyad by reclaiming the original sense of pangere (as peasant, rootedness in
the Earth) from pagan.
15
The difculty of this enterprise can be seen in the ease with which
Spengler moves from his perception of Earth as friend, then as Mother,
then as the object of devotion at the center of chthonian cults (p. 89).
In Miltons time the danger of this type of dualistic thinking is painfully
clear in Serano Della Salandras Adamo Caduto (1647), where Adams birth
from the Earth (as the Hebrew ha-adam: literally creature made of Earth)
is referred to in a way that makes earth a pejorative term:
Adam: Sir, I perceive that the almighty hands
Drew me and formed me from the humble mire,
The vile stench of the earth; and through Creation
I recognize my origin as vile . . .
God: I formed thee of the earth. That stamp divine
That shines forth upon thy form, thou hast from me;
For such a gracious likeness could not issue
In any other way from such vile stuff . . .
Of earth thou art: and neer could the World consent
To revere thee, of vilest substance born
If I had failed to set upon thy form
The image of my venerable self.
My graft divine I place upon so vile a trunk
I placed, in order that it might dissolve
The juices of the earth, and so the fruits
Might not be human but in truth divine.
16
If Milton fails to reclaim our original peasantry from being depicted as
bondage with vile earth, then he too runs the risk of having the remarkable
connection between Human beings and the Earth not only co-opted by
the pagan but also eschewed by the Christian. To understand just how
devastating this lapse into dualism can be for us and the Earth, it might be
helpful to consider the thinking of Friedrich Nietzsche before moving to
Milton.
In what some would see as an anticipation of deconstruction, Nietzsche
set about from his rst work, The Birth of Tragedy, to invert the privi-
leged position that the Christian (interpreted as Spirit) had over the pagan
(the Earthy). Milton scholar William Kerrigan succinctly expresses why
the thinker undertook this enterprise: Nietzsche argued with excruciat-
ing lucidly, that the concept of a transcendent world debases and devalues
this world.
17
The ecological signicance of Nietzsches understanding of
Place given 35
Christian thinking becomes clear when we recognize that, to Nietzsche, the
fantasy of the Christian was to have the Spirit pull free of the Earthy and be
with God in a super-sensible realm. But since the Spirit is still connected
to the Earth by way of the body, in Nietzsches view the Christian Spirit
lashes back at the body (and the Earth) out of anger for having its dream
of ascension thwarted. As noted earlier, this understanding was intimated
by Luther, but Nietzsche saw this anger in Christianity in a more general
way as a need for power and dominion not only over the body but over
all that was Earthy, indeed, the Earth itself. As one recent environmental
writer (Bruce W. Foltz) puts it, And as Nietzsche saw so lucidly . . . this
metaphysical hostility to the earth . . . is the very essence of revenge.
18
What is forgotten here, however, is what Nietzsche only came to see in the
last fewmonths of his sanity: this potential for ecological disaster only neces-
sarily occurs when the super-sensible realm is inaccessible for the embodied
human being.
19
While Nietzsche believed that this was necessarily the case
for Christianity and Platonism, he sawthat Platos doctrine itself, before the
historical advent of Platonism, did not postulate a super-sensible realm
inaccessible to embodied human beings.
20
As well Nietzsche might, for
Plato held throughout the Dialogues that we recollect Ideas such as Justice,
while still on Earth, by a lifetime of re-collecting Earth-bound examples
of justice. To understand how Miltons understanding of all this escapes
Nietzsches critique of Christianity, it will be rst helpful to consider the
genius loci gures in Miltons poetry.
In Lynn Whites enormously inuential essay on the historical roots of
our ecological crisis, the environmental signicance of the genius loci is
made clear:
In Antiquity every tree, every spring, every stream, every hill had its own genius loci,
its guardian spirit . . . Christianity of course also had its angels and demons . . . But
these were all as mobile as the Saints themselves. The spirits in natural objects,
which formerly had protected nature from man, evaporated.
21
To White, the environmental signicance of a belief in a genius loci stems
fromthe fact that there was a protective spirit of a particular place (or natural
occurrence, such as a hill), and it was important to placate the spirit in
charge of that particular situation, and to keep it placated. Christianity,
which White argues opposed such beliefs in genius loci, made it possible to
exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feeling of natural objects
as the old inhibitions to the exploitation of nature crumbled. Whites
understanding of guardian spirits is that their sole function (as guardians)
is to protect Nature from human beings. However, in Miltons poetry, the
36 Part I: Having place
genius loci of Antiquity receives a major rewrite as a human spirit joins with
a specic place to become a spirit of place which guards both the place
and human beings.
Each of ve major works of Miltons 1645 Poems contains a genius loci
(in most, actually named as genius by Milton), who generally gures
prominently in the work so prominently, that in Lycidas the role of the
Nature of the place becomes critical in ameliorating the tragedy of the story.
In Lycidas we come to understand that though Lycidas (Edward King)
did drown, he is also saved as Hence forth thou [King] art the Genius
of the shore (l. 183). In Lycidas a human being in peril is saved by the
benecent Nature of the place, which transforms the human being into
the Spirit of the place. The story of Lycidas is not a transformation myth
in the sense of the Daphne story where there was once a woman now
there stands a tree but rather, the shore not only existed before King, but
continues on as such with Lycidas made Genius of the shore (l. 183). At
a moment of complete powerlessness, Kings spirit unites with the shore
to become imbued with the immense saving power of the place, which
enables him to save all that wander in that perilous ood (l. 185).
In the Nativity ode we have the oft-quoted parting Genius (l. 186)
reference, in which a genius loci, along with a host of pagan gods, is forced
out of each haunted spring, and dale (l. 184) to make room for Christ.
So perhaps not surprisingly, in Il Penseroso there is only a brief mention
of a genius loci as there was a sweet musick (l. 151) that was either sent
by a spirit, Or th unseen Genius of the Wood (l. 154). Yet in Arcades,
a genius loci again has a central role. Why? To begin, it is not altogether
clear that the 21-year-old Milton is truly exiling his genius locus in the
Nativity ode. As Stella Revard comments on Apollo (another outcast in the
Nativity ode), though it would seem that the pagan god must either be
a symbol for Christ or a rival, Miltons novel approach to this either-or
dilemma was to embrace it as he endows his Christ in the Nativity ode with
Apollonian splendor and to reject it as he dismisses Apollo himself.
22
The
genius loci who later appears in Arcades is just such a refusal to accept the
either pagan or Christian dyadic structure. As Cedric Brown notes, in the
Genius of the Northern Woods speech Fifteen lines go to the description
of plant doctoring. Ten lines play out the celestial sirens harmonie. And
each balances the other in a puritan rhythm.
23
In Arcades we have the
vocationof the genius loci clearly dened as caring for the Nature of the place
(through plant doctoring) over which the Genius presides, yet seemingly
in contrast to this rootedness in place, there is a near equal concern for
the celestial Sirens harmony (l. 63). We are witness in Arcades to an early
Place given 37
re-emergence of the pagan genius loci within the Christian tradition a
Spirit rooted in place, yet with an ear for a spirit realm.
This Miltonian idea of genius loci as both rooted in the Earth and spir-
itually aware is probably nowhere clearer in the earlier works than in The
Ludlow Mask. As Richard Neuse noted some thirty years ago of the Masks
genius loci, Sabrina becomes a symbolic expression of mans lower nature
seen in a truly new light, transformed, namely as no longer in conict
with spirit and reason, but as harmoniously responsive to them.
24
Neuse
continues by suggesting that this thought would nd fruition in Paradise
Lost: It would seem that Milton envisioned the essential harmony and
continuity between the sensual and spiritual faculties long before he wrote
the Tree of Life passage in Book V of Paradise Lost. (At this point Neuse
quotes lines 47987 of Book V, in which the creation is seen as plant rooted
in the Earth that ultimately owers as spirit while still connected to the
Earth.) While we might substitute Miltons own coinage of sensuous for
Neuses sexually evocative sensual in sensual and spiritual faculties, and
see Sabrina more literally as an expression of the Nature of the place and
not mans lower nature, Neuse does make a provocative case for a spiri-
tuality rooted in place on the Earth being further developed in the Mask
in the form of a genius loci, Sabrina.
Adapting the Sabrina myth for this purpose did present something of
a problem for Milton: as the Sabrina myth appears in Spenser, Drayton,
and Geoffrey of Monmouth, and even in his own The History of Britain
as Milton records the story handed down to him, the River Severn is not
the mechanism by which Sabrina is saved but, quite the contrary, the
instrument of her destruction as she is murdered by being thrown into its
swift current.
25
Undaunted, Milton simply rewrites the tale to ascribe a
saving power to a now benecent river a saving power that Sabrina will
come to share in as she will be able to free the Lady. Of course, we need not
look far for Miltons inspiration for this maneuver: in Lycidas Edward
King is made the rescuing Genius of the shore (l. 183) by the power of
the place in the same way that in the Mask Sabrina is transformed into the
saving Goddess of the River (l. 842).
We have in Miltons genius gures a remarkable internal relation between
the human beings and their respective places on the Earth. While ecologist
Arne Naess explicated the idea of an internal relation by referencing the
indigenous Laplander of Norway who claimed that part of the river that
owed through his place was part of himself,
26
even Naesss explanation
pales by comparison to what Milton is developing in these early works.
Milton is making the notion of an internal relation between the place and
38 Part I: Having place
the human being so literal that it can only be expressed mythically as the
genius loci. Completely antithetical to Christian asceticism, in which the
spirit seeks to pull free of the Earth, Milton is unabashedly drawing from
pagan sources to develop a notion of spirit as irrevocably rooted in an
Earthly place.
The implications inMiltons genius maneuver are considerable: Milton
has his onetime human beings completely bodily connected to the place.
Recall what Deep Ecologist Bill Devall had to say about the connection
of human beings to a particular place on Earth: If a person can sincerely
say after careful self-evaluation and prayer that this Earth is part of my
body . . . that . . . If this place is destroyed, then something in me is de-
stroyed, then that person has an intense feeling of belonging to the place.
27
Could Miltons genius gures possibly feel anything else? Moreover, this
connectionis life-giving inMiltons formulation: the womanSabrina would
surely have drowned without the saving power of the place. Whether in
terms of body, ego-boundaries, life-giving power, sensitivity to the moods
of the place, or loving care of the place as part of ones Self, the genius
loci of Miltons early poetry are clearly, indeed literally, expressions of the
deepest of ecologies. However, the challenge facing the mature Milton is
considerable: how can these clearly pagan adaptations be integrated into
Christian thinking?
It is rather surprising that Milton largely abandoned the idea of a genius
loci in the great works of his maturity: there is no mention of a genius
loci in Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, or Samson Agonistes. Or did he? A
careful look at Arcades and Paradise Lost together will reveal the remarkable
nal form that the spirit of place will take in Miltons mature thought.
Consider the description of the Genius of the Woods vocation of caring
for his place in Arcades:
For know by lot from Jove I am the powr
Of this fair Wood, and live in Oakn bowr,
To nurse the Saplings tall, and curl the grove
With Ringlets quaint, and wanton windings wove.
And all my plants I save from nightly ill,
Of noisom winds, and blasting vapours chill.
And from the Boughs brush off the evil dew,
And heal the harms of thwarting thunder blew,
Or what the cross dire-looking Planet smites,
Or hurtfull Worm with cankerd venom bites.
When Eevning gray doth rise, I fetch my round
Over the mount, and all this hallowd ground,
And early ere the odorous breath of morn
Place given 39
Awakes the slumbring leaves, or tasseld horn
Shakes the high thicket, haste I all about,
Number my ranks, and visit every sprout
With puissant words, and murmurs made to bless.
(ll. 4460)
The similarity between this Genius and the Sabrina genius in the Mask
are obvious as both actively visit the place they inhabit: oft at Eeve
(l. 843) Sabrina Visits the herds along the twilight meadows (l. 844),
while the Genius in Arcades informs us that When Eevning gray doth
rise, I fetch my round / Over the mount, and all this hallowd ground
(ll. 5354). Sabrina with pretious voild liquors heals (l. 847) the effect of
all urchin blasts, and ill luck signes (l. 845), while the Arcades Genius ex-
plains not only that he undertakes to heal the harms of thwarting thunder
blew (l. 51), but also that all my plants I save from nightly ill, / Of noisom
winds, and blasting vapours chill (ll. 4849). What may be less obvious,
however, is just how closely the Genius of the Wood in Arcades resembles
Eve in Paradise Lost.
Diane McColley was the rst to notice the likeness betweenthe Genius in
Arcades and Eve. In order to give evidence of Miltons lifelong insistence on
the responsible use of creative energy towards the Earth, McColley draws
our attention to Miltons early spirit of place: In Arcades, the Genius of
the northern Wood says that it is his job to nurse the saplings, save plants
from nightly ill, heal the harms of thunder, unpropitious planets, and
hurtfull Worm, and, like Eve, hasten forth early to Number my ranks, and
visit every sprout / With puissant words, and murmurs made to bless.
28
If we build upon McColleys insight by considering, on a more fastidious
line-by-line basis, just how much this Genius is like Eve, it becomes clear
that we are examining an early formulation of Eve (and, to a lesser extent,
Adam).
Both the Genius in Arcades and humanity in Paradise Lost have been
givenby divine decree dominion
29
over their place: the Genius knows that
because of Jove I am the powr / Of this fair Wood (ll. 4445), while one
of Adams earliest memories is of God informing him that, This Paradise I
give thee, count it thine / To Till and Keep (8.71920). Now, of course, the
idea that human beings have dominion over the entire Earth is sure to make
environmentalists cringe, but as this early formulation in Arcades shows, the
domain of the Genius (as a genius loci) is limited to a specic place (the fair
Wood), which is also the case in Paradise Lost. Adam realizes that while
other Creatures all day long / Rove idle unimploid . . . And of thir doings
God takes no account (4.61622), human beings must remain rooted to
40 Part I: Having place
do their work of tilling and keeping their place: Man hath his daily work
of body or mind / Appointed, which declares his Dignitie (4.61819) by
caring for the small part of the Earth where they are rooted their pleasant
labour (4.625).
Both Adam and Eve realize that if human beings are to have dominion
over the entire Earth (to be guardians of the entire Earth), there are going
to have to be many more human beings to Till and Keep all the specic
places: Adam remarks to Eve that the work will require / more hands than
ours . . . (4.629), while Eve realizes that till more hands / Aid us, the
work under our labor grows (9.20708). There is a hint that the need for
more human guardians of place has already been provided for: when Adam
is rst brought into the Garden, he notices that the Garden is Planted,
with Walks, and Bowers (8.305), suggesting that there were many places
(with Bowers in place) in need of spirits to tend them. It should be noted
that the idea that a Spirit of a Place would dwell in a Bower was also
introduced in Arcades: The Genius lives in an Oakn bowr (l. 46), while
Adamand Eve live in a blissful Bower of Laurel and Mirtle (4.69094).
Continuing with Arcades, we can get a clearer idea of just what sort of
tilling the Genius practices inhis place inthe next line, inwhich he begins to
describe his vocation: To nurse the Saplings tall (l. 46). This nursing of
plants will mature into the dual image of fertility (as in a childs nursery) and
fecundity (as in a plant nursery) coming together in the single personage of
the nurturing Eve whose plants at her coming sprung in Her Nurserie
(8.46).
30
As nurse, nursery, and nurture have a common root in the
Latin nutrire (simply to nourish), keeping and tilling their place is rst
and foremost to the Genius and Eve a nurturing of the plants in the place
they inhabit.
Milton elaborates on this vocation of tilling and keeping a place on Earth
as the Genius must curl the grove / With Ringlets quaint, and wanton
windings wove (ll. 4647). In Paradise Lost this activity is portrayed in
two ways: rst as the practical work of nurturing as Eve (with Adam) must
work to insure that no Fruit-trees overwoodie reachd too far (5.213), and
must lead the Vine / to wed her Elm (5.21516). The idea here is that
the immense fecundity of the Earth itself will prove a liability without the
judicious Gardening of a Spirit of the place. Secondly, with Ringlets
quaint (l. 46), Arcades introduces the aesthetic aspect of gardening that
Eve would beautifully practice in the Bower: Here in close recess / With
Flowers, Garlands, and sweet-smelling Herbs / Espoused Eve deckt her
rst nuptial bed (4.70810), and that she would remember after the Fall,
Thee lastly nuptial Bowre, by mee adornd / With what to sight or smell
Place given 41
was sweet (11.28081). In both of these works we have the idea that a
guardian of the place is needed to insure both the bounty and beauty of
their place.
The next lines of Arcades deal with a postlapsarian world, in which ills
and evils come at night. Though the Genius must save his plants from
nightly ill, / Of noisom winds, and blasting vapours chill (ll. 4849) and
more ominously from the Boughs brush off the evil dew (l. 50), in the
prelapsarian world, the nightly ill that Milton retains is far more benign
as Eve fears that one night or two with wanton growth derides / Tending
to wilde (9.21112). Incidentally, not only is there an early formulation of
Eve in Arcades, but in the postlapsarian night there lurks a prototype of the
threat to her place as the hurtfull Wormwith cankerd venombites (l. 53).
After the night references, the Genius tell us that he is so concerned with
his vocation that with the odorous breath of morn . . . haste I all about
(ll. 5658). This deep sense of vocation (and with it deep joy) emerges again
in Paradise Lost (as morning haste) when On to thir morning work they
[Eve and Adam] haste (5.211).
31
Next, the Genius further expounds on how he tends his place, as part of
his task is to Number my ranks (l. 59) of plants in order to keep track of
them through a sort of classication (or ranking) system. In the parallel
passage in Paradise Lost, this ranking returns when Eve, faced with exile
from the Garden, asks her plants, Who shall reare ye to the Sun or ranke /
Your Tribes (11.27879). So tilling and keeping means not only nurturing,
but keeping track of the plants in the domain of the guardian, but as
Milton quickly reminds us (beginning in the same line in Arcades that
mentions ranking), nurturing is of the utmost importance as the Genius
makes sure to visit every sprout / With puissant words, and murmurs made
to bless (ll. 5960). The idea of visiting plants returns in Paradise Lost as
Eve goes forth among her Fruits and Flours, / To visit how they prosperd,
bud and bloom (8.4445) and after the Fall remembers the owers and
her early visitation (11.275). (Note also, that to Eve they are her Fruits
and Flours [emphasis added] (8.44) that she visits, in the same way that
the Genius proclaims that all my plants I save from nightly ill [emphasis
added] (l. 48): both the Genius and Eve understand their responsibility as
they know full well that these plants are in their place that these plants
are theirs to till and keep.) While in Arcades the Genius only blesses
the plants With puissant words, and murmurs, the metaphor is varied
and strengthened in Paradise Lost: it is not words or murmurs of Eves
voice, but her touch that affects the plants, and if there is any doubt that
the Geniuss blessing was felt by his plants, there is no question that Eves
42 Part I: Having place
owers felt the work of her hands as they at her coming sprung / And
toucht by her fair tendance gladier grew (8.4647).
32
In continuing with our comparison, it should be remembered that in Ar-
cades the Genius has a split nature, being not only rooted in his place on the
Earth, as we have been suggesting but also with an ear for a transcendental
spirit realm:
But els in deep of night when drowsines
Hath lockt up mortal sense, then listen I
To the celestial Sirens harmony
(ll. 6163)
Given howmuch Milton has used the Genius in Arcades as an inspiration
for Eve (and Adam) in Paradise Lost, it is perhaps not surprising that this
idea also reappears, though this time the celestial music is a hymn to God.
As it is spoken by Adam to Eve:
how often from the steep
Of echoing Hill or Thicket have we heard
Celestial voices to the midnight air,
Sole, or responsive to each others note
Singing thir great Creator. (4.68084)
Arcades Genius and Eve (as well as Adam) are not merely rooted in the
Earth but also have celestial awareness by virtue of the fact that the creation
is understood as a plant rooted in the Earth that is also rising to Heaven.
Withal, with the portrayal of Eve and Adam, Milton has startlingly
reformulated the genius gures of his youth. No longer merely mythic, we
have in Eve a compelling and practical paradigm for how human beings
should be in relation to their place on the Earth. Though fully embodied
human beings, Adam and Eve have nonetheless inherited the most salient
(and Earth-friendly) features of Miltons early genius loci. But if human
beings are spirits rooted in place, the new genius loci for a Christian world,
then what do we make of medieval theologys conviction that Christians, as
spirit, should attempt to pull free of the earthy aspect of Creation? Should
Christians uproot themselves fromthe Earth and renounce their peasantry?
As I shall argue in the following section, Miltons description of the Fall
offers an startling answer to these questions.
3
Place lost: Eves Fall as an uprooting
To be in place is good and to be out of place is evil.
Wendell Berry, Poetry and Place
1
The image of human beings kept low on Earth while Heaven stands above
the Garden is a persistent one in Paradise Lost. When Satan rst hears of the
command regarding the Tree of Knowledge, he simply assumes that God
intends To keep them[human beings] lowwhomknowledge might exalt /
Equal with Gods (4.52728). In many respects his temptation of Eve is an
effort to convince her of this conviction: Why then was this forbid? . . . /
Why but to keep ye low and ignorant (9.70405). Not surprisingly, then,
the idea that Eve can rise above her place on the Earth is rst offered by
Satan in the dream he induces as he tempts her to Taste this, and be
henceforth among the Gods / Thy self a Goddess, not to Earth connd
(5.7779). But as genius loci, Eve is thoroughly connected to her place on
the Earth, though not in the pejorative sense of Satans connd, but in
that she is nurtured and nurturer of what she and Adam recognize in their
nightly prayer as their delicious place (4.729).
Nonetheless, to pull free of her place on the Earth is just what Satan
makes Eve dream she can achieve:
Forthwith up to the Clouds
With him I ew, and underneath beheld
The Earth outstretcht immense, a prospect wide
And various: wondering at my ight and change
To this high exaltation. (5.8690)
But what should not be forgotten is Raphaels counsel to Adam: Heavn is
for thee too high / To know what passes there; be lowlie wise (8.17273).
As Raphael had taught earlier, there is so much for Adam and Eve to search
and know on Earth that they should be content to keep their knowledge
within bounds:
43
44 Part I: Having place
Commission from above
I have receavd, to answer thy desire
Of knowledge within bounds; beyond abstain
To ask, nor let thy own inventions hope
Things not reveald, which th invisible King,
Only Omniscient, hath supprest in Night,
To none communicable in Earth or Heaven:
Anough is left besides to search and know.
(7.11825)
In an even earlier lesson Adam understands Raphaels point that only In
contemplation of created things / By steps might we ascent to God (5.511
12). So, by being lowlie wise of the created things in their place, Adam
and Eve will gradually gain the knowledge that God will communicate of
Heaven:
till by degrees of merit raisd
They open to themselves at length the way
Up hither, under long obedience trid
And Earth be changd to Heavn, and Heavn to Earth.
(7.15760)
The idea here is that eventually, after long obedience to God and
study along with care of their place on Earth, while on the Earth, human
beings will nd the way / Up hither as they legitimately ascend upward
towards Heaven. While this ascent would clearly be a wonderful reward for
Adam and Eve, what is astonishing is the cosmic event it would precipitate:
the literal de-struction of what I have been calling the Christianpagan
dyad, not because the boundary between Earthy and the Spiritual will be
penetrable by human beings (angels have already had free passage between
both realms), but because the SpiritualEarthy dyadic structure will give
way to something more basic as Earth be changd to Heavn, and Heavn
to Earth (7.60). If there had not been a Fall, Heaven and Earth would
have ceased to be the two aspects of a structure in opposition, since Heaven
and Earth would have become one.
But there is a problem with the notion that human beings can facilitate
Earth being changd to Heavn, and Heavn to Earth (7.60): Earthy
Heaven can only come about if human beings stay rooted in their place
on the Earth, as Raphael expressed it in an earlier lesson:
So from the root
Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves
More aerie, last the bright consummate oure
Spirits odorous breathes. (5.47982)
Place lost 45
While the Creation may ower as spirit, it must be rooted in the Earth
if it is to live at all. If pulled free of the Earth, not only the root of the plant
that grips the Earth, but the aerie leaves and the odorous owers will
die as well. This is an important passage that Eve would have done well
to remember, for it is not as Satan suggests, that God intends to keep ye
low and ignorant (9.70405), but that like everything else native to the
Earth, Eve and Adam, as rooted in the Earth, should make no attempt at
an ascension if this means they must pull free of their place, since a plant
pulled from the Earth will surely die. To understand this further, we need
to consider just what happens when a bright consummate oure (5.481)
forgets that she too is rooted in the Earth, forgets that she is the fairest
unsupported Flour [emphasis added] (9.431).
Eve is thoroughly of the Garden. Not only is she cast in language as a
ower, but her effect on the owers (they at her coming sprung / And
toucht by her fair tendance gladier grew [8.4647]) and their effect on
her (after the Fall she laments Oh ours . . . / which I bred up with
tender hand . . . / Who shall now rear ye [11.27378]), suggests that Eve
has (to borrow Spenglers words) roots in the earth that [s]he tends, an
earth-boundness of being, as she grows in the fruitful earth that grows
up along with [wo]man. (ll. 8990). Eve and Adam would be happiest if
they sought No happier state, and know to know no more (4.77475)
than what they know of their place in the Garden. But as Eve did want to
know more, her lapse can be seen as an effort to gain a knowledge outside
of the Earthy Garden where she is rooted, not a knowledge of the Garden
and Creation itself (which, except for a single tree, she and Adam have
the opportunity, and are quickly developing the mental talents, to know
quite well), but what immediately after her Fall she believes is within her
grasp: knowledge, as the Gods who all things know (9.804) knowledge
reserved for a Creator.
Immediately prior to her Fall, Eve does something she has not done
before in the epic: she begins to speak to part of the place she inhabits.
Following Satans lead (who straightforwardly addressed the Forbidden
Tree: O Sacred, Wise, and Wisdom-giving Plant . . . [9.679]), Eve begins
speaking directly to the tree: Great are thy Vertues . . . (9.745). At no
point before the Fall does Eve begin to stand outside of her relation with the
place (or any plant which therein dwells) to address what she has been part
of as a speaking subject to an object (forging an external relation). Yet So
saying [to the tree], her rash hand in evil hour / Forth reaching to the Fruit,
she pluckd, she eat [and of course] / Earth felt the wound (9.78083). The
danger to the place (and to the entire Earth) brought about through this
46 Part I: Having place
act becomes clear as Eve resumes speaking to the tree after she ingorgd
without restraint (9.791):
O Sovran, vertuous, precious of all Trees
In Paradise, in operation blest
To Sapience, hitherto obscurd, infamd,
And thy fair Fruit let hang, as to no end
Created; but henceforth my early care,
Not without Song, each Morning, and due praise
Shall tend thee, and the fertile burden ease
Of thy full branches offerd free to all (9.795802)
Though Adam and Eve had attended to the plants in their place each
morning with song, Comus as well as Eve could have voiced these lines.
Never before the Fall does Adamor Eve look upon the tending and tilling
of their place with consumers eyes, but here Eve promises to tend the tree
with an eye to ease the fertile burden. In Comuss words: Wherefore did
Nature powre her bounties forth . . . But all to please, and sat the curious
taste? (ll. 71014). In these speeches, Comus and Eve, standing apart from
the place in an external relation, are viewing with desire the place as object.
The Fall comes about from a lapse in which Eve seeks to pull herself
free of Creation (to uproot herself from The Garden) so as to gain a
Gods-eye view of the Creation. Eves fall is the tragic consequence of a
failed ascension. Indeed, immediately after the Fall both Eve and Adam
mistakenly believe that they have succeeded at pulling free of the Earth:
As with new Wine intoxicated both
They swim in mirth, and fancie that they feel
Divinitie within them breeding wings
Wherewith to scorne the Earth. (9.10081011)
Had Adam and Eve only waited, they would have made the ascent to
Heaven by degrees of merit raisd (7.157); now, however, they only fancy
themselves ascended, though sadly, the Earth has truly been scorned. As
Eves Fall results from a move away from the Earth, it is the opposite of
the humility of one rooted in place on the Earth, as the word humility
comes fromhumus, earth. Clearly, then, this momentary lack of humility
which rips Eve from her place on the Earth is the source of the wound felt
by Earth. To illustrate this idea, one might imagine some great tree which
had simply reached too high for its roots in the Earth to continue to support
it, and so it falls. Now the crater left by such a fall, like Eves Fall, would
truly be a wound that the Earth would feel. Because in this viewhumanitys
difculties resulted from our desire to pull ourselves free of the Earth, our
Place lost 47
greatest postlapsarian hope should be in one motion to heal the wound felt
by Earth and re-root ourselves in place on the Earth, a situation quite the
opposite of what medieval theology generally held.
Stephen Fallon has astutely noticed in Paradise Lost that Milton takes a
poets revenge on the dualistic philosophers by dressing the philosophies
of Descartes and Hobbes in diabolic clothing as the poet gives the devils in
the epic the metaphysical views of Miltons age.
2
Miltons startling account
of the Fall makes a similar assault on dualistic medieval theologians. To
many of these Christian thinkers, giving too much favor to the Earth is
what happened at the Fall: a privileging of the not spiritual Earthy. It
is hardly surprising that to many modern environmentalists this Christian
tradition of privileging the spiritual at the cost of marginalizing the Earth is
taken to be the source of much of our current woe.
3
But in Miltons reading
of the Fall, Eve initiates the Original Sin as she momentarily acts like a
good dualistic theologian by pulling away from the Earth. In other words,
in Paradise Lost medieval theologys attempt to counterbalance Original Sin
through a one-sided privileging of the spiritual, becomes, with absolutely
delicious irony, a likeness of Original Sin! This understanding of the Fall
also radically destabilized medieval theologys misogynous suspicion that
Eve was a little too Earthy. As Paradise Lost celebrates Eves connection
to the Earth, her downfall only occurs when she is momentarily duped (by
a dualistic theologian in devils clothing) into believing she should turn
away from the Earth. The poets revenge aside, in Paradise Lost we have
a reading of the biblical Fall, friendly to both Eve and the Earth, that has
for three centuries been taken as entirely plausible.
It is Diane McColley who, in terms of Eves dream, brought attention
to the fact that the temptation to transcendence a natural and, from
the point of view of the Reformation, an unregenerate reaction to the
temptation of sensuality was one of which Miltons contemporaries were
well aware.
4
By citing John Donne, McColley focuses on a bridal song
in Miltons contemporary Joost van den Vondels Adam in Ballingschap in
which Eve Unties the bond that couples soul with body. / The soul, intent
upon its heavenly nature, / Rejects the earthly. Though in van den Vondels
account the Earth is rejected, as McColley aptly remarks, The dualism of
this passage is thoroughly opposed to Miltons sense of the original integrity
of body and soul and the original harmony of heaven and earth.
5
What
McColley identied as the temptation to transcendence in Eves dream
is what I am attributing to the Fall itself as Eves desire to uproot herself.
While the temptation of sensuality has been well identied in Paradise
Lost,
6
the temptation to transcendence has frequently escaped critics
48 Part I: Having place
attention.
7
Nonetheless, in Paradise Lost the Fall is complexly depicted, with
both the temptation of sensuality and temptation to transcendence as
evils to be avoided.
To understand just how human beings and the Earth share a single
woundas a consequence of Original Sin, we needfurther to explore Miltons
description of the Fall. The imagery surrounding Eves and Adams Fall is
not merely of a rootedness in the Earth. Milton is not prepared to relegate
Mother Earth to the status she occupies in works such as The Faerie Queen.
(As Walter Kendrick expresses it, Spensers Mother Earth is subject to no
personication and possesses little of what one could call character.
8
) The
fact that Mother Earth is so lovingly personied by Milton has recently led
one critic, Richard DuRocher, to ask of the Earths presence at the Fall a
long overdue question: What is the personication of the Earth doing at
this pivotal moment inParadise Lost?
9
This is animportant question, since,
as DuRocher notes, For all its originality and importance, the signicance
of this gure has virtually escaped critics attention (p. 94). Adam is not
present at Eves Fall, God is nowhere to be seen, even Satan has slithered
away as Eve nears the moment of Original Sin. There is only Eve and the
Earth:
Earth felt the Wound, and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost. (9.78284)
And at Adams Fall the Earth is again present:
Earth trembled from her entrails, as again
In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan,
Sky lowrd, and muttering Thunder, some sad drops
Wept at completing of the mortal Sin
Original. (9.100004)
Now if Nietzsche (or even one of the Church Fathers) had written these
scenes, one might have expected Earths presence at the event, but she would
have likely felt pleasurable trembling as the esh was privileged when Eve
ingorgd without restraint (9.791). But in Miltons account the Earth was
wounded. Why? DuRochers interpretation is provocative: Seen in the
sequence of the Earths personications throughout the poem, this gure
makes a turning point in Miltons argument. Through anthropomorphic
imagery of childbirth, Milton shows that during the Fall the Earth reverses
the process of Creation (p. 94).
Place lost 49
There is certainly much to suggest that there is anthropomorphic im-
agery of childbirth at the Fall. DuRocher argues that there is a parallel be-
tween the mining taught by the Fallen angel Mammon in Book 1 of Paradise
Lost (Men also, and by his suggestion taught / Ransackd the Center, and
with impious hands / Rid the bowels of thir mother Earth [1.67890])
and the idea that Adam and Eves sin likewise seems to involve a violation
of Mother Earths creative power (p. 101). Key to DuRochers argument
is the idea that, when personied, Mother Earths body may bring forth
naturally in birth as in The Earth obeyd, and straight / Opning her
fertile Womb teemd at a Birth / Innumerous living Creatures (7.44956)
or may unnaturally have her treasure taken from her (for example,
Mammons desecrationof Mother Earth). It shouldbe addedto DuRochers
case that Miltons use of pangs to describe what the Earth felt is telling,
since fromthe sixteenth century through Miltons time pangs was limited
to either death pangs or pangs of childbirth.
10
What all this means for
DuRocher is that Eves Fall is at rst unlocalized, but as the depiction of
the Earth after Adams Fall indicates, it is felt in the vital, creative part of
Mother Earth, her womb (p. 114).
Though DuRocher states that at the Fall Miltons Earth registers both
sympathy with human suffering and sentience of its own injury (p. 112),
the difculty he encounters is that in holding to the idea that during the
Fall the Earth reverses the process of Creation (p. 101), he is at a loss
to explain what brought about the wound, only concluding that Some
kind of external injury . . . actually befell the Earth (p. 114). On the
other hand, if we do not think in terms of a literal childbirth, but rather
a childs own foolish act that causes a separation from the Mother Earth,
then the wound becomes the site (the place of rootedness) where human
beings and the Earth became separated. If a child is tragically taken from
its mother through a momentary lapse in obedience by the child, we not
only say that the mother feels her own wound at having lost the child, but
we also rightfully say that the empathetic mother feels the childs wound
at having lost the mother. In this sense, the childs and mothers wound are
the same, not only because the childs act which pulled themapart created a
single wound that they share, but simply because in their profound sorrow,
they each share the wound by feeling it for their own sake and the sake
of the other. Indeed, as long as they continue to feel the wound, though a
great distance may separate them, they will always be together in the sorrow
they feel. So we might say, though it sounds contradictory, that while the
act that brought about the wound separated human beings from the Earth,
through the act of feeling the single wound of the SelfOther, they are
50 Part I: Having place
still, in a certain sense, together. This is a radical de-struction of the idea
that spiritual Christians (even after the Fall) must be separated from the
Earth.
It can be further argued that the casting of the Earths wound at the
Fall in terms of childbirth has more far-reaching implications. Consider
Miltons rewriting of Genesis 3:16 as it is told by Raphael:
Thy sorrow I will greatly multiplie
By thy Conception: Children thou shalt bring
In sorrow forth (10.19395)
Though Adam interprets this judgment as to thee / Pains onely in Child-
bearing were fortold (10.105051),
11
Raphael speaks of childbearing only as
a feeling of sorrow, and not as a punishment of pain. Because the Earths
sorrow at losing her connection with humanity is portrayed anthropomor-
phically as childbirth, the birth of each human child is going to be, in some
sense, a reenactment of the events of the Fall. In these terms, bringing forth
children in sorrow is an attempt by God not to punish, but to remind, so
that each new generation might be brought forth in the memory of what
befell the Earth through our Original Sin. Again, this is not a punishment
but a reminder of the wound we share with the Earth, so that we might
renew the bond we had with the Earth by recalling that we still share the
same wound.
The environmental importance of this interpretation of the Fall in
Milton becomes clear if we return to the earlier quoted environmental
writer (Bruce Foltz), who accepted Nietzsches assessment of Christianity
as being inherently in opposition to the Earth (understood as the pagan).
Consider Foltzs expressed intention of the way he intends to approach
the modern environmental crisis in (what is to him) a very non-Christian
manner:
Yet it is possible to approach the problem from a different direction altogether,
taking our fundamental relation to nature, rather than nature alone, as our primary
subject of the crisis. Traditionally, however, this question has taken its bearing from
a standpoint that attempts to rise above this relation; it has been decided from a
position that strives to establish itself beyond phusis, that is, from a metaphysical
position. I propose to consider this relation, then, with reference to a position that
is within the relation itself and thus outside of metaphysics.
12
That metaphysical position beyond phusis is, to Foltz, Christianity
Platonism. But it is also extraordinarily like the position that Miltons Eve
hoped to secure by knowing what God knows, a position outside of her
very enmeshed existence with the Earth, which, of course, was tragically
Place lost 51
impossible for Eve. Eve, her place on the Earth, and the remarkable relation
they shared (which I etymologically associated with peasants), received a
single devastating wound at the moment of the Fall.
Returning to Eve, the full tragedy of Eves lapse becomes clear to her
when she learns that she will be permanently uprooted from her place.
Though there is A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament (l. 183) when
the parting Genius of the Nativity ode is forced from his place, we as
readers are not privy to the lament. But in Book 11 of Paradise Lost,
when in similar language the parting Genius Eve reveals herself by audible
lament (11.266), Milton unfolds the scene as we hear Eves speech when
Michael informs her that she must leave her place (the Garden). As Death
is the punishment for disobedience to God, Eves lament is all the more
astonishing as she now feels the wound she shares with the Earth as she
learns of the separation:
O unexpected stroke, worst than of Death!
Must I leave thee Paradise? thus leave
Thee Native Soile, these happy Walks and Shades,
Fit haunt of Gods? where I had hope to spend,
Quiet though sad, the respit of that day
That must be mortal to us both. O ours,
That never will in other Climate grow,
My early visitation, and my last
At Eevn, which I had bred up with tender hand
From the rst opning bud, and gave ye Names,
Who shall now reare ye to the sun, or ranke
Your Tribes, and water from th ambrosial Fount?
Thee lastly nuptial Bowre, by me adornd
With what to sight or smell was sweet; from thee
How shall I part, and whither wander down
Into a lower World, to this obscure
And wilde, how shall we breath in other Aire
Less pure, accustomed to immortal Fruits?
(11.26886)
In her penultimate speech in Paradise Lost, on coming to understand that
she must leave the Garden, her place, Eve has a moment of painful clarity
in which her existence comes into focus even as it falls away from her with
news of the impending exile. And it is not, as some existentialists might
have it, a life in focus because she is faced with the prospect of her own
death (she has known that she has been facing death ever since her Fall),
but rather because she clearly understands here that she (along with Adam)
has been a spirit of the place called the Garden.
52 Part I: Having place
It is not her existence per se that Eve laments, but her existence as a genius
loci, anexistence so interwoveninto the Gardenthat Eve is inessence asking,
What will happen to us: Eve, Adam, the owers, the Bower to the Garden
that roots us all? How shall we [Adam and Eve] breath in other Aire / Less
pure, accustomed to immortal Fruits? (11.28586) And of the plants: Who
shall now reare ye to the sun? (11.278). When Eve learns of the exile from
the Garden (as she feels the wound), she realizes both that she is a spirit
of a place without a place and that the place is equally without a spirit,
which paralyzes her with fear of the separation of her life from the place
of life that both nurtured her and had been nurtured by her which will
mean Death for All. While Aquinas argued for a wounding of nature
(vulneratio naturae) at the Fall, it was a wound inicted upon all human
nature [humanae naturae] by reason of the rst parents,
13
and not upon
the Earth herself. But Milton has the Earth as explicitly wounded at the
Fall as he has Eve wounded when she learns she is to be separated from the
Garden.
Seen in these terms, it can be argued that Milton took the attributes
of the pagan genius loci and used them to develop his Adam and Eve as
spirits of place so as to embody a destruction of medieval theologys
dualistic representation of Christianity. Although Miltons destruction is
radical even by Luthers standards. While in these terms, Luthers destruc-
tion sawhumanity as spirits of esh (and equivalently as esh of spirit
clearly problematizing medieval theologys mutually exclusive dyadic struc-
ture with the esh merely as vessel: as in spirits in esh), Luther still ran
the risk of having his human beings as spirits of esh interpreted as unique
spiritesh amalgams that, being fundamentally different from everything
else of the esh (Earth), are still privileged visitors merely sojourning on
Earth as they make their way home to be with God in an un-Earthy
realm. But in seeing human beings as spirits of place (which presupposes
Luthers spirits of esh and equally problematizes medieval theologys
spirits in esh), Milton claries that human beings (though privileged
by being made the guardians of place by being given dominion over
a place) are spirits rooted in a specic place in the Earth: that human
beings are not visitors on Earth but in the truest sense natives whose
vocation is to nurture and guard their place on Earth their true home.
Approaching the portrayal of Eve in Deep Ecologys terms, Miltons
Christian genius loci seems tailor-made to address Paul Shepards somewhat
veiled attack upon Christianity: If nature is not a prison and earth a shoddy
way station, we must nd the faith and force to afrm its metabolism as
our own or rather, our own as part of it.
14
To Milton, it is not that
Place lost 53
we are in some sort of bondage to the Earth, but rather that we once had
a remarkable bond with the Earth that needs to be renewed. Moreover,
though a more literal (than the genius gures of 1645 Poems) expression of
the mythic relation to the Earth, Miltons genius Eve still afrms the places
metabolism as her own. This said, what Wendell Berry remarked of his
deep relation to his place (the Kentucky hill) sounds remarkably like the
way Eve might have described her life in Eden: I came to see myself as
growing out of the earth like other native animals and plants. I sawmy body
and my daily motions as brief coherences and articulations of the energy
of the place, which would fall back into it like leaves in the autumn.
15
Continuing with Berrys insights, the relationship with place on the
Earth that Eve lost is very much like what Berry comes to believe is the
most worthy ambition of all:
If I belonged in this place it was because I belonged to it. And I began to see that
so long as I did not know the place fully, or even adequately, I belonged to it only
partially. . . . I began to see, however dimly, that one of my ambitions, perhaps my
governing ambition, was to belong fully to this place, to belong as the thrushes and
the herons and the muskrats belonged, to be altogether home here. That is still
my ambition. But now I have come to see that it proposes an enormous labour.
It is a spiritual ambition like goodness. The wild creatures belong to the place by
nature, but as a man I can belong to it only by understanding and by virtue. It is
an ambition I cannot hope to succeed in wholly, but I have come to believe that
it is the most worthy of all.
16
What makes Eves Fall especially tragic is that on the morning of the day
she will lapse, she sees, like Berry, that tending to the place proposes an
enormous labour. As Eve expresses it:
Adam, well may we labour still to dress
This Garden, still to tend Plant, Herb and Flour,
Our pleasant task enjoynd, but till more hands
Aid us, the work under our labour grows,
Luxurious by restraint; what we by day
Lop overgrown, or prune, or prop, or bind,
One night or two with wanton growth derides
Tending to wilde. Thou therefore now advise
Or hear what my minde rst thoughts present,
Let us divide our labours. (9.20514)
That Eves fall was precipitated by a hope to fulll her role as genius loci
more full certainly mitigates her lapse. As Diane McColley notes, Miltons
Eve is distinguished from all other Eves by the fact other she takes her work
seriously, as Miltons Garden is a real garden really needing care. Clearly,
54 Part I: Having place
this is a natural garden that responds to care in familiar ways, and in their
labor it is a high delight. At the same time, it teaches Adam and Eve about
its Maker, and about themselves.
17
Berrys similar insight is that tending
to ones place is a spiritual ambition like goodness.
18
As genius loci Eve
lacks none of this goodness, though her spiritual ambition, to know
and to tend to her place and herself, lapses for a moment when she is
duped by Satan into seeking knowledge not of herself and her garden but
knowledge, as the Gods who all things know (9.804).
The horrid danger of uprooting from place, both for human beings and
the place, is made clear as Adam and Eve are outside their place even when
within it. Yet as Paradise Lost draws to a conclusion, not only is there the
promise of redemption for humanity, but through the act of that one
greater Man (1.4), place will eventually be restored: the Earth / Shall
all be Paradise, far happier place / Then this of Eden, and far happier
days (12.46365). But until that far-off day, Paradise Lost also ends with
the promise that Michaels instruction to place themselves in tter soile
(11.262) will be heeded by Adam and Eve. While it is beyond their power
to regain paradise, there is the promise that Adam and Eve might regain
place:
The World was before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitarie way (12.6.4649)
The challenge before Adamand Eve as their epic ends is to reroot themselves
in a new place on Earth.
4
Place regained: Sabrina puts down roots
Does man still dwell calmly between heaven and earth?
Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking
1
They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow / Through Eden took
thir solitaire way (12.64849). With these lines Paradise Lost closes, but
after Adam and Eve take that long walk out of Paradise, what next? Once
lost, how is Paradise to be regained? The sad truth is that the situation
has gotten so out-of-hand that, try as they might, Adam and Eve simply
cannot regain Paradise regardless of what they do to atone. It is somewhat
surprising, then, that Milton did not give greater emphasis to what the Son
did to atone for humanity in Paradise Regained; instead the poet focuses
on the decisive scene in the desert where the Son would rst lay down
the rudiments / Of his great warfare (1.15558) in order to provide what
is both his plan for atonement and arguably a new paradigm of human
action. As I shall argue in the following sections, in Paradise Regained not
by looking to what the Son did on the cross to atone but in laying down
the rudiments of a startlingly new manner for humans to approach their
world (for example, by resisting the temptation of Greek learning, Roman
power, and exalted Judaic thinking), Milton delivers a fair measure of the
responsibility of regaining Paradise (place) in the here and now back to
humankind.
2
So the question remains, after Adam and Eve are exiled from Eden, what
can they do to work towards regaining place? Another way of approaching
this question is to ask, if only the Son can conquer Sin and Death the
two grand foes (Paradise Regained 1.159), what is left for humanity to do?
Will resisting the temptations of Greece, Rome, and the glorious Throne
of David conquer a less grand foe? In Paradise Lost there is a third foe
(setting aside for a moment the Devil), no less grand, which is not only
worse than Death, but in a seeming paradox, is both the cause and effect of
Eves Sin. Though resisting the sort of lavish personication Milton gives
55
56 Part I: Having place
to Sin and Death in Paradise Lost, this foe nonetheless is represented in
the epic as both the wounded Earth and wounded humanity. From his
title onward, Milton chooses not to emphasize the rst two effects of Eves
lapse by writing an epic entitled Sin Found or Death Released; instead he
focuses on the wounded area of the Earth as he tells the story of how the
place, Paradise, was lost. As Milton states it, fromthe rst book he proposes
the whole Subject, Mans disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise
wherein he was plact (Paradise Lost, The argument to Book 1).
As Eves lapse in Miltons epic comes about not from a desire to privilege
the Earthy aspect of her existence (as it often does in medieval theologys
depiction of the Fall), but quite the opposite, as an attempt to pull free of
her very enmeshed existence with the place, the cause of both Eves Sin and
the Earths wound is in part this momentary desire to uproot herself. But as
Eve nds to her horror, this Sin of seeking separation from the Garden has
the effect of achieving just that, her separation, or exile, from the place
the stroke, worse than Death. On the one hand, this separation can simply
be viewed as having a punishment that ts the crime, but if we interpret
Miltons depiction of what may well be the pivotal moment in the Judeo-
Christian unfolding of our history allegorically, especially in light of our
current environmental crisis (which was germinating in Miltons time), a
different picture emerges.
As noted earlier, more than a few environmentalists have suggested that
the dualistic thinking of certain metaphysical theologians (such as the
Scholastic philosophers) runs the risk of having these high-seeking spirits
abandon, indeed scorn, the Earth as they seek to pull free of their Earthly
bondage. This becomes especially clear when we remember that giving too
much favor to the Earth, recast as Earthly in medieval theology, is to
these metaphysical theologians just what happened at the Fall: a privileg-
ing of the not spiritual Earthly. Why should Christians worry about their
place on the Earth when they should at each turn eschew the Earthly to
avoid the Original Sin of privileging that which is of the Earth? It is hardly
surprising, then, that, to many environmentalists, Christianitys privileging
of the spiritual at the cost of marginalizing the Earth is the source of much
of our current woe. But in Miltons radical approach, medieval theologys
privileging of the spiritual at the cost of marginalizing the Earth itself be-
comes Original Sin. For a moment, Eve, like a metaphysical theologian,
pulls away from her place on the Earth, yet to her horror both Eve and the
Earth suffer a devastating wound.
The separation of humans from Eden is, of course, also what happened
in the Genesis account, but in Genesis God merely drove out the man;
Place regained 57
and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a aming
sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life (Genesis
3:24). Milton signicantly adds that a devastating change occurred in the
place as The brandisht Sword of God before them[the Cherubims] blazd /
Fierce as a Comet; which with torrid heat, / And vapor as the Libyan Air
adjust, / Began to parch the temperate Clime (12.63336). In so doing,
Milton gives a far more satisfying interpretation than medieval theology
of why the Fall brought about our separation from Paradise: humankind,
though thoroughly rooted in place in the Garden, had a momentary lapse
in which we sought that which was reserved for the highest heaven, but
in our Scholasticism-like preoccupation with that Other realm, we turned
away from the Earth, causing an environmental disaster that devastated the
place on the Earth that humanity occupied, the Garden.
The Fall in Paradise Lost thus allegorically warned metaphysical theolo-
gians of what so many environmentalists now caution us all: if we privilege
the spiritual at the cost of the Earth, our Paradise here on Earth will be
lost. To Milton, the exile from the Garden is not some sort of appropriate
punishment for the sin of favoring the spiritual at the cost of the Earthy,
it is the effect of what happens when we do this: the Earth suffers, and as
Eves lament (11.26886) reveals, we suffer along with the Earth. If Paradise
Losts environmental allegory is not to be lost on us, we must open ourselves
to the possibility that what happened once might happen again (indeed,
is happening all across globe at the present time), so our original question
remains: once Adam and Eve (humanity) are exiled from Eden, what can
they do both to avoid such future destruction and work towards regaining
Paradise?
The simplest answer to this question is that we should take the advice
of Milton and modern environmentalists, who urge us to remain rmly
rooted in the Earth. To the metaphysical theologians who would have their
spirits soar free of the Earth, Milton counters that, like the prelapsarian Eve,
we should be spirits of place (genius loci) with roots running deeply into
the place on the Earth we inhabit as we equally rise up towards Heaven.
In Thoreaus pithy self-answering question, Why has man thus rooted
himself rmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion
into the heavens above?
3
While the Sons task in Paradise Regained is to
work out how he will conquer what humanity cannot (Satan, as well as
Sin and Death the two grand foes [Paradise Regained 1.159]), there is still
the prospect that humankind can wage warfare against that third foe, the
cause and effect of Eves Sin which brought Death to the Earth. This can be
achieved only by remaining rmly rooted in our place on the Earth while
58 Part I: Having place
rising upwards towards Heaven in order to heal the single wound we now
share with the Earth in our postlapsarian world. This is not to say that the
rudiments / Of his great warfare (Paradise Regained 1.15558) that the Son
works out in Paradise Regained are of no use in healing the HumanEarth
wound: as we shall see in the following sections, the temptations the Son
resisted in the minor epic (some of which Milton contrived for the occasion
of Paradise Regained) offer a highly provocative argument that humanity
should carefully reconsider the Greco-Roman-exalted Judaic tradition in
which we still nd ourselves today, which arguably urges us to sever the
bond we have with our place on the Earth thereby replaying Original Sin
all over again. By taking the Son in Paradise Regained as a new exemplar,
humankind might work towards healing the wound, caused by Original
Sin, that brought Death to the Garden.
As provocative as the mature Miltons thoughts are on what is needed
to heal the HumanEarth wound, the purpose of this present section is to
consider one of Miltons earlier meditations on what happened to humanity
after the exile from the place Paradise: A Mask at Ludlow. Humanity, in
this case the common family of Sabrina and the Bridgewater children of
the Mask, have, after long ordeal, nally landed on the British Isles after
their exile from the Garden. And following humanity there comes not only
Comus, but, as Cedric Brown noted, in the Mask there is also the prospect
of an ideal order, in which the temperate use of nature leads to a prosperity
for the people, and in which the piety of the people is shown.
4
To reword
our original question, exactly how is this ideal order attuned to Nature to
be achieved? In a sense, the founding of this perfect order began long before
the Mask begins.
In the recent Hollywood lm Sabrina, the title character surprisingly
recites a portion of the Sabrina Fair song from Miltons Mask (ll. 860
66). To which her male lead (played by Harrison Ford), being something of
an inattentive dolt, responds by asking if this is yet another fairy-tale story
of a helpless woman in need of saving by her prince. Sabrina returns, quite
correctly, that it is Sabrina who is the savior of this story. In true Hollywood
fashion, the remainder of the lm is given to the way the ultra-competent
male lead comes to realize just how desperately he needs to be saved. In an
unexpected way, this lms radical reversal of the traditional fairy-tale mold
mimics the Ludlow Mask.
As Stella Revard reminds us, the story of Sabrina, both before and after
Milton, is a prototypical founding myth.
5
But in Milton, the traditional
myth gets a signicant twist indeed, it gets altogether turned around. In
Spenser, Drayton, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, and even in his own The
Place regained 59
History of Britain as Milton records the Sabrina myth handed down to him,
6
the River Severn is not the mechanism by which Sabrina is saved, but quite
the contrary, the river is the instrument of her destructionas she is murdered
by being thrown into its swift current. Though all the accounts of her death
have Sabrina eeing the not-so-Original Sin of domestic violence which has
followed her family into Britain, only in Miltons Mask does Sabrina seek
protection from the sin following her as she Commended her innocence
to the ood [the River Severn] / That stayd her ight with his cross-owing
course (ll. 83132) . . . a small but crucial change. As Brown notes, There
is no need to search for a source giving a version of the story closer to
Miltons details: he deliberately changed the emphasis. In Browns view,
Milton made the change because the story of Sabrinas drowning did not
quite t the celebratory context at Ludlow.
7
This is no doubt true, but
Milton also dramatically reconsiders the relationship of human beings to
the place on the Earth they occupy through this radical retelling of the
Sabrina myth.
As a founding myth, the story of Sabrina handed down to Milton casts
the River Severn, a natural feature of the region of the Earth being settled,
as rather like a weapon; a means of destruction a potential horror. Which
is not to say that the river, any more than a weapon, is in and of itself
evil, but it does elicit fear, suspicion, and a deep-seated concern as to what
role this instrument of destruction should have in our lives. This myth
reveals a people deeply concerned for their well-being in what is taken to
be a menacing new land. Milton, however, would have none of this for the
River Severn. Not only is his Severn not cast as potentially harmful, but
just the opposite, in the Mask the river has an astonishing capacity to save,
not destroy.
It is worth pausing for a moment to consider the environmental impli-
cations of Miltons reversal. It is now almost pass e to talk about saving
the Earth. It seems that everyone from politicians to scientists have their
own pet initiative intent on saving the planet. While these enterprises vary
widely, most have a shared characteristic so common it often eludes notice:
most of these initiatives proceed from a position of power or strength,
believing we are in a position not only to initiate change but to bring
it to fruition as we, powerful entities that we believe ourselves to be, will
save the helpless planet. (But, as ecologist Wendell Berry wryly remarks,
to save the world from some crisis is nowadays usually to save the
world from the result of some previous breakthrough.
8
) Sabrina is in
no such position, the guiltless damsell ying the mad pursuit (l. 829)
knows that it is she who is utterly helpless before she encounters the River
60 Part I: Having place
Severn. During her ight it would have been absurd for Sabrina to believe
she was in any sort of position to save the place on the Earth where she
found herself it was she who needed to be saved, and she knew it.
To Milton (unlike Spenser, Drayton, and Geoffrey of Monmouth),
Britain is founded by a people who desperately needed to be saved from
the sin following them. What is fascinating is that, in the poets account,
the saving power will not come directly from Heaven but rather from a
place on the Earth. As John Knott has noted, Sabrinas power . . . seems
to spring from the river itself. It is as though Sabrina by virtue of her own
purity can call upon a power for goodness latent in the natural world.
9
James Obertino adds, Sabrina suggests the positive powers remaining hid-
den in nature despite the Fall.
10
But perhaps it is not so much Sabrinas
purity that calls upon this latent power in nature, but, in addition, her
acknowledgment that she needs the power of the place to save her.
Seen in these terms, one can argue that in the Mask Milton is offering an
early answer to our prior question of what humanity can do to work towards
healing the EarthHuman wound: humans must undo Eves Original Sin of
uprooting ourselves from our place the Earth by re-rooting in a new place.
This, however, can only happen if we acknowledge the helplessness of our
position of being without life-sustaining roots deep in the dark Earth. In
Miltons retelling of the Sabrina myth, this idea is made so literal that it can
only be expressed mythically, with the isle opening up to receive its rst
daughter, Sabrina, thereby inaugurating a new regenerative era as Sabrina
re-roots her people in a place called Britain. As noted earlier, in so doing,
Sabrina joins the ranks of Lycidas, the parting Genius of the Nativity ode
(l. 186), thunseen Genius of the Wood of Il Penseroso (l. 154), and the
Genius of the Wood of Arcades (l. 26), as a spirit of place (genius loci) who
will now share in the saving power of the place.
What makes the Ludlow Mask so fascinating is that, although in the
Mask we can see Milton laying out the groundwork of the HumanEarth
relationship, as genius loci (which will directly develop into Paradise Losts
Eve), the Mask also offers a vision of how humans are to work towards
regaining Paradise: by becoming protective spirits of the specic place on
Earth where we dwell. Thus the genius of The Ludlow Mask is not only
something of a proto-Eve, but the character Sabrina suggests what Eve
must become if she is to wage her own warfare against that third grand
foe: after the Fall and exile from her place in the Garden, Eve (humanity)
must simply return to being what the mother of all humanity was, a spirit
of place, though in a new place. In a rather circular way, one could say
that Sabrina is both mother (along with the other genii of the 1645 Poems)
to Eve, as Paradise Losts heroine inherits many characteristics that Milton
Place regained 61
rst penned in the Mask, but also daughter to Eve, as Sabrina takes up the
mother of humanitys postlapsarian task of re-rooting her people in a new
place on the Earth.
With all this said about Sabrinas relation to place, it naturally leads one
to question just what relation this spirit of place has to spirit. In the
Mask an approach to this inquiry has been nicely laid out for us through
the inclusion of the Attendant Spirit. The dream of those aforementioned
dualistic theologians to dwell in some Other realm is splendidly realized by
the Attendant Spirit:
Before the starry threshold of Joves Court
My mansion is, where those immortal shapes
Of bright aereal Spirits live inspheard
In Regions milde of calm and serene Ayr,
Above the smoak and stirr of this dim spot,
Which men call Earth, and with low-thoughted care
Connd, and pesterd in this pin-fold here, (ll. 17)
Unlike Sabrina, the Attendant Spirit has no connection to any place on the
Earth, though he certainly asserts he does indeed, the Attendant Spirit is
often interpreted as genius loci, in the words of Roy Flannagan: In Miltons
terms he [the Attendant Spirit] is also a genius loci, a spirit which inhabits
and protects a certain region.
11
Thoughthe Attendant Spirit does play the part of the genius loci, habited
like a Shepherd (stage direction at l. 490), and professing to the brothers
in the Mask to have learned of Comus while Tending my ocks hard
by ith hilly crofts, / That brow this bottom glade (ll. 53132), this is all a
deception. In terms of the Earth, this Attendant Spirit is quite the opposite:
a spirit without place. It is only because he has been dispatched by quick
command from Soveran Jove (l. 41) that he even deigns to visit the dim
spot (l. 5) Earth, otherwise I [the Attendant Spirit] would not soil these
pure Ambrosial weeds, / With the rank vapors of this Sin-worn mould
(ll. 1617) and exchange skie robes spun of Iris Wooff for the weeds and
likeness of a swain (ll. 8384). As used by the Attendant Spirit, the word
soil is actually a pejorative verb. Compare the disdain with another high-
seeking spirits view of this dim spot Earth: I who erst contended / With
Gods to sit the highest, am now constrained / into a Beast, and mixed with
bestial slime (Paradise Lost 9.16365). Like good metaphysical theologians
with eyes xed on an Other realm, the Attendant Spirit and Satan both
hold an altogether dim view of the Earth.
12
This is not to say that the
Attendant Spirit shares much else with Satan; the Attendant Spirit being
as much a protector of humanity as Satan is a foe. But it is nonetheless a
62 Part I: Having place
pity that these lofty spirits must suffer, if only for a short time, earthly
bondage.
But, of course, this bond with the Earth was exactly what Eve lost and
Sabrina regained. This said, it could be argued that the Attendant Spirit,
perhaps as much as Comus, stands in direct opposition to Sabrina. Simply
put, Sabrina has a place on the Earth; the Attendant Spirit has none. Conve-
niently Milton has provided Satan and the Attendant Spirit as non-Earthy
foils to draw attention to the fact that humans like Eve and Sabrina should
be deeply rooted in their place on the Earth. Though casting this spiritual
visitor from the Other realm as a classical daemon is an interesting ma-
neuver on Miltons part, suggesting that the poet might already have been
pondering whether Christian spirits, such as Paradise Losts later spirit of
place Eve, might not be fully Earth-bound. But in naming his Attendant
Spirit as a daemon (as Flannagan noted, Milton seems to use the word
daemon in the Platonic sense of a divine spirit who may have a presence on
earth
13
), Milton sidesteps Christianity completely as he focuses his atten-
tion on the metaphysical Greek tradition that is arguably the Wests source
of the dualistic thinking that eschews the Earth.
E. M. W. Tillyard was neither the rst nor the last critic to speak of
the poets work as providing conclusive proof of Miltons early and deep
devotion to Plato,
14
though by the time of Paradise Regained it is clear that
Milton is bringing Plato into question. However, if we consider the actions
of the Mask as a whole, an unwavering devotion to Plato (at least as Plato
was understood by medieval theology) even as early as the Mask of 1634
seems unlikely. This is especially clear in the case of the Attendant Spirit:
how is it that this emissary from where those immortal shapes / Of bright
aereal Spirits live inspheard (ll. 23) (no doubt immortal Platonic shapes,
eide, made bright by the Good, ta Agathon, or some god), is so utterly
impotent in the Mask? How is it that a marble venomd seat / Smeard
with gumms of glutenous heat (ll. 91617) is the match for such a brilliant
celestial emissary? After all, the Ladys actions are beyond reproach, and
although the brothers do fail in their effort to thwart Comus, all three
children never waiver in their single-minded dedication to pure eyd Faith,
white-handedHope . . . Andthouunblemisht formof Chastity (ll. 21315).
Why, then, with all this working for her (not to mention temperance,
courage, and a judicious use of reason), is the Lady not freed? Could it be
that there is something rooted in this dim spot Earth that is far more
powerful than this Attendant Spirit? If so, what does this say for Platonic
idealism?
Before continuing, we need to be clear about just what we mean by
Platonic idealism. As mentioned earlier, towards the very end of his sanity
Place regained 63
Nietzsche saw that Platos doctrine was fundamentally different from what
medieval theology believed it to be, in so far as Plato held that the soul
never escaped its Earthly bondage: though human beings had access to
that Other realm, this was achieved while they were still embodied on the
Earth.
15
To Nietzsche, this was a good thing as well it should be as
it overcomes so many of the difculties inherent in the dualism of later
Platonism and medieval theology. Moving back to Milton, it should be
fairly obvious that even a cursory look at the Mask suggests that something
akin to Nietzsches view of Platos doctrine (and not medieval theologys
understanding of Christianity) is being developed here.
In the second part of his speech, the elder brother declares that his sisters
hidden strength, (l. 418) which is chastity, my brother, chastity, (l. 420)
takes the unpolluted temple of the mind, / And turns it by degrees to
the souls essence, / Till all be made immortal (ll. 46163). Not only is
this a monism in which there is a sort of sliding motion in which the
soul uidly moves from the Earth realm to a spiritual one,
16
while still
in the body (indeed, without the body restraining the souls motion), but
there is the tacit connection of the biblical temple of the body with the
temple of the mind. From within a temple (the body), the temple of
the soul makes the lifelong journey towards another realm simply be-
cause the embodied soul acted virtuously on Earth in that Earthy temple.
(Although, as the inclusion of Sabrina suggests, this virtue is not itself suf-
cient.) For example, the Lady does not seek to deny the body, she knows
that good men can give good things, (l. 703) but she resists Comus be-
cause her wel-governd and wise appetite (l. 705) knows that which is
not good, is not delicious (l. 704).
Unlike medieval theology, Milton is not denying the Earthy. The elder
brothers notion that the temple of the mind is turned by degrees to the
souls essence, / Till all be made immortal (ll. 46163) develops into the
general understanding of the SpiritEarth relationship expressed in Paradise
Lost:
So from the root
Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves
More aerie, last the bright consummate oure
Spirits odorous breathes. (5.47982)
To medieval theologys conviction that there is a duality of spirit and
Earth, Milton responds that there is but one rst matter (5.472), and that
(had there been no Fall) our bodies might at last turn all to Spirit (5.497),
though we must never forget that this all springs from the root (5.479)
that lies in the dark Earth. It is precisely this that the Attendant Spirit and
64 Part I: Having place
Satan have forgotten. Similarly in the postlapsarian future foretold by the
Son in Paradise Regained, the glorious Throne of David will not exist in
some Other realm, but rather it will be like a tree rmly rooted in the Earth:
Knowtherefore when my season comes to sit / On Davids Throne, it shall
be like a tree / Spreading and over-shadowing all the Earth (ll. 14648).
This understanding in Paradise Lost, of Earthy and Spiritual as being one
rst matter all (5.472), however, is not at rst glance the Ladys grasp of the
bodys relation to the spirit in the Mask. After taking the Lady to his palace,
and informing her that he has her captive, the Lady seems to respond to
Comus that he really does not have her at all: Fool do not boast, / Thou
cannot touch the freedom of my minde / With all thy charms, although
this corporeal rinde / Thou haste immanacld (ll. 66265). The OED
credits Milton for coining three separate uses of the word rind: rst as
the outward form of a person,
17
the OED cites the Ladys above-quoted
speech from the Mask; the second denition as the skin of a person or
animal is from Paradise Lost;
18
nally, rind as the peel or skin of fruits
and vegetables, also occurs in Paradise Lost.
19
In none of these case is the rind in any sense inessential: a skin is
obviously indispensable to a person. Moreover, in Paradise Lost Adam and
Eve, like many cultures who live close to the Earth, make use of all that
Nature offers: Fruits which the compliant boughes / Yielded them . . . /
The savourie pulp they [Adam and Eve] chew, and in the rinde / Still as
they thirsted scoop the brimming stream (4.33236). Here the pulp and
rind, like a persons inner organs and skin, are not only of equal importance
with respect to one another, but are not to be simply discarded. If the Ladys
speech is, like the elder Brothers declaration (in the words of Stephen
Fallon), a Platonizing Speech,
20
then it seems clear that even in the early,
seeming dualistic Mask at Ludlow, Milton is questioning how the rind of
a person is any less integral than some other unseen part.
But even if the Lady believes that she does not have integral bodily roots
that reach deep into the Earth, what then? If we take the Lady as saying
here that she is free and clear of any assault Comus might initiate, the Mask
would be largely devoid of drama. The brothers, the Attendant Spirit, and
the Masks audience are all waiting with pensive breath for the Lady to be
freed; if like a salamander or magician the Lady had cleverly shed her skin,
leaving Comus with only a corporeal rinde, the Mask could end at this
point why summon Sabrina to save a discarded rind? But the younger
brother clearly knows that they must rush to save his sister, body and all,
from a prospective assault, To save her blossoms, and defend her fruit /
From the rash hand of bold Incontinence (ll. 39697).
Place regained 65
In Paradise Lost Eve is duped by Satan into momentarily thinking like a
dualistic theologian, the result of this deception being that she, who rst
and foremost (even more than Adam) is thoroughly rooted in the Garden,
uproots herself from the place which has sustained and been sustained by
her life. Similarly, every action in the Mask, fromthe Attendant Spirit being
rst dispatched to Sabrinas appearance, as well as every tension we who see
or read the Mask experience, assumes that the Ladys body, that corporeal
rinde, does matter. Or, to put it another way, as much as spirit, matter
matters, so to speak. Whatever dualistic ideas the children of the Mask may
have, if they have been led to believe, even for an instant, like Eve, that
that Lady can somehow soar above her bodily connection with the Earth,
then tragedy will certainly ensue. But it is precisely the connection with the
Earth that the children may believe the Lady can and should eschew, the
roots that Sabrina rst set down into a place on British soil, that can save
the Lady.
Without roots like Sabrinas that run deep into a place on the Earth,
we are, like the Lady, powerless. This was the condition of the human
being Sabrina before she was saved by (a place on) the Earth. It is also
the condition of the Attendant Spirit. A parody of dualistic theology, the
Attendant Spirit has realized Eves dream(induced by Satan in Paradise Lost
5.8690) of being without roots in the Earth, yet far from a freedom, this
lack of connection to the Earth has rendered him all but helpless. True,
he does have practical knowledge (of haemony, for example) and a fair
amount of wisdom but, without roots in the Earth, he is nearly powerless.
Not surprisingly, then, each of the Attendant Spirits attempts to assist the
Lady must enlist the help of something (or someone) rmly rooted in the
Earth: the brothers, haemony, or Sabrina. In the case of Sabrina, this does
raise questions regarding just how responsive the genius loci is to the call of
the Attendant Spirit.
As Richard Neuse noted, Sabrina becomes a symbolic expression of
mans lower nature seen in a truly new light, transformed, namely as no
longer in conict with spirit and reason, but as harmoniously responsive to
them.
21
While we might see Sabrina more literally as an expression of the
Nature of the place and not mans lower nature, Neuse does raise an im-
portant point which poses an essential question: is Sabrina harmoniously
responsive to the call of the spirit? Well, certainly, Sabrina does answer
the call (invocation) of the Attendant Spirit, but it is by no means certain
during the invocation that she will respond, or even that she is responding,
to a call of the spirit at all. Earlier in the Mask (ll. 12834) Comus made a
similar invocation to Cotytto without response. Moreover, the Attendant
66 Part I: Having place
Spirit knows full well not only that Sabrina needs to be right invokt
(l. 854), but that his effort may not succeed: this I will try / And adde the
power of some adjuring verse (emphasis added) (ll. 85758). Indeed, only
after the Attendant Spirits humble acknowledgment of the power of the
genius (Goddess dear / We implore thy powerful hand . . . [ll. 90203]),
does Sabrina respond to what she believes is the invocation of a shepherd.
Now, of course, as the benecent genius of a pastoral place, Sabrina has a
special relationship with the thankful shepherds:
[Sabrina] oft at Eeve
Visits the herds along the twilight meadows,
Helping all urchin blasts, and ill luck signes
That the shrewd medling Elfe delights to make,
Which she with pretious voild liquors heals.
For which the Shepherds at thire festivals
Carrol her goodnes lowd in rustick layes,
And throw sweet garland wreaths into her stream
Of pancies, pinks, and gaudy Daffadils.
(ll. 84351)
So Sabrinas response to a shepherd may have less to do with spirit,
and more to do with a genius loci caring for the humans who rightly honor
Sabrinas care of the place they inhabit. Put another way, an invocation
responded to loses a great deal of its signicance as an invocation when the
call is merely for the spirit do her vocation. Though the Attendant Spirit is
quick to point out to the freed Lady that the grace that has come through
Sabrina has a higher origin (Com Lady while Heaven lends us grace, / Let
us y this cursed place [ll. 93839]), there is also a sense that this Spirit
sent from an-Other realm knows that the grace given is beyond his power
to muster and that they had better take quick advantage of it.
With all the power ascribed to the genius loci Sabrina in the Mask, it
is perhaps not surprising that, like the Attendant Spirit, Comus wishes to
play the part of the genius loci:
I know each lane and every alley green
Dingle, or bushy dell of this wide Wood,
And every bosky bourn from side to side
My daily walks and ancient neighbourhood,
And if your stray attendance be yet lodgd,
Or shrould within these limits, I shall know
Ere morrow wake, or low roosted lark
From her thacht pallat rowse (ll. 31018)
Although it is clear that, other than sauntering through his place, Comus
has no real understanding of what a genius loci actually does. It can be
Place regained 67
similarly stated that Comus also has an equally shallow understanding of
the role of his father, Dionysus.
As Cedric Brown and others have noted, Milton would have known
the [Greek] words komos (the revel) komazein (to revel, reveling), and ko-
mazontes and komastes (revelers).
22
Comus, as a personication of komos,
then become the embodiment of that particular kind of revelry we asso-
ciate with the cult of his father, Dionysus. Though in deference to Brown,
who is no doubt using the ever-reliable Liddell and Scotts GreekEnglish
Lexicon to translate komos as the revel, komos seems to mean something
more. Brown suggests this when he notes that, As Milton would have
known, moral writers, like Plato, wrote how the komos might disable a
whole community.
23
The very fact that phrases such as good-natured
revelry and reveling in our success do not sound discordant suggests that
revelry might be far more benign to us than komos was to Plato. Perhaps
a better word for that wild, ecstatic intoxication that could disable an en-
tire community might be frenzy. It is difcult to imagine good-natured
frenzy; impossible to imagine good-natured ecstatic, intoxicated frenzy.
Though in English there is no one word that seems to capture the sense
of komos, in German there is a single word, rausch, that means just that:
ecstatic, intoxicated frenzy.
Nietzsche, who used to boast that he, so to speak, put Dionysus on
the map,
24
thought like Milton that rauschkomos was a close relative
to Dionysus. In the following passage from Twilight of the Idols, I am
using the standard Kaufmann translation with the exception that I am
substituting komos for Kaufmanns use of frenzy as a translation of rausch.
Here Nietzsche is explaining rauschkomos as what is necessary to create a
great man such as himself:
All kinds of komos, however diversely conditioned, have the strength to accomplish
this: above all the komos of sexual excitement, this most ancient and original formof
komos. Also the komos that follows all great cravings, all strong effects; the komos of
feasts, contests, feats of daring, victory, all extreme movement; the komos of cruelty;
the komos in destruction; the komos under certain meteorological inuences, as for
example the komos of spring; or under the inuence of narcotics; and nally the
komos of will, the komos of an overcharged and swollen will. What is essential in
such komos is the feeling of increased strength and fullness. Out of this feeling one
lends to things, one forces them to accept us, one violates them . . . A man in this
state transforms all things until they mirror his power until they are reections
of his perfection.
25
Here, in Nietzsches last formulation of the Dionysian, Dionysus as we
knew him son of the Earth deity, Semele, brother to Demeter, protector
of crops, and celebrator of the harvest is gone, all that is left is komos.
68 Part I: Having place
(Or, in Miltons formulation, all that is left of Dionysus is his son, Comus.)
Though there is a nod to certain meteorological inuences, Nietzsche
severs the Dionysian connection to the Earth.
The source (the Earth) of that intoxicating feeling of komos, as a people
humbly gave thanks to the Earth for providing for them for yet another
season, is altogether discarded by Nietzsche. If we, like Milton, person-
ify komos into Comus, we have a spirit of place who believes that the
place on Earth is not something of which he is a part (and is further his
gratefully to protect), but is merely an object to have. Not surprisingly,
Comus causes his followers to forget their place on the Earth: their native
home [to] forget (l. 75). To Nietzsche, komos is the intoxication of power.
But Nietzsches komos is equally a forgetting that the intoxicating power
was rst and foremost a humble human acceptance and celebration of the
Earths creative power. Nietzsches language, more than astonishingly phal-
locentric, whether intentional or not, is the language of rape. Every thing
exists to yield to his increased strength and fullness as one forces them
to accept his swollen will as he violates them through the komos of
cruelty; the komos in destruction. In a bizarre frenzy of sexual excitement
(which could itself rightly be called komos), Nietzsche not only forgets that
Mother Earth is the source (as in Dionysian myths) of the creative power in
which he wildly revels, but utterly convinced that his power is self-created,
Nietzsche adds licentious injury to insult as the Earth herself must now
submit to him.
Being so unlike his father, Dionysus, it is perhaps not surprising that
Comus is not a classical deity at all. As the Variorum Commentary on
the Mask reminds us, Comus does not appear until the Imagines (1.2) of
Philostratus the elder (c. ad170 to c. ad245).
26
While Philostratus could be
considered as belonging to the late Classical period, we know that his most
famous work, a life of the Pythagorean philosopher Apollonius of Tyana,
shows not only a knowledge of the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and
the Lives of the Saints; but as such was enormously inuential in cultivating
a cult of Apollonius as a Christianized Greek alternative to Christianity.
27
While not quite an early Christian character, Comus nonetheless belongs
to an early Christian period, where he is directly constructed in opposition
to Christian values. Having Comus (as komos) still deeply connected to the
Earth (as was his father, Dionysus) simply would not suit early Christian
values which, before the advent of dualistic medieval theology, still retained
a strong Earth connection as Jesus himself urged human beings humbly
to emulate the fowls of the air, and the lilies of the eld (Matthew
6:2534). Though Comus remained largely dormant for a thousand years,
Place regained 69
he exploded on the Christian Italian Renaissance scene with the works of
Cartari, Mantegna, and others.
28
The importance of Comuss genealogy for Milton is that Comus, as
komos, was not only uprooted from the deep Earth connection his father,
Dionysus, enjoyed (as Nietzsche so vividly displayed), but (as Nietzsche
also showed) the hideously destructive values Comus embodies are in direct
opposition to Christian values. What makes Comus so fascinating is that
he is not, as one might have expected him to be in a portrayal by dualistic
medieval theology, anti-Christian because he is thoroughly Earthy. Had
Milton wanted such a character, Dionysus (as Nietzsche realized early in
his career) was certainly available, but Comus is as much not of the Earth
as he is not of a heavenly realm. The inclusion of the Comus character in
the Mask thus provided Milton with a wonderful opportunity to explore
how an anti-Earth posture is equally anti-Christian.
Consideredinpostmodernterms, the three spirits of the Mask provide a
ternary structure which destabilizes medieval theologys either of the Earth
or not of the Earth mutually exclusive dyadic structure. The metaphysical
position (taken by the Attendant Spirit who views the Earth as a dim
spot) proves to be an altogether helpless condition without a connection
with the Earth. Because the Attendant Spirit lacks the deep roots in the
Earth that Eve lost and Sabrina regained, the supposedly powerful emissary
from an Other realm proves to be utterly powerless without the help of
something rooted in the Earth (the brothers, the symbol of rootedness
haemony, or Sabrina). On the other of the metaphysical theologians hands,
Comus, who is the seeming embodiment of every carnal lust, should be
as obviously anti-Christian the most Earthy. But in Miltons assessment,
Comus, unlike his father, is anything but rootedinthe Earth; rather, because
Comus is what Nietzsche hoped to be (some sort of minor god), he basks
in the intoxicating power over all that he might make into a mere object. In
short, only because Comus believes himself separate fromthe Earth does he
believe everything of the Earth should yield to him. The eitheror choice
of Spiritual (the Attendant Spirit) or Earthy (Comus) proves not only
to be an oversimplication of the situation but rather a neithernor choice
in the Mask.
But Miltons third possible Spirit, the spirit of place, Sabrina, is
both Spiritual and Earthy. Like the Attendant Spirit, Sabrina begins as
thoroughly powerless, though the extraordinary power she draws from her
place on Earth makes her stronger than either the Attendant Spirit or
Comus. This is not to renounce Gods role in Nature but rather to declare
that human beings and the Earth should be in accordance with Gods
70 Part I: Having place
calling, as Milton states it in his denition of Nature from De Doctorina
Christiana: Nature cannot possibly mean anything but the mysterious
power and efcacy of that divine voice which went forth in the beginning,
and to which as a perpetual command, all things have since paid obedience
(15.93). This is something like what Lao Tzu remarked in the Tao Te Ching:
Manis inaccordance with the earth. Earth is inaccordance with heaven.
29
Unlike Comus, Sabrina never forgets that her power comes from the
place that roots her, so in tending to her place, this Spirit insures not
only the fertility of the place, but her own strength as well. Sabrina, unlike
Comus and Nietzsche, would not brutally ravage the creative power of the
Earth; rather she seeks, and is kindly permitted by the benevolent Earth,
to take part in the creation. If Sabrina, like Comus, was to turn on the
Earth, and, like Nietzsche, in a wild carnal frenzy forcibly to take from
Earth (instead of gratefully receiving what the Earth provided), not only
would the place suffer, but Sabrina would suffer as well. The environmental
signicance of all of this has not been lost on the children of the Mask.
In one of Comuss longest speeches (ll. 70655), he begins with a question
which already contains his answer as to why the Earth is so immensely
fertile: Wherefore did Nature powre her bounties forth, (l. 710) was it
not But all to please, and sate the curious taste? (l. 714). In other words,
Why is the Earth so fertile? Why for me, of course. Comus concludes
the long speech by suggesting that, like the Earths bounty, the Ladys own
considerable gifts must not be hoarded (l. 739) as There was another
meaning in these gifts, / Think what (ll. 75455). Though Comus clearly
intends to arouse in the Lady erotic notions here, another meaning has
already occurred to the Lady. To Comus, who views the Earth (and the
Lady) as merely an object to yield to his will (in Nietzsches vernacular of
rape, to yield to the komos of an overcharged and swollen will
30
), the Lady
replies that there is indeed another meaning to these gifts, of which Comus
seems unaware.
Apparently the idea of a female provider was so unusual in Miltons time
that the poet coined the word cateress (l. 764) in the Mask to express
the idea of a female supplier of goods, usually to a household.
31
It is as
a cateress that the Lady in the Mask understands the Earth. And what a
good provider the Earth is: if only we were to live according to her sober
laws, / And holy dictate of spare Temperance . . . every man who now
pines with want (ll. 76668) would be provided for and she [the Earth]
no whit encomberd with her store (l. 774). Through the holy dictate of
spare Temperance [emphasis added], human beings and the Earth are a
match made in heaven, with human beings temperately taking just what
Place regained 71
the Earth provides (in the Ladys words, a moderate and beseeming share
[l. 769]) and the Earth providing just what human beings need.
In the far less poetic parlance of modern environmentalists, the notion
the Lady is putting forth is something like sustainable yield. In an essay
entitled Poetry and Place, Wendell Berry aptly remarks of the Ladys
speech (ll. 76279) in the Mask that it is a prototype of the ecological
argument of our own time or it is the traditional morality that we have
now begun to perceive as ecological; humans can have a decent, permanent
place in the earthy household [fed by the cateress, no doubt] only by
knowing precisely the extent of their beseeming share and by using no
more.
32
The Ladys speech is a prescription for how humans should live
on the Earth, taking just what we need (and not the astonishing excess that
Comus, along with our modern Earth-consuming lifestyle, urges) so that
the Earth can sustain us, and in the process, the giver [the Earth] would be
better thankt (l. 775). This is completely unlike Comus, who Nere looks
to Heavn amidst his gorgeous feast, / But with besotted base ingratitude /
Crams, and blasphemes his feeder (ll. 77779).
These lines (ll. 77779) can also be read as the Lady offering a sec-
ond meaning rather like Nietzsches language of rape, as Comus turns on
her who has fed him, and with besotted base ingratitude / Crams, and
blasphemes his feeder [the Earth].
33
Once the Lady cleverly discloses to
Comus that she has unmasked his true intent towards the Earth (and her)
as rapist, she immediately breaks off her response to Comus (Shall I go
on? / Or have I said enough [ll. 77980]) to make direct reference to the
serious doctrine of Virginity (l. 787). Though prior to 1637 perhaps with
greater drama following the Ladys clever double entendre, which disclosed
Comuss aim, her speech simply ends with Shall I go on?, to which Comus
responds This is mere moral babble (l. 807). From 1637 onward the Lady
adds that To him that dares / Arm his profane tongue with contemptuous
words / Against the Sun-clad power of Chastity (ll. 78082), Thou are
not t to hear thy self convinct (l. 792). Self-convinced and reveling in
his power, like Nietzsche at the end of his sanity, Comus can only see the
Earth (and the unfortunate Lady) as a feast to be had. The neer-do-well son
of an Earth-deity, Comus has completely forgotten whence his inherited
power originates. And, like Nietzsche, intoxicated with the life and power
bestowed on him by Mother Earth, Comus turns back on the Earth with
licentious, ecstatic, intoxicated komos.
With this said about the Mask, considering Nietzsches earlier remarks
will be illuminating. Though a fewmonths after penning the earlier quoted
passage from Twilight of the Idols Nietzsche lost his sanity, what he said
72 Part I: Having place
regarding komos, far from being taken as the ranting of a madman (or in
Miltons formulation, the licentious intentions of what can best be called, as
a Christian-era embodiment of carnal lust, a little devil), is nowarguably the
obscene posture most of the world nowtakes towards the Earth. Convinced
of our own power, even to the extent that we believe it within our grasp
to save the Earth, we have forgotten that all of the power in which we
shamelessly revel comes from the Earth herself. Even more startling is that
we have forgotten, along with Nietzsche and Comus, that the feeling of
revelry itself was rst and foremost a grateful, excited celebration of the
Earths fertility that the Earth had provided for us, and in so doing had
saved us from hardship and hunger. In what may prove to be the last great
irony of humankind, as we give ourselves, like Comus and Nietzsche, to
the intoxicating thought of our own immense power (even if it is to force
some goal as noble sounding as to save the Earth), our brutish ravaging
of the Earth in order to foster this komos of power may forever destroy the
Earths ability to save us from ourselves.
Yet Miltons Mask offers a startling alternative, both to this power-driven
phallocentric scenario championed by Comus and Nietzsche, as well as to
the radically ascetic position held by dualistic medieval theology and the
Attendant Spirit. We need, like the helpless young woman Sabrina, to
admit our own powerless position without life-giving roots deep in the
Earth. Though masked by Milton as parents putting on a performance
for the instruction of their children, the Ludlow Mask is also children
putting on a performance for the edication of their parents. As the newly
commissioned leader of a place and his wife watched the spectacle of their
children (though in possession of every virtue and divine gift) rendered
utterly helpless, Milton reminded this recently appointed protector of
place that he was equally helpless without the Earth that had long ago
accepted and saved his people.
part i i
The underlying importance of place
5
The New Testaments call to place: Pauls and
Luthers deconstructions
Beware that no one makes you captive through philosophy and empty
deceit.
The Apostle Paul
1
In stark contrast to my literal discussion of place, Dayton Haskin opens
his Miltons Burden of Interpretation by noting how Martin Luther wrote
an account of what he took to be the turning point in his life. He connected
it with an interpretative insight into a place, as he called it, a particular
biblical passage.
2
In Luthers case, the place in question was a phrase
from Romans 1:17, the righteousness of God. As Haskin makes clear, it
was commonplace in the seventeenth century to feel a certain connection
with a biblical place, to feel like Luther when the passage suddenly spoke
to him immediately, as if he were in the same place that Paul had occupied
many centuries earlier.
3
However, what made Luthers epiphany such a
turning point was that he used an interpretative strategy of linking passages
to get to this place, prompting him fatefully to study linguistic usage,
comparing text to text, concentrating on how biblical language conveys
meaning.
4
Similarly, in the critical period of 164345, Haskin argues, Milton
beganradically torevise his thinking about biblical places.
5
Facedwiththe
apparent biblical condemnation of divorce, Milton devised interpretative
strategies to nd a place in a text that seemingly offered no refuge for the
divorced. Although Miltons divorce pamphlets are certainly interesting in
this light, what interests me in both Luther and Milton is the remarkable
place they both found in the opening chapters of 1 Corinthians for a
very literal place on Earth for human beings. In spite of an oppressive
amount of biblical interpretation that extended from the Church Fathers
into their own eras, both Luther and Milton were able, through a largely
deconstructive interpretative approach, to divorce Christianity from the
ancient traditions acting upon it.
75
76 Part II: The underlying importance of place
With an eco-critical eye, the present chapter will look to Luthers desta-
bilizing approach in some depth as an introduction to Miltons tour de force
deconstruction of the Western tradition in Paradise Regained, which will
be the subject of the following chapter. As the remainder of this chapter
will not speak directly to Milton, I have provided a very brief synopsis
of this material in the opening of the next chapter on Paradise Regained
for Miltonists who wish to gloss over this Paul/Luther chapter. However,
readers wishing to exercise this interpretative strategy should be forewarned
that they are glossing over not only the early-modern emergence of decon-
structive critical approaches but also a startling Green-friendly reading
of Christianity.
There is in Plato a desire to look away fromany place on the Earth. True,
he does make a life of looking towards beautiful trees, lakes, and mountains;
but this is to enable him to turn away from trees, lakes, and mountains to
see above all this imperfection Beauty itself. And perhaps, too, he sees
the perfect Form of Tree, Lake, and Mountain, though Plato, seemingly
uncomfortable with this prospect, prefers instead to look towards concepts
such as Justice, Truth, and the Good in the wondrous invisible world that
lies above (at least in importance, if not geographically) any place on
the Earth. Now the environmental consequences of this type of thinking
are twofold. On the one hand, if we do achieve something of a viewpoint
above the physical, as scientists who followed Platos lead seek, we have
removed ourselves from our enmeshed relation with the Earth. Not only
does this have the effect of distancing us from the place as it becomes an
object and we become viewing subjects (an external relation), but once the
relations between the objects we view become established, the possibility
of manipulating those relations appears as applied science. On a completely
different hand, if not only as scientists, but as philosophers and theologians,
we stand with eyes xed on this meta-physical realm, privileging it, like
Plato, over the physical Earth, there is a temptation to neglect our own
imperfect place as we pine for perfection.
The great irony here is that Platos thinking actually begets the two
contradictory stances of at once being empowered to manipulate the Earth
on a wholesale basis, and believing that one should, on principle, disregard
the Earth. While the belief that place should be disregarded might have
mitigated, if not eliminated, the desire to manipulate the place, our history
is a testament to the sinister synergy of these two conicting perspectives.
As mentioned earlier, a century ago Max Weber clearly saw that since
asceticism undertook to remodel the world and to work out its ideals in the
world, material goods have gained an increasing and nally an inexorable
The New Testaments call to place 77
power over the lives of men as in no previous period in history.
6
Indeed,
because the Earth is rendered unimportant by virtue of the wonderful other
realm, we can do with it as we please. This is less of a problem if this place
on Earth is still our home: as we are embodied in this place we cannot
completely have access to that Other realm; therefore we have to be careful
just how we manipulate this Earthy realm, for neglecting our bodies along
with the place could spell our Death. Enter Christianity.
A typical way of approaching Christianity in these terms is as follows:
to begin, Death is not a problem at all, since Death is merely the name for
the passage of the faithful from this tainted place to the invisible perfect
realm, renamed Heaven. Environmentally, the consequence is that the
Greek problem of privileging the Other realm over the Earth worsens
with Christianity, because now the place is not our home at all but rather
a prison in which we are held, our cell being our bodies, until God grants
us parole for our good behavior on Earth so that we might return to our
true home with Him. As Heidegger late in his life summarizes this idea:
That notion presents the earth to us as earthy in the sense of transitory. The
soul, by contrast, is regarded as imperishable, meta-earthly. Beginning with Platos
doctrine, the soul belongs to the super-sensible. If it appears within the sensible, it
does so only as a castaway. Here, upon the earth the soul is miscast. It does not
belong on earth. Here, the soul is something strange. The body is the souls prison,
if nothing worse. The soul, then, apparently has nothing else to look forward to
except to leave as soon as possible the sensible realm.
7
Even worse, the Earth and our Earthy bodies run the risk of becoming
the source of sin themselves as they tempt us with Earthy pleasures when
we should, like Plato, be turning away from the Earth as we intently x
our gaze on the Other realm. With medieval theology, the potential for
ecological disaster inherent in the meta-physical philosophy of the Greeks
becomes realized in the Christian/Greek tradition of Scholasticism: at once
to scorn and manipulate our place on Earth risks becoming a good, while
all that is evil is invariably seen as Earthly.
In direct opposition to this now conventional wisdom, which follows
medieval theology in holding that the Greek tradition was a match made
in heaven with Christian dogma, a number of thinkers have sought to
deconstruct the very Greek tradition that it wed in medieval thinking
a marriage that begot the above-mentioned Scholastic mindset and
with it horric environmental consequences. In the writings of Luther,
Kierkegaard, and most surprisingly in the writings of the young
Martin Heidegger, a distinction emerges between apostolic and apostate
78 Part II: The underlying importance of place
Christianity. This distinction, perhaps most famous in Kierkegaard as be-
tween Christianity and Christendom, holds that the institutionaliza-
tion of Christianity so thoroughly co-opts what the young Heidegger calls
primal-Christianity (Urchristentum) with a profound Greek philosophic
inuence that it turns into its very opposite. Hence the need for decon-
struction.
In a general way, as James Shiel notes it in the introduction to his book on
Greek thinking and early Christianity, this understanding of Christianity
as having become reversed by Greek thinking is one that is, in some sense,
possessed by many students of Classical philology and Christianity:
The student of Greek thought wonders what to make of the New Testament.
The book is printed in the same Greek alphabet as his other texts . . . Yet when
he attempts to read this document of the ancient mind he is surprised. Its style
of expression is not that of the Greeks he knows. It feels rather like a veneer of
Greek over a Semitic mode of expression. Though the book deals with wisdom
and morality he sees little hope of nding in it the congenial and lucid thoughts
of the Greek thinkers. And that little hope will vanish if he happens to notice
in Saint Pauls letters a severe warning against Greek philosophy as a dangerous
deception.
If from here he moves forward to the Christian Greek writings of only a few
generations later he comes upon a reversed situation. The religious message is
now framed in philosophers language, reminiscent at every turn of Heraclitus or
Plato or Aristotle or Cleanthes or Epictetus. Indeed, the Christian religion is now
occasionally described as a philosophy and its founder described as a philosopher.
One Christian bishop, Phileas, on trial before the Roman magistrate Cucianus in
ad 303, says that Paul himself was the greatest of the Greeks and a ner philosopher
than Plato.
8
What Luther and Heidegger each envisioned was a deconstruction which
could reclaim Christianitys original revolutionary spirit from the Greek
philosophic thinking co-opting it. The irony here is that the Greek tra-
dition threatening Christianity was, in part, the very tradition that these
thinkers argued Christianity itself was designed to deconstruct. As the
young Heidegger prospectively put it in lecture notes that have recently
come to light, the great revolution [of Christianity] against ancient sci-
ence, against Aristotle above all, not only failed, but turned on itself as he
became the Philosopher of ofcial Christianity in such a manner that the
inner experiences and the new attitude of [Christian] life were pressed into
the forms of expression in ancient science.
9
The eco-critical implication of
the deconstructive approach of Luther and Heidegger is that it is a strange
amalgam of Christian and Greek ways of thinking that is responsible for
much of our environmental woe. Underpinning this approach is the belief
that while the Greek philosophers prompted human beings to x their
The New Testaments call to place 79
gaze away from the Earth, Christianity sought a reversal by urging human
beings not only look towards the Earth, but also to live a more existential
and Earthy, less speculative life.
To recap quickly my earlier remarks regarding the origins of deconstruc-
tion, when confronted with what appeared to be a xed structure, in Being
and Time Heidegger sought to de-structure the structure so that after the
hardened tradition was loosened up, and the concealments which it
[the tradition] brought about were dissolved,
10
it would be found that
what had been taken for a monadic structure would prove to be only one
half of a dyad. Scholarship into Heideggers early lecture notes revealed a
surprising source of destruction: in the words of John D. Caputo, the young
Heidegger, who identied himself . . . as a Christian theologian, had for
a model in this project of destruction Martin Luther, who even used the
word destruction to describe his project of recovering an authentic Chris-
tianity beneath the conceptual scaffolding of medieval theology.
11
What
is even more surprising is Luthers source for deconstruction: the Apostle
Pauls rst letter to the Church at Corinth, in which God declares that, I
will destroy the wisdom of the wise (1 Corinthians 1:19). In the words of
Heidegger scholar Edward Van Buren, Fatefully for the young Heidegger,
Luthers Theses 19 and20[of the Heidelberg Disputation] translate the term
destroy in 1 Corinthians into the Latin destruere [cognate for the German
Destruktion], to pull down, to dismantle, to de-stroy, to deconstruct.
12
The declaration of Pauls God that he will destroy [deconstruct] the
wisdom of the wise [Greeks] (1 Corinthians 1:19) became a signicant part
of Luthers Theology of the cross (theologia crucis). In one sense Luthers
Theology of the cross can be seen as a political construct, part of the
Protestants protest against the Catholic Church. As one theologianexplains
it, the theologia crucis passes judgment upon the church where she has
become proud and triumphant . . . and recalls her to the foot of the
cross where the scene of total dereliction, of apparent weakness and folly,
at Calvary is the theologians [Luthers] paradigm for understanding the
hidden presence and activity of God in his world and his church. The
problem, of course, was that the ofcial position of the Church had become,
counter to a Theology of the cross, a theology of Glory (theologia
gloriae) which expects God to be revealed in strength, glory and majesty,
and is simply unable to accept the scene of dereliction on the cross as the
self-revelation of God.
13
The Church had simply grown too strong and,
reveling in its strength, had forgotten Gods words to Paul, that my [Gods]
strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). The Church in
Luthers time, constructed on a theology of glory, had made itself perfect
in strength, prompting Luthers deconstruction to recall to the Church
80 Part II: The underlying importance of place
the abject scene of Christ on the cross, by way of which, in utter weakness,
the strength of the Christian faith was born.
In another sense, as we are only now learning, Luthers Theology of the
cross would take on profound philosophical signicance in the twentieth
century, not as a political protest bent ondeconstructing the RomanChurch
by Luther but because it offered insights into the deconstructive revolution
initiated by Paul against the power of the old (Greek inuenced) Roman
empire. And one of the unlikely architects of this understanding of the
theologia crucis would be the young Martin Heidegger. While Heidegger
never tired of telling how he became captivated with the question of Being
at age 18, it was not until twenty years later that Being and Time appeared
the only published work to have emerged, other than his thesis. Although
Heidegger destroyed most of the work of these two decades, asserting that
it was all made redundant by his magisterial Being and Time, a picture
of those lost decades is now coming to light thanks to the aforementioned
work of Van Buren and Caputo.
14
And the image emerging suggests that the
aim expressed in Being and Time, to destroy [deconstruct] the traditional
content of ancient [Greek] ontology until we arrive at those primordial
experiences in which we achieved our rst ways of determining the nature of
Being,
15
may have rst been undertaken by Paul. A deconstruction taken
up again by Luther in his theologia crucis to to destroy the traditional
content of ancient [Greek] ontology as it amazingly still thrived in the
faith that originally sought its deconstruction. While Luthers theologia
crucis gave Heidegger a direction for his own secular thinking, it rstly gave
him insights into primal Christianity (Urchristentum).
As Heidegger understood it, by virtue of the theologia crucis, Luthers
counterattack was now enacted religiously and theologically against
Scholasticism that had been consolidated through the reception of
Aristotle; therefore, what is at stake here is something decisive.
16
Deci-
sive because what is at stake is an understanding of primal Christianitys
deconstruction of the Greek thinking propounded by Aristotle. As Van
Buren expresses Heideggers perception of Luthers theologia crucis:
Since God is a mystery hidden in suffering, in the cross, there is nothing present
before-the-hand [an apparent reference to Heideggers word for a reied entity,
Vorhanden] that can be conceptually objectied, built up into the speculative
dominion of a Christianity, Inc. and calculated in theoria, contemplation. There
is no starting point in the humility and shame of the cross for ontotheological
speculation to move from the visible to knowledge of the invisible, because what
is given here is not the eternal, power, glory, the kingdom, but the very opposite;
time, suffering, exile, the death of the King on the cross.
17
The New Testaments call to place 81
Simply put, the image of a physical, manifestly weak, humiliated God on
the cross deconstructs the concept of a meta-physical, all-powerful, glorious
God.
To elaborate: because the Church represented Christianity as a monadic
structure characterized by power and glory, Luther deconstructed this re-
presentation to reveal it to be a binary structure in opposition, with one half
so completely marginalized as to have been obfuscated. So, because the
Church sees only glory, Luthers deconstruction offers the scene of humili-
ation on the cross. Similarly, Luther exchanges an innitely power-ful God,
for an utterly power-less one on the cross. Beauty is exchanged for horror;
the elevated for the diminished; radiance for darkness; the extraordinary
for the ordinary; a kingdom here for kingdom not here; and, on a more
philosophical note, a meta-physical God for a manifestly physical one; a
God out of time for one trapped in time; an omni-present God for an
absent God indeed in Greek being is of course ousia, but in the New
Testament comes an emphasis on the par-ousia, the second coming the
waited for presence of the God who is absent. The young Heidegger took
this to be a remarkable deconstruction of medieval theology brought about
by Luther, cracking wide open an apparently monadic structure; and in so
doing moving out of the margin something precious and forgotten.
For Luther, the Church had, in adopting a theologia gloriae, completely
reversed the import of the scene on the cross, re-constructing Greek
thinking after the spectacle on the cross attempted to deconstruct it. In
Van Burens words, to Luther, glory means the Greek onto-etio-theo-
logical experience of the being of beings as presence: radiant light, splendor,
beauty; the wondrous and extraordinary, the elevated and exalted; and
power, majesty and dominion quite the opposite of Earthy existence
which to Plato was deciency, lack, absence, darkness, pollution, ugliness,
falsity, and evil in relation to the heavenly topos.
18
But as the scene on
the cross is precisely one of deciency, lack, absence, darkness, pollution,
ugliness, falsity, and evil, it deconstructs the theologia gloriae.
In essence, Luthers theologia crucis was an antidote, so to speak, for
Christians who were enthusiastically climbing Platos ladder away from
the Earth towards a higher realm. Luther hoped that he could cause
these glory-seeking spirits to look back for a moment at the image of their
Savior on the cross and, seeing their folly, turn back down towards their
meta-physical God who had, as these theologians apparently forgot, come
down to Earth. However, as one might imagine, this was a rather hard sell
for Luther. Heidegger believed that by the end of Luthers career, when
his thinking had been institutionalized into Lutheranism, much of the
82 Part II: The underlying importance of place
force of the theologia crucis had again been co-opted by Greek-inuenced
Christian thinking. Nonetheless, the environmental import of the theologia
crucis of the young Luther still stands: when we consider my earlier state-
ment that there is, rst in Plato, then in institutionalized Christianity, a
desire rst to look at, then move away from places on the Earth. In so far
as the theologia crucis urges Christians to confront their God as manifestly
physical, much of the desire to abandon their place on the Earth in favor
of the Other realm is mitigated. This will be clearer if we return to Luthers
own source of his deconstruction of the theologia gloriae with the theologia
crucis: the Apostle Paul.
So unbelievable was the spectacle of God come down to Earth on the
cross that Paul realized that the Greeks [who] seek after wisdom would
never understand it (1 Corinthians 1:22).
19
But it is precisely for this reason
that Paul says, we preach Christ crucied, unto the Jews a stumblingblock,
and unto the Greeks foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:23). To counter the con-
ventional wisdom of power, dominion, and intellectual transcendence that
the Greeks preached, Paul tells us that, precisely because the Greeks seek
after wisdom, his God declared, I will destroy [deconstruct] the wisdom
of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent, in
order to make foolish the wisdom of this world (1 Corinthians 1:1922).
Moreover, when Paul asks Where [is] the wise? where [is] the scribe? where
[is] the disputer of this world? (1 Corinthians 1:20), he not only is asking
after the Greek philosophers, but is suggesting that as disputers of this
world, it is arguably these philosophers who reject the here and now as
base and inferior in comparison to the splendorous world of the Other
realm. Hence the base things of the world, and things which are despised
[by Greek philosophers who privilege the other realm], hath God chosen
because He hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the
wise [the Greeks] (1 Corinthians 1:2728). Not surprisingly, then, Paul is
not going to preach that one should attempt to understand the Christian
faith in a Greek philosophic manner through complex intellectual argu-
ments, but rather by recalling the image of Christ on the cross: to preach
the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be
made of none effect (1 Corinthians 1:17).
It is precisely on this point that Luther would formulate his theologia
crucis, as the preaching of the cross is to them that perish [some of whom
will be named in 1 Corinthians 1:23 as the Greeks] foolishness; but unto us
which are saved it is the power of God (1 Corinthians 1:18). Because the
foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger
than men (1 Corinthians 1:25), Luther understands that what Paul is
The New Testaments call to place 83
suggesting is a deconstruction in which a reversal is being effected to undo
the power of the GreekRoman machine. Moreover, Paul argues in words
that could have been written by Derrida that his God has chosen things
which are not, to bring to nought things that are. Luther could not help
but see this as a recipe for deconstruction: things which are not [such
as weakness, a nonentity to the Greeks, are chosen], to bring to nought
[katargeo: destroy, arguably deconstruct] things that are [such as power].
Things which are, the word here is ousia, being. Therefore, in the general
wording of 1 Corinthians, things which are not [non-being], are chosen
to bring to nought [deconstruct] being. Both Luther and Heidegger
would see this not only as deconstruction of Western metaphysics, but as a
radical de-structuring of the prevailing Greek value structure, which, seeing
only strength, had wholly marginalized its Other, weakness.
Luther andHeidegger sawthis as a deconstructionof power itself through
a paradox in which power is achieved through weakness: a deconstructed
power-less power, which nonetheless will undo the most power-full
power. What may be most fascinating is that this strategy of deconstructing
the Greek mindset being unfurledby Paul was a paradox of strengththrough
weakness that the Greek mindset simply could not grasp. But, of course,
that was the plan since God hath chosen the weak things of the world to
confound the things which are mighty (1 Corinthians 1:27), and will bring
to nothing the understanding of the prudent (1 Corinthians 1:19). The
young Luthers innovation was to realize that this tactic of deconstructing
power through weakness could destabilize the new seat of world power in
Rome reveling in its strength, which, in one of historys greatest ironies,
was the very Church Paul strove to establish.
It is worth noting here that because Luthers was a deconstruction of
the mindset that privileged things high, it led back to the concrete world
of historical happenings: in the words of Heideggers friend and colleague,
Catholic theologian Rudolf Bultmann, the NewTestament asserts that the
authentic life of man is not that of the cosmos [the meta-physical realm],
but runs in the course of the incidental, the individual, in the sphere of
history: that what the Greeks regard as the appearance of reality [this Earthy
sphere] is in fact the authentic sphere of life.
20
Because Paul and Luther
deconstructed the privileging of the meta-physical realm, they were led
back to what Bultman calls the authentic sphere of life, which was sorely
in need of change.
Long after he abandoned Luther, Paul, and Christianity, Heidegger
would, in an entirely secular way, continue with his interest in the way
Greek-inuenced thinking has shaped our world. But in the later work
84 Part II: The underlying importance of place
the project takes a decidedly environmental turn, as Heidegger questioned
what could stop the Greek/Roman juggernaut (part of the legacy of which
is modern science and technology) from completely destroying the Earth.
Heideggers answer? Only a godcansave us.
21
As Hubert Dreyfus explains,
by this Heidegger was suggesting that
to get what is still nontechnological in our practices in focus . . . a new paradigm
[a new god] would have to take up practices that are now on the margin of our
culture and make them central, while deemphasizing practices now central to our
cultural understanding . . . If it worked it would become an exemplar of a new
understanding of what matters and howto act. There would, of course, be powerful
forces tending to take it over and mobilize it for our technological order, and if
it failed it would be necessarily be measured by our current understanding and so
look ridiculous.
22
In terms of the argument I have been advancing in light of the recent
revelations regarding Heideggers early Christian inuences, Heideggers
paradigm for this god, this Savior, who would be an exemplar of a
new understanding of what matters and how to act to counter the Greek
philosophic tradition may have been the early Church. By undertaking
a radical deconstruction of Greek values (substituting the cross for glory,
weakness for power, and so forth), the early Church was able to exalt what
had been utterly marginalized in Greek thinking: the weak, the lowly, the
ordinary, absence, faith, poverty.
In Luthers reading of 1 Corinthians, what the early Christian Church
should have revealed to the Greeks was that their values represented only
one half of an underlying mutually exclusive dyadic construct, which had
been covered over by their unabashed privileging of only one half of the
structure.
23
But the remarkable success of the Greek enterprise made it
impossible for the Greeks to see anything other than foolishness in what
the early Churchs deconstructionrevealedhowcouldweakness be favored
over strength, or poverty over wealth? In Aristotle, for example, strength is
understood as a kind of presence, where weakness is simply understood as
an absence of strength in other words strength is the thing that everyone
wants and weakness is the no-thing that everyone hopes to avoid. This is
not to say that all Greeks sought strength and power, but, like the wealth-
seeking materialism of modern America it is clear that in the consolidated
view of most Americans, to have is good, to have not bad as to the Greeks
strength and power were that which should be had.
While this all makes a rather provocative case for an early Christian origin
of deconstruction, my own interest in this subject is largely environmental.
Environmentalists have long asked just what it would take to stop (or
The New Testaments call to place 85
at least mitigate) the vicious legacy that Greek and Roman thinking has
wrought upon the Earth. While this Greek tradition in which we nd
ourselves has certainly had positive effects, it has also provided the philo-
sophical and scientic foundations for the unleashing of destructive human
power over the Earth. In the words of the enormously inuential Deep
ecologist George Sessions: With the culmination of Athenian philosophy
in Aristotle, an anthropocentric system of philosophy and science was set
in place to play a major role in shaping Western thought until the sev-
enteenth century [though conceptually long after]. But, as Sessions notes,
Heidegger provided a major critique and indictment of the development
of Western philosophy since Plato. He concluded that this anthropocentric
development paved the way for the technocratic mentality which espouses
domination over nature.
24
Indeed it is to enable the deconstruction of the
Greco-Roman mindset that Heidegger rst openly employed deconstruc-
tion in Being and Time in order to destroy [deconstruct] the traditional
content of ancient [Greco-Roman] ontology until we arrive at those pri-
mordial experiences in which we achieved our rst ways of determining the
nature of Being.
25
Though in light of the recent disclosures by Caputo,
Van Buren, and others on how Heideggers enterprise might actually be
an adaptation of early Christian thinking which chose things which are
not [such as weakness], to bring to nought things that are [Greco-Roman
power, for example] (1 Corinthians 1:28) a new picture emerges of the
early Church laying down the deconstructive thinking necessary to initiate
the same type of counter-movement against the Greco-Roman approach
(the great empirical power which had colonized the ancient world) that
would make Heidegger not only famous but of great interest to environ-
mentalists. These environmentalists would do well to consider Miltons
Paradise Regained, which, as I shall argue in the next chapter, contains an
early modern deconstruction of the Western tradition which has profound
environmental import.
6
Rejecting the placeless ancient doctrines:
confusing Paradise Regained
Hast thou not right to all Created things?
Miltons Satan
1
Paradise Regained is a confusing text. In noting this I certainly mean to
draw attention, as Barbara Lewalski did some thirty years ago, to the way
readers have thought of the epic for more than three centuries, that the
brief epic is Miltons most perplexing major poem.
2
But more than just
perplexing, Paradise Regained brings the necessary con-fusion to take apart
what hundreds of years of Western thinking have fused together; namely
the Christian, Greek, Roman, and the Judaic traditions. In this sense of
con-fusing I do mean de-constructing, though this sort of deconstruct-
ing does not so much de-construct a text as it con-fuses readers, in so far as
it takes apart something of us as we are born into a fusion of these ancient
traditions. Which raises the question, why should Milton, classicist non
pareil, ofciate over the divorce of what for a lifetime he had wed? Is it that
Milton himself was simply confused? In this present section I intend to
suggest just that: that Milton, and the Christianity he cherished through-
out his life, is thoroughly confused in Paradise Regained, which gave the
poet an astonishingly clear understanding of himself and his faith through
this radical deconstruction.
To recap quickly my last section: in Luthers reading of 1 Corinthians,
Paul was attempting to stand in direct opposition to the prevailing Greek
thought of the time: because the Greeks seek after wisdom, Christians
should preach Christ crucied . . . unto the Greeks foolishness; nonethe-
less, the foolishness of God is wiser than men (1 Corinthians 1:2225).
This reading forms the basis of Luthers celebrated Theology of the cross
(theologia crucis), whichwas formulatedto counter medieval theologys priv-
ileging of glory. To Luther, it was largely through the reading of Aristotle,
who was sent by God as a plague upon us on account of our sins,
3
that
medieval theology had quite reversed what Christianity should privilege:
86
Rejecting the placeless ancient doctrines 87
not glory but its opposite, which the abject scene on the cross discloses. In
Luthers understanding of 1 Corinthians, the dis-closure of the cross should
have opened up what Greeks such as Aristotle sawas a closed case on their
values. In terms of what the Greeks valued, strength for example, Aristotle
held that there was really no-thing but strength since weakness was merely
the absence of strength on a scale of one to ten, true strength would be
ten, while true weakness, as zero, would not even register on the scale.
4
To
the Greeks, strength was the thing and weakness utterly no-thing case
closed. How could it be otherwise; were not the weak merely those who
were not strong?
But to Paul, in reopening the case, his God brings dis-closure to this
Greek situation. The horric scene on the cross could be to the Greeks no-
thing but the glorious triumph of strength over weakness as complete dom-
ination of the alleged God-man signied nothing other than the strength
of the Romans. Yet Paul responds that because the weakness of God is
stronger than men, his God has chosen the weak things of the world
to confound the things which are mighty (1 Corinthians 1:25, 27). On a
more philosophical note, God has chosen things which are not, to bring to
nought [katargeo: destroy, arguably deconstruct] things that are [on: ousia,
being] (1 Corinthians 1:28). Both Luther and Heidegger would see this
as a radical deconstruction of the prevailing Greek value structure, which,
seeing only strength, had wholly marginalized its Other, weakness. But
there on the cross, in utter weakness, a new strength was born. A paradox
of strength in weakness, a might-less might to confound the things which
are mighty (1 Corinthians 1:27). As this new strength was in complete
opposition to the old strength of the Greco-Romans, it would not be (as
so gloriously effected in the Greco-Roman model) a human strength at all.
But rather, as a complete humbling of human beings before an immensely
powerful God, this all-powerful God would be the seat of power for his
power-less people.
While Christianity has repeatedly been fused with Greek, Roman, and
certain Judaic thought, to Luther and Heidegger it was con-structed as a
power (though as a con-struction to the immense Greco-Roman power, this
Christian power was a power-less power) to un-do these very opponents it
has been fused with again and again throughout history. In this reading,
although Christianity rst asserted it-Self in complete opposition to its
Greco-Roman Other, Christianity nonetheless time and time again lost
it-Self and actually became the Other. The implication of this argument
is that which is taken to be an environmentally injurious institutionalized
Christianity may be something completely Other thanChristianitys origin.
88 Part II: The underlying importance of place
In short, to Luther and the young Heidegger, Christianity was a way of
approaching the world which from its very beginning took a stand against
the tradition now wreaking havoc upon the Earth.
This leads me to Paradise Regained to see Milton push the origin of
this deconstruction of Greco-Roman thought further than even Heidegger
seemed to have imagined, not only past Paul to an astonishing begin-
ning with Jesus, but to the very moment when the Christian Self emerged
through his temptation. This is not to say that in pressing this deconstruc-
tion Milton was expressly attempting to make an environmental stand;
nonetheless, the stand he and his protagonist take in Paradise Regained
against the Greco-Roman juggernaut does have profound environmental
import. I read Paradise Regained as a con-fusing text precisely because it
does, to vary the language, de-fuse the explosive power contained in what
has become an environmentally disastrous Greco-Roman-Judeo-Christian
machine. By con-fusing us readers, Paradise Regained not only pulls apart
Greco-Roman-Judeo-Christian thinking, but it pulls us apart as well, or
at least it should. Anyone, faithful or not, who reads Paradise Regained in
its original language is already squarely in a tradition that sees Christianity
and Greco-Roman thinking as at least somewhat compatible, if not a match
made in Heaven.
To these readers whose thinking is this precarious blend of Christian
and ancient thought, Milton not only brings confusion, but after pulling
us apart, the poet urges us not to put our Christian-Greco-Roman-Judaic
Selves back together. This is at the center of the temptations of Paradise
Regained; for the power of Rome, the learning of Athens, or the glorious
Temple of David are not merely temptations for the Son or Milton, they
are central aspects of the way those of us in the Western tradition, even
as we enter the twenty-rst century, approach and understand our world.
To turn away from the power of Rome is to reject the empowered manner
in which we control the world we encounter and create; to eschew the
learning of Athens is to reject not only an extraordinary amount of our
Western heritage but the very way we conceptualize the world; and to
decline the glorious Throne of David is to question just what we mean by
dominion, empire, and kingdom. Nonetheless, Milton con-fuses us with
these temptations. As Ashraf Rushdy aptly said, although the gospel began
in brightness, [as] Milton might have written, sixteen centuries had done
nothing but obscure the primitive glory of its origins.
5
As Satan is the god of this world [aion: age, world, or, arguably, world-
view] (2 Corinthians 4:4), he represents the values of the Greco-Roman-
Judaic age in which Jesus lived. This is not merely biblical interpretation,
Rejecting the placeless ancient doctrines 89
but a reading of Paradise Regained in which Satans crowning temptations
of Athens, Rome, and the glorious Throne of David are a direct reference
to an age (which could be equally Jesus, Miltons, or our own) dominated
by Greek, Roman, and exalted Judaic thinking and culture. The triumph
that Miltons Son has over these temptations as he stands on the pinnacle
(a Miltonian innovation, for while both Matthew and Luke have Jesus
resisting the temptationto cast thyself down [Matthew4:6], only Miltons
Son takes a literal stand against Satan) can itself be seen as a reference to
lines in Ephesians by which Milton suggests that Jesus victory, though
spiritual, has a decidedly cultural and political component as it has also
been a triumph against worldly powers, principalities, and human rulers:
put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles
of the Devil. For we wrestle not against esh and blood, but against principalities,
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world [aion], against
spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour
of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to
stand (Ephesians 6:1113).
Abrief look at howreaders have responded to the temptations in Paradise
Regained, especially the temptationof Greeklearning, reveals just howmuch
these temptations still inuence us. Speaking for most of us brought up
in a culture that not only intensely admires, but arguably is, the extant
Greek tradition, Louis Martz remarks of the temptation of Greek learning
in the epic that rst of all, we should note, with some relief, perhaps, that
these realms of Greek culture do not lie within Satans gift: he does not
control them . . . The Sons answer [to the temptation of Greek learning]
at rst should cause us no discomfort: he does not deny the value of Greek
culture [emphasis added].
6
Martzs careful reading does bring relief to
what is admittedly discomfort, but why do we need this relief? Similarly,
why are we relieved when Donald Swanson and John Mulryan refer to the
tongue-in-cheek denigration of Greek philosophy in Paradise Regained,
or call the polemic against Greco-Roman philosophy a part of Jesus ruse
against Satan?
7
These readings, in nding moments in the text where the
question of accepting Greek learning wavers, relieve us of our confusion by
re-constructing our Greco-Christian Selves, which have been pulled apart
by our encounter with the epic.
In Paradise Regained, it is somewhat perplexing that Milton should
choose the temptation of Jesus at all for his New Testament epic: why
not the birth of Jesus, the teachings, the miracles, the betrayal, the crucix-
ion, or the resurrection? As E. M. W. Tillyard put it, surprisingly in Paradise
90 Part II: The underlying importance of place
Regained Christ is no longer in the main the Redeemer of man, hence
the Pauline fabric of fall, grace, redemption, and regeneration, seems to
have crumbled.
8
While there has been no shortage of reasons offered up
for Miltons choice of the temptation as the moment when Paradise was re-
gained (not the least of which is to tell the complementary story of Paradise
Lost, of the one man who stood where Eve and Adam fell) readers since the
epic rst appeared have nonetheless noted that Miltons choice was hardly
the best in terms of drama. Little drama is possible when few would expect
the Son to lean towards Satans temptations at all, since, as Douglas Bush
observed, the sinless divine protagonist of Paradise Regained cannot falter,
much less fall.
9
If Luther had written a New Testament epic, it would no
doubt center on the crucixion with abundant drama. Nonetheless, it
strikes me that Paradise Regained is intensely dramatic, not only (as I shall
argue) as it astonishingly captures the very moment where the Christian
faith is con-structed against ancient traditions, but as we nd the epics
author and readers placed in a position in which it is they who must resist
enormous temptation, culminating in the almost irresistible enticement of
the glorious Greco-Roman machine itself. To see in Paradise Regained not
only the Son, but also the spectacle of Milton, who made a life of glori-
ously representing Rome and Athens, resisting its temptation is high drama
indeed.
Barbara Lewalski has aptly noted that as the confrontation with Satan
begins in Paradise Regained, the Son not only does not know quite who he
is, but is not quite who he will be either, that both the Son and Satan begin
with a limited and imperfect knowledge of Christs mission as well as his
nature.
10
Only, as A. S. P. Woodhouse noted, through his experience in
the wilderness, does the Son gain a progressively deeper insight into his
own nature as well as into Gods purpose.
11
Yet in the epic this is all part of
Gods expressed plan to regain Paradise: But rst I mean / To exercise him
[the Son] in the Wilderness, / There he shall rst lay down the rudiments /
Of his great warfare.
12
Not surprisingly, then, as we rst see the Son in the
epic he is not at all sure howto achieve what is required of him: Musing and
much revolving in his brest, / How best the mighty work he might begin /
Of Saviour to mankind, and which way rst / Publish his God-like ofce
now mature (1.18588). This same bewilderment returns as we see the Son
for the rst time in Book 2: Into himself descended, and at once / All his
great work to come before himset; / Howto begin, howto accomplish best /
His end of being on Earth, and mission high (2.11014). Indeed, early in
the epic the Son is so puzzled as to howto proceed he admits that as a youth
victorious deeds / Flamd in my heart, heroic acts, one while / to rescue
Rejecting the placeless ancient doctrines 91
Israel from the Roman yoke.(1.21517). Dreams of heroic acts aming in
his heart? Hardly the biblical Jesus we are accustomed to, but as the series
of temptations is presented (most taken directly from the Gospels), the
Son gradually gains a sense of Self, becomes the Jesus to whom we are
accustomed, and a paradigm for a new way of approaching the world, as
he manages to stand against Satan during these confrontations.
On the one hand, as Stanley Fish has noted, this series of confrontations
brings about Satans defeat, not because [of] something that is done to him
(in the crude physical sense expected by Adam) but because of something
that is shown to him, a mode of being whose very presence in the world
brings about his defeat. To Fish, the moral is that the true formof action is
not something one does (a wound inicted, a battle waged), but something
one is.
13
But, on the other hand, Miltons Son simply is not this true form
of action until he confronts Satan. As Satan offers one temptation after
another, naturally in the form of Satans own mode of being, the Son,
at rst perhaps just as a reex to resist that which he suspects to be evil,
counter-moves against each temptation by standing for what to Satan is
no-thing. In this deconstructive fashion the Son will effect by epics end a
true reversal of the Greco-Roman-Judaic position that Satan will privilege
through his corresponding temptations of Athens, Rome, and the glorious
Throne of David.
Fishs observations on this count are particularly astute as the Son be-
comes both a new mode of being where previously there had been only
non-being, and a presence in the world where previously there had been
only absence. In the same way that Gods deconstruction of weakness for
strength that Paul noted confounded the Greeks, so does it confound Satan,
but not as Fish says by virtue of something one [the Son] is, but rather
as something Satan is not. What Milton has done is to focus on the de-
cisive moment where the Christian Self emerges in the Son precisely as
he becomes the Other to the prevailing world-view offered by Satan. As
the confrontation results in Satans being undone as the Christian Self is
formed, it is the very moment where the paradigm of human action not
only shifts but inverts, as out of the no-thingness of the desert
14
comes
some-thing that will turn the world upside down. But, of course, this new
mode of human action will not be an action at all, but rather the in-action
of doing nothing other than standing, though in making this stand, the
power of the power-less Son will undo Satan.
It is important to note that this new Christian Self is not merely deriva-
tive of the prevailing world-view championed by Satan Miltons Son is
far cleverer than that. For example, in the rst temptation, where Satan
92 Part II: The underlying importance of place
challenges the hungry Son to use his ability to Command / That out of
these hard stones be made thee bread (1.34344), the temptation, as the
Son realizes, not only involves hunger but power and trust. Miltons Son
clearly knows he has the power to turn stones to bread, but the tempta-
tion of power is cast aside as the Son comes to understands that to ex
his own strength would be a lack of trust in his God. The Sons God had
always provided for the faithful who trusted in Him: in the Mount / Moses
was forty days, nor eat nor drank, / And forty days Eliah without food /
Wandered this barren waste (1.35154). This prompts the Son to ask of
Satan, Why dost thou then suggest to me distrust? (1.355). This rst
temptation marks the beginning of the Sons deconstruction, as it is pre-
cisely because Satan urges the Son to dis-trust that the future Savior begins
to clearly understand why it is imperative he must trust.
While the Sons substituting of trust for dis-trust may seem little more
than nay-saying, Milton puts forth a deeper rationale which clearly de-
constructs and inverts Satans distrust. Both the Son and Satan know that
power resides in God. To Satan, as Paradise Lost attests, this is a most vexing
fact, but to the Son, it is a thought that comforts, as he knows that though he
himself should be manifestly weak, his powerful God will provide for him.
Satans difculty is that in his privileging of power and strength he cannot
understand weakness (weakness or praus, in Matthew 5:5, for example, in
New Testament Greek should be understood as a trust in Gods goodness
and control over the situation
15
). In this confrontation with Satan, the
Son rejects power precisely because power represents a dis-trust in his God,
yet amazingly, this privileging of weakness over power is what allows the
Son to triumph over the temptation. In a sense, this single temptation,
taken directly from Matthew 4:3, marked what could have (and given that
Christianity gained worldwide inuence, should have) been a profound
shift in, indeed an inversion of, the paradigm of how human beings should
act.
To the GreekRoman mindset, not to use power or strength available to
one is frankly foolishness, as noted in 1 Corinthians 1:25, where the death of
the presumably powerful God-man on the cross is unto the Greeks fool-
ishness. As Donald Swanson and John Mulryan have noted, this is clearly
an understanding at work in Paradise Regained as 1 Corinthians 1:2225
serves as the basis for the divine mandate that God issued to Miltons Son;
I send him forth / To conquer Sin and Death the two grand foes, / By
Humiliation and strong Sufferance: / His weakness shall oercome Satanic
strength (1.15861).
16
As Fish interprets the Sons response to Satan: if I
were to do as you ask, it would imply that God cannot sustain his servants
Rejecting the placeless ancient doctrines 93
without natural means. The examples of Moses and Elijah who trusted
suggest otherwise and it is in their tradition that I would enroll myself.
17
Though this would put the Son, in the eyes of the Greeks, in a remarkably
precarious position, since the Son understood the vulnerable position as
being like a trusting child in the hands of a powerful and loving parent,
there was no danger at all. Because the Greeks and Satan lack this trust in
a powerful and loving God (because they dis-trust), they believe they must
seek power for themselves.
The position in which we nd ourselves today in our Greek-Christian
world is essentially this same Greek posture of seeking power, though in
different ways. We have achieved, and freely use, extraordinary techno-
logical power that seemingly provides for our every need with never a
nod to higher power, since we are the source of all the power we need.
Because we trust in ourselves, through technology, we have urged ourselves
to dis-trust in any god (other than technology). We have, to borrow Fishs
understanding, enrolled ourselves in a tradition, but, as Milton understood
the situation, it is Satans, not the Sons, tradition. Indeed, the astonishing
dominion we have achieved over our world through our own substantial
power is rather like what Miltons Satan had aspired to in Paradise Lost;
this becomes especially clear when we consider Satans next temptation: the
banquet.
Before conjuring upthe banquet, Sataninitiates the temptationby asking
the Son a crucial question: Hast thou not right to all Created things?
(2.324). In a way this temptation anticipates and eclipses the forthcoming
offers of Parthia, Rome, Athens, and Davids glorious Throne, for while
the banquet is certainly inconsiderable in comparison to these kingdoms,
what is offered is the prospect of dominion over all Created things. While
in the same breath Satan quickly diminishes the signicance of the offer
by narrowing Creation to the meat of creatures (Owe not all Creatures by
just right to thee / Duty and Service, nor to stay till bid, / But tender all thir
power? [2.32527]), the signicance of the temptation has not escaped the
Son. In offering the Son dominion over all of Creation, beginning with the
creatures, Satan is echoing the God-given right of human dominion put
forth in Genesis, that human beings have dominion over the sh of the
sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth
(Genesis 1:26, thoughechoedinGenesis 1:28). This temptationof dominion
differs from the enticement to turn stones into bread in that Satan now
approaches the Son as manifestly human (and therefore unlikely to exercise
miraculous power), who as a human being has the right to dominion over
all the Earth as given by God in Genesis.
94 Part II: The underlying importance of place
The Sons response to the temptation of dominion is at once an acknowl-
edgment of the human right of dominion over the Earth and a human
refusal to exercise that right, And who withholds my powr that right to
use? (2.380). It is not Satan or God who withholds the power of dominion,
but rather the manifestly human Son. Although the Son quickly adds that
he has more than human power (I can at will, doubt not, as soon as thou,
/ Command a Table in this Wilderness [2. 38384]), it is rst as a human
being that he rejects the banquet. Miltons Son is effecting a reversal of
Judaic thought, though not by denying the God-given right human beings
have over the Earth, but rather by simply refusing to exercise that right of
dominion when it clearly is in opposition to Gods plan. As the pronounce-
ment of human dominion is here mouthed not by God, as in Genesis, but
surprisingly by Satan (Saidst thou [Satan] not that to all things I [the Son]
had right? [2.379]), the Son naturally nds the gift suspect. What Milton
has done is to deconstruct the idea of human dominion over the Earth by
suggesting that, as this gift may come from either Satan or God, the only
safe course of action is that taken by the Son in the epic, not to act on
this right of dominion unless it clearly is in keeping with Gods design
thereby returning the gift of dominion to God. While this does deconstruct
Genesis 1:26 and 1:28 by shifting dominion from human beings to God,
it equally claries the Genesis transaction, for while the power-less people
of a power-ful God have been given dominion, all human actions in this
domain must be in keeping with their Gods will. This deconstruction by
Milton does a great deal to clarify the dominion pact in Genesis which
environmentalists have found so troubling.
When Satan continues his temptations in Book 2 by suggesting that
the Son Get Riches rst, get Wealth, and Treasure heap (2.427), the Son
at rst responds by offering a number examples where riches were not a
necessary prerequisite for highest deeds (2.438), so that he May also
in this poverty as soon / Accomplish what they did, perhaps and more
(2.4512). Then, towards the end of this speech, a remarkable new idea
occurs to Miltons Son: Besides to give a Kingdom hath been thought /
Greater and nobler done, and to lay down / Far more magnanimous, then to
assume (2.48183). While the Son had rst just rejected getting wealth as a
way to achieve his mission, here he dramatically reversed the idea of getting
completely, substituting instead giving. The kingdomis not a kingdomthat
the Son will get; rather it is a kingdom that he will give. This idea is so
astonishing that Satan stood / A while as mute confounded what to say, /
What to reply, confuted and convinct / Of his weak arguing and fallacious
drift (3.14).
Rejecting the placeless ancient doctrines 95
Had Satan comprehended what the Son had realized here, he might
have saved himself the trouble of tempting him with the kingdoms of
Parthia, Rome, and Athens. Because the Sons deconstruction is so radical,
what is arguably a cultural and political revolution bent on unseating the
Greco-Roman-Judaic world powers assumes the appearance of not being
political or cultural at all, as the kingdom sought is not a kingdom here
at all, but a kingdom not here that the Son will give. Not surprisingly,
this idea confounds Satan. But, as Barbara Lewalski succinctly reminds us,
in De Doctrina Milton denes Christs kingdom as existing in two stages,
the Kingdom of Grace (the invisible church), which is at hand, and the
Kingdomof Glory (the millennial kingdom), which is to come.
18
The Son
will give both kingdoms, though the rst, the Kingdom of Grace, will have
a remarkable regenerative effect in the here and now. A profound political
and cultural change will be effected to begin to regain Paradise.
When Satan proceeds to urge the Son to take a kingdom here, Parthia, in
order to fulll his mission, Satan misses the point: that the Son is beginning
to formulate a way to act upon his earlier inclination that it is more
heavenly, rst / By winning words to conquer willing hearts, / And make
perswasion do the work of fear (1.22123). While it is true that military
power of Parthia might not only make the Sonpossessdof Davids Throne
(3.357), but also free Israel from the threat of such enclosing enemies /
Roman and Parthian (3.36162), the Son has already understood that this
is just the sort of violent action that can rob and spoil, burn, slaughter, and
enslave / Peaceable Nations (3.7576). Just before the idea of the counter-
move of giving a kingdom occurred to the Son, he understood that to
guide Nations in the way of truth / By saving Doctrine, and from errour
lead / To know, and knowing worship God aright, / Is yet more Kingly
(2.47376).
Though this might seem little more than foolishness to power-mongers
like Satan, it is worth noting how political and cultural change can be and
has been achieved through this paradigm of saving Doctrine alone. To
certain thinkers, such Tolstoy, the thinking of Jesus on this point suggested
a peaceful alternative to bring Russian serfs enslaved in their own homeland
out of the margins of the political power structure that prevailed over them.
Though this nineteenth-century effort largely failed, the twentieth century
saw, with Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., a more successful implication
of the idea. Neither Gandhi nor King sought forcibly to take a kingdom,
but rather both instilled the belief that a new kingdom was at hand, if
only those marginalized would believe. By bringing those individuals and
values marginalized by a dominant culture out of the no-thingness of their
96 Part II: The underlying importance of place
existence (in postmodern political parlance, to make the subaltern or sub-
proletariat visible as a Self as opposed to being relegated into an Otherness
intended to consolidate the prevailing Self ), Gandhi and King led these
non-Self Selves into a political and cultural Selfhood. This was not done,
qua Satan, through violence, but by raising these individuals to the level
of signiers, letting them be heard. In this sense, the rather puzzling
admiration the Son feels for Socrates in Paradise Regained (Poor Socrates,
[who next more memorable?] / By what he taught and sufferd for so doing, /
For truths sake suffering death unjust, lives now/ Equal in fame to proudest
Conquerours [3.9699]), has, as the context here indicates, little to do
with the upcoming temptations of Greek learning, but everything to do
with how Socrates effected change non-violently.
19
Put simply, Gandhi and
King, like Socrates in the Apology or the Son in Paradise Regained, initiated a
non-movement movement by giving a kingdomnot yet here as they merely
took a stand.
The temptation of Greek learning is arguably the most fascinating in
the epic, not only because it raised the question of Classical learning (as
Swanson and Mulryan succinctly ask it, why did Milton, who had a life-
long devotion to learning, and Greco-Roman learning in particular, so
contemptuously reject, in the person of the Son, Satans temptation to
learning?
20
), but also because this question so dramatically effected the
form of the epic. While, as Luther and Heidegger observed, Scholasticism
may have ofciated over the marriage of Classical and Christian thinking
through medieval theologys reception of Aristotle, it is also the case that
Milton and a generation of poets both before and after him were respon-
sible for immortalizing the occasion in verse.
21
To Milton, arguably the
greatest of these poets, this was achieved through an almost systematic re-
visiting and re-celebration of one classical form after another in which the
Christian and the Classical were seamlessly interwoven into one glorious
tapestry: sort of the literary counterpart to the theologia gloriae a poetry of
glory.
As he matured,
22
a Christian poetry of glory, perhaps because it might
have implied a theology of glory, seems to have become questionable to
Milton. However, as Roy Flannagan noted, such a necessary rejection of
pagan philosophy and art must have been hard for Milton to endorse. It
also may be difcult for later readers to reject the wisdom of Athens or
Rome.
23
But this is more than just a difculty, it is what I have noted as
the most dramatic temptation both within and without the text of Paradise
Regained. As Milton understood the mission of regaining Paradise, then,
he needed to destabilize the very mindset he startlingly consolidated in the
Rejecting the placeless ancient doctrines 97
poetry that hadbeenhis lifes work. Toachieve this end, Miltondeconstructs
in form the very poetry of glory that he helped to put together in his ear-
lier work by privileging in Paradise Regained the quiet, humble forms of
Hebrewexpression, such as the Book of Job (as Barbara Lewalski and others
have noted
24
), over the glorious Greco-Roman inuence that Milton sys-
tematically celebrated in his youth. For example, the rst book of Paradise
Regained, as Martz observed, contains no classical allusions whatsoever,
except near the close of the book, where the pagan oracles are mentioned
only in order to announce their demise, though the rm and quiet man-
ner of lines in this book, dignied, yet modest, is representative of the
ground-style of the whole poems action.
25
Though some might see this
as a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water, Milton seems to
have felt, like his Son, that he needed to question the temptation of his
own immense (in Miltons case poetic) power.
This is not to say that Milton felt that admitting Greek forms into our
tradition, pastoral poetry being an excellent example, is equivalent to an
open invitation to let the Devil into our world. Miltons mission to confuse
we readers merely brings us to question the wholesale acceptance of the
fusion of ancient traditions. In practice, Miltons gesture of questioning
what was dearest to himin the Greek tradition (and what is perhaps equally
dear to those who feel a special fondness for Miltons poetry of glory)
might make us all pause to consider just what we ourselves should retain
of our Western tradition. Still, in one of historys great ironies, many of
Milton critics would nd Paradise Regained a minor epic in more than
genre, preferring instead the poetry of glory of Paradise Lost. Even more
remarkable, poets such as William Blake would nd in Paradise Lost Satan
and the mindset he represented so glorious that he took center stage in their
reading of the epic. To Blake, and the generations of poets who followed
him, the fact that Milton had humbly regained in Paradise Regained an
uncorrupted Christianity, which he had so gloriously lost in Paradise Lost,
was, well, lost.
A biblical mandate for Miltons rejection of Greek learning can, perhaps
not surprisingly, be found in the same passages that motivated both Luthers
and Heideggers deconstruction: in the words of Swanson and Mulryan,
The rationale for this polemic [against Greco-Roman philosophy] is sup-
plied by the programmatic role of 1 Corinthians, chapters III, as a source
of basic premises for Miltons poem [Paradise Regained].
26
In the closing
lines of Paradise Lost this direction had already been intimated by Adam
as he echoed 1 Corinthians: by small / Accomplishments great things,
by things deemed weak / Subverting worldly strong, and worldly wise /
98 Part II: The underlying importance of place
By simply meek (12.56669). As Dayton Haskin has recently noted, the
timing of Miltons message, that the idea that indiscriminate acceptance of
Greek learning should be questioned, was particularly opportune:
Timely as the Epistles to the Galatians and Romans had been in the sixteenth
century for effecting a disengagement frommerit-mongering, the First Epistle to
the Corinthians, read in light of Galatians and Romans, seemed a biblical message
newly addressed to the learned in the Renaissance . . . The Pauline condemnation
of the wisdom of the world, understood now as a function of the doctrine of
justication by faith alone, was the principal source for the temptation of classical
learning in Paradise Regained.
27
In turning his attention to Greek learning, Milton would push the Refor-
mation further as he himself re-formed the work of his life through Paradise
Regained. This obviously necessitated a radical reconsideration of much of
what Milton had spent a life believing: as Swanson and Mulryan express
it: The attitude towards learning that Milton conveys through the Sons
responses in Paradise Regained is surprisingly at odds with every thing else
Milton had previously written on the subject.
28
While Miltons deconstruction certainly does in a general way anticipate
contemporary environmentalists who urge us to reconsider our wholesale
acceptance of the Greco-Roman tradition, Miltons deconstruction addi-
tionally takes the form of a direct assault staged on Renaissance Science
itself. In Lewalskis words, in Paradise Regained Milton assumes a radi-
cal distinction between knowledge (scientia), which derives from the study
of things of this world, and wisdom (sapientia), which comes only from
above.
29
The rationale for this privileging of biblical wisdom over science
is voiced by the Son in the epic:
he who receives
Light from above, from the fountain of light,
No other doctrine needs, though granted true;
But these are false, or little else but dreams,
Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing rm
(4.28892)
With these lines the Son rather scandalizes the general Greek theory
of knowledge, indeed, epistemology as a theory (logos) of what we are
standing (stamis) upon (epi), is based on the notion that there is something
solid underneath our knowledge, but much of twentieth-century thought
(Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Derrida) has tacitly agreedwithMiltons Sonthat
this knowledge is really built on nothing rm (4.292). In essence, the Son
has peeked under the grand Greek knowledge edice to nd not a rock-solid
Rejecting the placeless ancient doctrines 99
foundation, but little else but dreams, / Conjectures, fancies (4.29192),
prompting a complete reversal as he turns around to look upward towards
his God. Though this might seema questionable movement to our modern
sensibilities, it should be remembered that in the case of Science, as so
convincingly argued in the twentieth century by Thomas Kuhn, the rock-
solid truth Science allegedly stands upon, as a disciplinary matrix, is
perhaps more akin to faith than anything else.
30
It has been noted by Haskin that having Jesus voice Pauls counter to
Greek learning from 1 Corinthians does present something of a difculty:
According to the author of the Acts of the Apostles, the decisive moment
when an inchoate Christianity met with Greek culture is to be found in the
experience of Paul. Nonetheless Haskin argues that Milton reprojected
the encounter between the classical and biblical back into the experience
of Jesus. This enabled him to explore [in Paradise Regained] what might
be the legitimate and fruitful accommodation of the scriptural data to
classical culture and also, as the temptation of learning indicates, to in-
sist upon the limits within which the marriage [of the Gospel and Classic
culture] was to be made.
31
Haskin gives two responses to this difculty:
the rst approach is simply that Milton employed a characteristic imag-
inative technique that he learned early from his own Bible-reading . . . It
involves placing a familiar bit of material into an earlier content in or-
der to bring to light its wider signicance.
32
In terms of the argument
we have been advancing, by putting Jesus in opposition to aspects of the
ancient world perhaps unknown to him, Milton was able to extend our
glimpse into how the Christian Self was created to a realm outside of
the historical Jesus likely experience the Son of Paradise Regained be-
comes something of a paradigmatic early Christian Self. The fact that
Milton did undertake the curious project of projecting Pauls thinking re-
garding the Greco-Roman approach back to Jesus does suggests just what
importance the poet gave to undoing Christianitys fusion with the ancient
traditions.
33
Alternatively, Haskin suggests that Milton, when he introduced the
temptations of Athens, made the human Jesus aware of the broader world,
including the cultivated world, thereby giving the poet the opportunity
to respond to the greatest pagan accomplishments of the ancient world.
34
In Paradise Regained the Son responds not just to learning but to other an-
cient Greek accomplishments, both empirical and ideological. This read-
ing is certainly supported by the epic. Though the Son makes reference to
Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics a number of times (4.24553, 4.27380, and
4.29399), the condemnation of the Stoics gets an extended treatment:
100 Part II: The underlying importance of place
The Stoic last in Philosophic pride,
By him calld vertue; and his vertuous man,
Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing
Equal to God, oft shames not to prefer,
As fearing God nor man, contemning all
Wealth, pleasure, pain or torment, death and life,
Which when he lists, he leaves, or boasts he can,
For all his tedious talk is but vain boast,
Or subtle shifts conviction to evade.
Alas what can they teach, and not mislead;
Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,
(4.30010)
In short, the Stoics in themselves [alone] seek vertue, and to themselves /
All glory arrogate, to God give none (4.315). One could say that the Stoics
were in a state of dis-grace, as they neither sought nor wanted a gods grace,
believing instead that they were sufcient in themselves.
In a way, though this indictment is specically of the Stoics, it could
equally be applied to Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle. In Platos thinking, the
Good does not, in any way, through an act of grace on its part, allowhuman
beings to attain its metaphysical realm. Socrates is not given the realmof the
Good, he takes it, thereby believing that he has become, in the Sons words,
Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing / Equal to God (4.30203).
To the philosopher-theologians who believed they could through their
own (largely intellectual) acts take Heaven as Socrates took the realm of
the Good, Miltons Son reveals that they are in as much a state of dis-grace
as the Stoics. As William Hunter noted,
The rejection of pagan wisdom and especially of the self-sufciency which was the
Stoic goal in favor of Christian trust and obedience thus marks the events of this
entire section of the poem [Book 4 of Paradise Regained], molding the wisdom-
night terrors-pinnacle episodes as three different manifestations of the same faith
in God, the same decision that Jesus not take matters into his own hands so as to
resolve them. Satan had trusted in himself and his own powers; so had Adam and
Eve, and they were all disobedient.
35
This sort of Greek cultural bent towards self-sufcient strength, while
hardly the sort of esoteric Greek learning that we might take Milton to
refer to in Paradise Regained, is rather just the sort of general Greek incli-
nation that he had the Son rst encounter, then count. As Hunter sums up
the temptations of Book 4: Rejection of these temptations of the devil,
then . . . is a rejection of self-sufciency, of pride. This is the paradise lost
by Adam which Jesus regains (IV, 608).
36
Rejecting the placeless ancient doctrines 101
The Sons own paradoxical statement regarding just what he does or does
not know of Greek learning (Think not but that I know these things, or
think / I know them not [4.28687]), loses a good bit of interest when
we understand that to him the Greek culture, like Satan, was motivated
by a general propensity for self-sufciency, strength, glory, empire and
dominion, the elevated, the exceptional, reason, and wealth, which the
Son will overturn into a reliance on Gods grace, weakness, humiliation,
returning dominion to God, the lowly, the ordinary, faith, and poverty.
It is not so much any particular Greek doctrine of learning that Miltons
Son rejects, it is rather the prevailing Greek mindset that has spawned not
only these one-sided values but the Greek philosophic traditions as well.
By placing the Sons decisive encounter with this Greek mindset during the
wilderness temptation, Milton makes a provocative case for the origin of the
Sermon on the Mounts values (weakness, humiliation, poverty, and so on)
preached shortly after the temptation. As these Christian values are by the
way of the Sons deconstruction, the anti-values of the Greeks, one could
say that the Sons response to Satan takes the form, It is not a question of
what I know of Greek learning, I know enough to grasp that the Greeks
have turned the world upside down, and I now understand my missions as
being to right the world.
While Miltons deconstruction has profound environmental signicance
as it places Christianity in the company of such Earth-friendly approaches
as Native American spiritualism and the pagan practices of prehistory,
Miltons Christianity has the added characteristic of actually being tailor-
made (con-structed), from the very moment the Son rst lay down the
rudiments / Of his great warfare (1.15558) in the desert, to counter the
Greco-Roman mindset. In this sense, the startling vision Milton offers us
of Christianity is not that of a disease infecting the Earth, but rather of a
very specic, well-crafted cure.
7
The Old Testaments call to place: Jobs wisdom
in Miltons poetry
These are my best days, when I shake with fear.
John Donne
1
From the discussion of the previous section it should not be inferred that
the wisdomchampioned in 1 Corinthians is entirely a NewTestament inno-
vation. Indeed, the passage in 1 Corinthians on which both Heidegger and
Luther would base their deconstructions (1:19: I will destroy the wisdom
of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent)
is a near faithful rendering of Isaiah 29:14. Paul quotes from Isaiah exactly
as it would have appeared in the Greek translation of the Hebrew available
to him, the Septuagint, with one minor exception: the second verb in Pauls
version, atheteso (in the Authorized Version, I . . . will bring to nothing),
is a change from the Septuagints krupso, which is an accurate translation of
the Hebrew satar, to conceal. As atheteso carries the meaning of rejecting
or disregarding so as to nullify or make void, Paul is taking Isaiahs claim
that the wisdom of the wise will be concealed and strengthening it to sug-
gest that, in light of the revelation of the cross, the wisdom of the Greeks
is, through this radical deconstruction, simply undone.
Though 1 Corinthians (and its roots in the Old Testament) certainly
had much to do with the rejection of Greek learning in Paradise Regained,
it is also the case that the Book of Job not only inuenced the form of
Miltons brief epic (as Barbara Lewalski has well argued), but as it preg-
ured 1 Corinthians rejection of certain wisdom, Job also reveals a great
deal of the foundation for Miltons position regarding learning. This is
not just to say, as Herman Rapaport has observed, that Milton simply
uses the New Testament in order to prop up the Old Testaments fallen
texts (which, of course, Milton is doing) but also that the poet radically
transforms [scholastic] theological tradition . . . by taking a very Hebraic
position in regard to Western Metaphysics.
2
This Hebraic position be-
comes especially clear when, as Lewalski suggests, we consider that the
102
The Old Testaments call to place 103
aforementioned crucial distinction between knowledge (scientia) . . . and
wisdom (sapientia) . . . [in Paradise Regained] was, interestingly enough,
often developed through allusions to and commentary upon Job xxviii.
3
Most of this commentary particularly focused on Job 28:28: And unto
man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that [is] wisdom; and to depart
from evil [is] understanding. The interpretation of Job 28:28, both before
and after Milton, provides fascinating insight into how the confusion be-
tween Greek philosophical thinking and Judeo-Christian beliefs found a
strange resolution in medieval theology. As Milton is clearly challenging
this sense of resolution (as he brings con-fusion), considering how the wis-
dom (sapientia) of Job stands in conict with Greek learning will show that
Milton very much found in the Old Testament a wisdom which (along
with the New Testament wisdom of 1 Corinthians) needed to be reclaimed
from the GreekRoman tradition co-opting it.
Barbara Lewalskis insightful and thorough connecting of the commen-
tary on Job 28:28 and Paradise Regained provides an excellent position from
which to start.
4
Lewalski begins by assuming a radical distinction be-
tween scientia, which derives from the study of things of the world, and
sapientia, which comes only fromabove (p. 291). As noted earlier, this dis-
tinction would certainly seem to be supported in Paradise Regained, where
the Son explains that the Light from above (presumably sapientia) is en-
tirely sufcient and what scientia provides is either false or insupportable:
he who receives
Light from above, from the fountain of light,
No other doctrine needs, though granted true;
But these are false, or little else but dreams,
Conjectures, fancies, built on nothing rm
(4.28892)
To understand this further, Lewalski considers a number of commentaries
on Job 28:28, starting with Augustine, who sets the precedent for the direct
opposition of sapientia and scientia (p. 292).
When Augustine translated Job 28:28 from the Septuagint (iocu n
tcottic to:iv ocgic :c ot ttytoci tc scscv to:iv ttio:nun
5
)
into Latin (Ecce pietas est sapientia; abstinere autem a malis est scientia
6
),
he interprets sophia as sapientia and episteme as scientia, thereby setting
sapientia and scientia into opposition. As Lewalski states the situation, in so
translating, the AugustinianChristiantradition was set upby Augustine to
counter the Stoic idea of wisdom(sapientia), which was knowledge of both
human and divine things (2994) in Latin the Stoic motto Sapientia
104 Part II: The underlying importance of place
est rerum humanarum divinarumque scientia.
7
This is certainly the case,
as the following quotation by Augustine (cited as it appears in Lewalski)
reveals:
Having examined a great number of passages from the Holy Scriptures, I nd it
written in the Book of Job, that holy man being the speaker, Behold, piety, that is
wisdom; but to depart fromevil is knowledge [Job 28:28]. In thus distinguishing, it
must be understood that wisdom belongs to contemplation, knowledge to action.
For in this place he meant by piety the worship of God, which in Greek is called
theosebeia. For the sentence in the Greek MSS has that word. And what is there in
eternal things more excellent than God, of whom the nature is unchangeable? And
what is the worship of Him except the love of Him, by which we now desire to see
Him, and we believe and hope that we shall see Him; and in proportion as we make
progress, see nowthrough a glass in an enigma, but then in clearness? . . . Discourse
about these and the like subjects seems to me to be the discourse itself of wisdom.
But to depart from evil, which Job says is knowledge, is without doubt of temporal
things . . . And therefore, whatsoever we do prudently, boldly, temperately, and
justly, belongs to that knowledge or discipline wherewith our action is conversant
in avoiding evil and desiring good . . . When a discourse then relates to these things,
I hold it to be a discourse relating to knowledge, and to be distinguished from a
discourse belonging to wisdom, to which those things belong, which neither have
been, nor shall be, but are; and on account of that eternity in which they are, are
said to have been, and to be, and to be about to be, without any changeableness
of times.
8
As his last sentence suggests, wisdom (sapientia) to Augustine is also a
sort of knowledge, but it is the hope for knowledge of the eternal (of
God), where everyday knowledge (scientia) is without doubt of temporal
things.
Though this understanding of wisdom certainly smacks of Platonism,
Lewalski claries the relation between the Augustinian tradition and Pla-
tonismas she quotes fromCambridge Platonist Nathanael Culverel, [who]
for all his devotion to the classics (p. 296) rebukes Classical learning as
grossly inferior to Christian wisdom:
You may see Socrates in the twilight, and lamenting his obscure and benighted
condition, and telling you that his lamp will shew him nothing but his own
darkness. You may see Plato sitting down by the Waters with Lethe, and weeping
because he could not remember his foormer notions. You may hear Aristotle
bewailing himself . . . that his abrasa tabula has so few, and such imperfections
upon it.
The Candle of Socrates, and the Candle of Plato, the Lamp of Epictetus, they all
did shine before men, and shine more then some that might be calld Christians.
Nature makes a very ne show, and a goodly glittering in the eye of the world,
The Old Testaments call to place 105
but this Candle cannot appear in the presence of the Sun; all the paintings and
varnishings of Nature, they please and enamour the eyes of men, but they melt
away at the presence of God.
9
Though it is clear that Culverel is certainly rebuking Classical learning in
this passage (as did Milton in Paradise Regained), it is equally clear that
Culverel, like Augustine, is so thoroughly rooted in the tradition of Greek
learning that even his rebuke is framed, with shocking precision, in Platonic
terms here in Culverel we have the structure of the Sun and Cave analogies
from The Republic reproduced with surprising exactitude.
In Book 5 of The Republic, understanding (the same episteme, which
Augustine translated from the Septuagint MSS of Job 28:28 as scientia) is (as
inAugustines viewof scientia) related without doubt to temporal things
(Augustines words
10
), in the same way that the faculty of the mind which
has true knowledge of things (nous), is related to the xed and immutable
realm. This analogy of episteme/scientia being related to the Earthly realmas
nous is to the eternal realmis exactly as Augustine interpreted Job 28:28, with
the only difference being that Jobs sapientia stands in the place of Platos
nous. Roughly put, both in Platos Republic and Augustines understanding
of Job 28:28, we know (episteme/scientia) things of this world in the same
way that we know (sapientia/nous) things in the other world. In Culverel,
even Platos ocularism is reproduced, with the Candle and Lamp of the
Greek philosophers making a goodly glittering in the eye of the world,
in the same way that Platos prisoners lived in a realm illuminated by a
false light, but in Culverel the true light, which is still described as the
presence of a Sun, is found to be the presence of [the Christian] God.
If there is any truth that revolutions do turn on their children, then in
Culverel we have the philosophic revolution initiated by Socrates and Plato
being turned on its creators with unabashed zeal, and yet the revolution
itself is little affected as the rebuke of Greek learning is done through the
methodical application of Greek learning. In Culverel, Greek learning is
deposed by a Christianity which has assimilated Greek learning.
Similarly, in setting up sapientia and scientia in opposition, Augustine
goes a long way towards using Greek learning, with respect to human
understanding, to construct the dualistic Christian view of scholasticism
which I have been referencing throughout this work: in Augustine, true
wisdom is of Gods xed and immutable (and superior) realm, which is
separate and apart from the here and now. As Lewalski states it: In the
Augustine Christian tradition the wisdom appropriate to the contempla-
tive life is knowledge of God . . . Though the Scholastics modied the
106 Part II: The underlying importance of place
Augustinian position by attributing the name of wisdom to metaphysics
and natural theology (pp. 29193), thereby clearly setting their sights on
that Other realm. The danger in this understanding is, of course, that
in xing ones gaze on that Other, meta-physical realm, one risks having
turned away from our Earth and its changing realm. This marginalizing of
the knowledge associated with what becomes our inferior realm becomes
clear in a gloss by Filelfo (quoted by Lewalski) on Job 28:28: Therefore that
which is of wisdomis that by which unchangeable things are contemplated.
The inferior realm of knowledge is versed in temporal and mutable things
[emphasis added].
11
The deeper danger of Augustines position becomes clear in the imagery
of the above passage from Culverel, where we see the dark underside of
the desire to privilege the eternal meta-physical realm, as all the paintings
and varnishing of Nature, they please and enamour the eyes of men, but
they melt away at the presence of God.
12
No longer mere ocularism as
in Plato, the presence of God, more than just brilliant, is portrayed as
a scorching, destructive heat which melts away the works of Nature. This
is a rather remarkable way to describe the effect of the presence of the
Christian God, who, after creating each aspect of our imperfect realm,
repeatedly saw that it was good (Genesis 1:431). Such imagery depicts
the here and nowof Earths mutable realmas not only marginal but like the
light in Platos cave, so eclipsed by the supernatural light that this Candle
cannot appear in the presence of the Sun.
13
Expressed in post-structural
terms, that which cannot appear in the presence of the Sun [God], is utter
absence a completely marginalized no-thing.
It is worth considering in light of this discussion the thoughts of the
young Heidegger, who held that, though he had remarkable insights into
Christianity, Augustines understanding was nonetheless compromised (as
we have noticed in his gloss on Job 28:28) by the inuence of Greek learning.
As Van Buren states it:
[in his] 1921 lecture course Augustine and Neo-Platonism, Heidegger showed
how Augustine compromised his own understanding of the relational sense of
primal Christianity by adopting the Greek notion of the theoria . . . Augustine
writes that the perfectly blessed person possesses that quality [of absence of fear]
by the tranquillity of the soul. . . . Here in Augustines speculative anticipa-
tions of the afterlife, the anxious, uncertain, situationally oriented, and wakeful
faith in the Parousia of the hidden unseen God (the word that is listened for) is
Hellenized, ocularized, theorized, and delivered down to the remnant of a qui-
etistic, ocular-aesthetic contemplation and enjoyment of the Paradise of God as
The Old Testaments call to place 107
summon bonum. . . . It is precisely the quietistic, ocular-aesthetic relational sense
of Greek and medieval metaphysics that Luther characterizes as gloriatio, glory.
(Van Burens parenthetical comments)
14
The difculty to which Augustine succumbs is that, as he understands
sapientia to be a type of knowledge of the metaphysical realm (in the
same way, qua Plato, that scientia is a knowledge of our Earthy realm), he
believes that he is, in some sense, in a position to attain a wisdom which
leads to a tranquillity of the soul.
But is this the wisdom of Job? Though it is clear that what Augustine
understood as Jobs wisdom (sapientia) has far more in common with
Platos nous, just what was Jobs wisdom? Job 28:28 is quite clear on
this point, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that [is] wisdom. More signi-
cant than Augustines translation of sapientia for sophia is his use of pietas
for theosebeia: the service or fear of God.
15
Though Augustine, interest-
ingly, draws attention to theosebeia (For in this place he meant by piety
the worship of God, which in Greek is called theosebeia. For the sentence
in the Greek MSS has that word), the context in which this occurs is
within Augustines understanding that wisdom belongs to contemplation,
knowledge to action.
16
Because Augustine does approach Job 28:28 from
the perspective of Greek learning which holds, like Plato, that wisdom be-
longs to contemplation, Augustine seems to interpret theosebeia as simply
a pious contemplation of God. Though theosebeia does carry the meaning
of the service of God, it is difcult to understand how Augustine comes
to interpret sapientia which is the fear of God (theosebeia), as a tranquil
contemplation of God. Somehowin Augustine, quiet contemplation seems
to have replaced the fear Jobs wisdom.
To understand sapientia as the fear of God (theosebeia), we can enlist
the help of an unlikely interpreter of scripture: Jacques Derrida. With the
1992 appearance of Donner la mort, which contained an interpretation of
Kierkegaards Fear and Trembling (itself an interpretation of the Old Tes-
tament story of Abraham and Isaac), Derrida, in the words of Kierkegaard
scholar John Caputo, surprisingly revealed himself to be one more child
of Abraham, defending the claims of singularity and of the incommensura-
bility of the individual against the universal.
17
In Donner la mort Derrida
focuses on what just Abraham felt, the mysterium tremendum, which, as
Caputo explains, is a secret that makes us shudder. Tremendum means
what is to be feared, something fearful that is to come, something that I
cannot see or foresee. I know that there is something that I do not know
108 Part II: The underlying importance of place
and that causes me to tremble.
18
This idea of fear and trembling in the
face of the unknown is persistent throughout both Testaments, occurring
not only in 1 Corinthians
19
but also when Paul writes to the Philippians
to tell them that they should work out their own salvation with fear and
trembling (Philippians 2:12). To understand this passage in Philippians,
Derrida poses a question (here succinctly expressed by Caputo):
But Why fear and trembling? . . . Minimally, Paul may be understood to say that we
can do nothing without Gods help. Taken more rigorously and this is Derridas
reading Paul means that God does not have to give reasons (rationem reddere);
God can give or take away salvation without giving an explanation. We are in
the hands of God and we do not know what Gods wants, what is Gods pleasure,
what is a secret (Donner la mort 5960) shrouded in silence. We do not see (voir)
or know (savoir) what God wants, otherwise god would not be God, i.e., Wholly
Other (Donner la mort 59). God does not share his reasons with us; we cannot
have a conversation with God; we cannot establish the homogeneity with God
that having a conversation, and so a common language, would imply. The word
of God is the word of the Wholly Other, and the word of the Wholly Other is
wholly other than a word, otherwise than that what we mean by a word. His word
reduces us to silence, is received in silence, cannot be understood, and cannot be
repeated to anyone else.
20
Compare this fear and trembling (which echoes the fear and trembling
of Abraham at the prospect of sacricing Isaac) in the face of the unknown
(and unknowable) to Van Burens description of Augustines position as a
Hellenized, ocularized, theorized . . . [tranquil] contemplation and enjoy-
ment of the Paradise of God as summon bonum.
21
A transformation takes place in Augustine in which the wisdom of Job,
as a fear and trembling of the unknown, becomes the wisdom of Plato
which is the quiet, tranquil contemplation (and knowing) of the Good
(which becomes in Augustine God, then in Scholastic thought, as Lewalski
noted, metaphysics and natural theology [pp. 29193]). Indeed, in stark
contrast to Derridas interpretation of Judaic wisdom which does not see
(voir) or know (savoir) what God wants,
22
the very etymology of Platos
word eide is to see, and in the past tense (oida, I have seen), also
becomes the present tense I know
23
to Plato, to have seen is to know.
Platos wisdom is that in quiet contemplation he sees (and hence knows)
the realm of the Good, while Jobs wisdom is that in fear and trembling he
neither sees nor knows God.
In describing Adam and Eve after the Fall, Luther says, Adam and
Eve . . . are so lled with fear and trembling that when they hear a breath
or a wind, they immediately think that God is approaching to punish
The Old Testaments call to place 109
them . . . what a grave downfall, to plunge from the utmost security and
lack of care . . . into such horrible trembling.
24
Similarly in Paradise Lost,
in Adams loud lament after the Fall, we nd that fear / Comes thundring
back with dreadful revolution / On my defensless head (10.81315), as his
conscience represented / All things with double terror (10.84950). As
Adams lament suggests, the postlapsarian state for human beings is one of
fear and trembling: O Conscience, into what Abyss of fears / And horrors
hast thou drivn me; out of which / I nd no way, from deep to deeper
plungd! (10.84244).
In a coincidence of insight with Derrida, in his Poetics of the Holy Michael
Lieb explored in considerable depth both the role of the Wholly Other
and mysterium tremendum in Miltons work. (Although both the terms
Wholly Other and mysterium tremendum derive from Augustine, they
were perhaps made most famous by theologian Rudolph Otto, who serves
as an important touchstone for Lieb.) Lieb focuses, both in Poetics of the
Holy and his recent reading of Samson Agonistes, on the crucial descriptive
distinction between a notion of deity as rational and more primitive feelings
of dread in the face of the holy, the latter which Lieb repeatedly attributes
to Milton. Accordingly, Lieb rejects Mary Ann Radzinowicszs belief that
Samson Agonistes contains a rational conception of God, arguing instead
that
no longer is it possible to look upon the God of Miltons drama as the culmination
of a movement or progressive revelation toward a more rational conception of
the nature of deity. Any attempt to suggest that Miltons god may be understood
through . . . the enlightened categories of spirit, reason purpose, and goodwill is
undermined by what actually transpires. The theology of dread that distinguishes
this drama is one in which deity is portrayed in its most archaic and terrifying
form.
25
As Lieb compellingly makes clear time and again, the Deity in most of
Miltons poetry is one which invokes dread, not quiet contemplation.
26
To understand further the implications of how fear and trembling in
Milton, as the human postlapsarian state, is in opposition to the quiet con-
templation of Plato and Augustine, it will be helpful to enlist again John S.
Tanner and his exquisite comparison between Milton and Kierkegaard.
27
Tanner begins from much the same position I have been developing, that
for Milton, the god of the philosophers is not the God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob. Furthermore, Kierkegaard is also profoundly subversive of
this [the philosophers] false god. As theology his work seeks to expose
and overturn the Greek premises upon which Christian thought has been
110 Part II: The underlying importance of place
cantilevered at least since Augustine . . . This double enterprise, destructive
of the god of philosophy and recuperative of the living God of Abraham, is
calculated to disconcert a misguided Christendom, which for centuries has
taken its intellectual bearings more from Athens than from Jerusalem.
28
These later statements could, of course, apply as equally to Milton as they
do to Kierkegaard. Though in general Tanner provides an extended con-
sideration of anxiety (Kierkegaards angst) in Paradise Lost, both before and
after the Fall, what he has to say about the building of Pandemonium will
throw light on the relationship philosophy has to fear and trembling.
In Pandemonium the devils recreate (or from the perspective of the
poem, create for the rst time) the world of Greek and Roman epics; their
debates even occur on hells equivalent of the Areopagus . . . Philosophy
and speculative theology are the highest achievements of Miltons proto-
classical Pandemonium, as they were of ancient Athens (p. 140). Tanners
assertion is certainly supported by Miltons comical description of the devils
after the construction of Pandemonium:
Others apart sat on a hill retird,
In thoughts more elevate, and reasond high
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate
Fixt Fate, Free Will, Foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argud then
Of happiness and nal misery,
Passion and Apathy, and glory and shame,
Vain wisdom all, and false Philosophie:
Yet with pleasing sorcery could charm
Pain for a while of anguish, and excite
Fallacious hope, or arm th obdured breast
With stubborn patience as with triple steel.
(2.55769)
Tanners comment on all this philosophic musing in Pandemonium is
squarely on mark: what could be further from the point than to speculate
in hell about God and truth all the while ignoring ones existential relation
to the topics of discussion? (p. 140). But that is exactly the purpose of such
musings: to distract them from thinking seriously about their concrete,
existential relationship to God . . . Such is its dread of a living God that
the demonic empties the term of life, reducing the Word to dead letters
on a page, a mere cipher for the Good rather than a being who thunders
down from Sinai and whispers across Galilee insisting that we answer his
voice with our lives. Thus the demonic drowns out God, ironically, with
The Old Testaments call to place 111
theology (p. 140). Philosophy and speculative theology in Pandemonium
are not in any sense a confronting of ones existence in relation to God, but
rather a running away from the fear and trembling that even the thought
of such a confrontation invokes.
Tanner continues his consideration of Miltons Pandemoniumby noting
that Kierkegaard alludes to the River Lethe in order to contrast Greek and
Christian views of immortality. The one posits oblivion, symbolized by the
River Lethe, at the threshold to immortality; the other imagines eternity
opening up with the total recollection of Judgment Day (p. 142). Tanner
continues that, in a striking coincidence of insight and imagery, Milton
also concludes his depiction of Pandemonium with an account of the River
Lethe. Since hell contains the rest of the classical world, it is not surprising
that its demon explorers discover the silent stream / Lathe the River of
Oblivion as well (2.58283) (p. 142). This would seem to be a bonus
to the devils since, in Miltons words, with one small drop to lose / In
sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe / All in one moment (2.60709). As
Tanner notes, To forget pain and woe, of course had been the intent of
Pandemonium from the start, but unfortunately for them, they cannot
drink from its anesthetizing stream (p. 142) though in the epic they wish
and struggle . . . to reach / The tempting stream (2.60607).
Though Heidegger would later deny the link,
29
as one Heidegger scholar
describes the philosophers famous understanding of inauthentic existence
(from which Sartres concept of inauthenticity was largely derived), it is a
motivational account of . . . [why we] . . . pull away fromauthenticity . . . It
helps to understand Heidegger here to realize that he can be read as again
secularizing Kierkegaard, in this case Kierkegaards interpretation of the
Christian doctrine of the fall . . . That Heidegger is secularizing original sin
is clear when he treats lostness in the one [becoming lost in public norms]
not as a structural tendency but as a psychological temptation.
30
Inauthentic
existence is a giving intothe temptationnot toconfront ones ownexistence.
This is precisely what the devils in Miltons Pandemonium had hoped to
do, both through the diverting activity of philosophy (as well as building
Pandemonium) and by drinking of Lethes anesthetizing stream, but, as
Tanner notes of Pandemoniums builders, However assiduously they busy
themselves with learned proofs of Gods existence, demonic metaphysicians
cannot avoid an even more anxious question of existence: namely, the issue
of their own existence before a living God (p. 141).
This is a scorching indictment of Philosophy and speculative theology
by Milton. Philosophy and speculative theology are not in any sense a
confronting of our existence (nor a feeling of the fear and trembling such
112 Part II: The underlying importance of place
a confrontation necessarily invokes) but rather an elaborate anesthetizing
diversion intent on avoiding the confrontation by looking to an-Other
realm. In looking away from our own Earthy existence in the here and now
to a not-here and eternal realm, the devils in Miltons epic, and arguably
metaphysical theologians in general, have enacted a true reversal of Judaic
thinking by doing precisely what they should not be doing. In Kierkegaard
(and arguably still in Heidegger), though we nd ourselves in a fallen state,
we continue to fall into inauthentic existence in so far as we do not confront,
in a deeply personal way from within our place on Earth, our fallen state.
Pandemonium is just such an attempt to divert attention away from the
fear and trembling that our fallen state should elicit. The wisdom of Job
28:28 is not philosophic musings diverting us fromour fallen state but quite
the opposite: it is the wisdom to confront, with fear and trembling, our
existence and God. Adams lament after the Fall (OConscience, into what
Abyss of fears / And horrors hast thou drivn me; out of which / I nd no
way, from deep to deeper plungd! [10.84244]), though painful even to
read, is just such a confrontation.
As Milton understood them, the wisdom of Job (to confront God and
our existence with fear and trembling) and the wisdom Paul teaches the
Church at Corinth (the foolish wisdom of the weakness and humiliation of
the cross) are both attempts to pull human beings back into an authentic,
Earthy existence in the here and now. Again, what modern theologian
Rudolf Bultmann said of the New Testament can as well apply to Jobs
wisdom: the New Testament asserts that the authentic life of man is not
that of the cosmos [the meta-physical realm], but runs in the course of the
incidental, the individual, in the sphere of history: that what the Greeks
regardas the appearance of reality [this Earthy sphere] is infact the authentic
sphere of life.
31
To those Christian ascetics and secular (as well as Christian)
subjectivists who argue that human beings should seek to pull free of our
place onEarth, toobtainwhat Thomas Nagel has aptly calledthe viewfrom
nowhere,
32
Milton responds in Paradise Regained by drawing attention to
two of the biblical texts which most compellingly argue for our presence
in our place on Earth.
8
The inuence of time on place: forbidding
unripe fruit
To every thing there is an appointed season.
Ecclesiastes (3:1)
1
In Paradise Regained, Paradise Lost, and the Ludlow Mask, Satan and Comus
tempt with fruit merely unripe, not forever forbidden. In Greek there is
a word which conceptually deals with this idea of a not quite ripe fruit:
kairos, the fullness or ripeness of time. While Leonard Mustazza noticed
that in Paradise Regained the concept of kairos, in Gods time, is con-
stantly operative,
2
we could equally say (as have other critics) that kairos is
constantly operative throughout many of Miltons works.
3
But more than
just operative in the works, it is only through kairos that the works I have
been citing operate at all. As I shall argue, without taking into account the
ripeness of time the central temptations in Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained,
and the Ludlow Mask cease to be temptations at all. Indeed, the tempta-
tions are also the prescribed courses of action championed by the Bible (in
Paradise Regained, the prophecy the Son reads), an angel (Raphaels words
to Adam), and proper thinking (by the Masks Lady). Whether forbidden
fruit is forbidden or to be enjoyed whether Eve, the Son, and the Lady
act to realize fully their destiny or to squander it is entirely a question of
kairos.
In the New Testament, kairos is a sort of timetable, known only to God,
by way of which his plan is unfolding: It is not for you to know the times
or the seasons [kairoi] which the Father hath put in his own power (Acts
1:7). In a sense, kairos is the cornerstone of Christian eschatology, as the
time of the Parousia remains unknown to the faithful: Paul says, But of
the times and the seasons [kairoi)], brethren, ye have no need that I write
unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh
as a thief in the night (1 Thessalonians 5:1). As Jesus himself said, Take
ye heed, watch and prey: for ye know not when the time [kairos] is. (Mark
13:33). From this it should not be assumed that the Christian should do
113
114 Part II: The underlying importance of place
nothing while Gods plan unfolds, to the contrary, the Christian needs to
have faith in ones actions: And let us not be weary in well doing: for in
due season (kairos) we shall reap, if we faint not (Galatians 6:9).
Kairos also has a cognate in the Old Testament: the Hebrew zem-awn:
the appointed time or appointed season. Understanding zem-awn will fur-
ther prepare us to understand the importance of kairos in Miltons poetry.
In one sense zem-awn is used to describe certain predictable events or-
dained by God which will take place in the future, like holidays: Let the
children of Israel also keep the Passover at his appointed season [emphasis
added] (Numbers 9:2). But in another sense, zem-awn is the unpredictable
appointed time which, unknown to human beings, is at Gods choosing:
Then I [God] will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her
increase, and the trees of the eld shall yield their fruit [emphasis added]
(Leviticus 26:4). Though this is a promise from God to be fullled in the
future, exactly when it will be satised is unknown. The appointing of
the time belongs God: The Lord shall open unto thee his good treasure,
the heaven to give the rain unto thy land in his season [emphasis added]
(Deuteronomy 28:12).
The idea that zem-awn is a time known only to God becomes especially
clear in some of the most oft-quoted lines from the Bible:
To every thing there is a[n appointed] season, and a time to every purpose under the
heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck
up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down,
and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and
a time to dance [emphasis added] (Ecclesiastes 3:14).
4
Who knows the time to weep? Perhaps everyone, but who knows when
that time will come? Granted one can set the time of an organized social
event called a Dance, but can one set the time when the desire to dance
spontaneously announces itself across the body? Or set the time to em-
brace, or the time to refrain from embracing (Ecclesiastes 3:5)? Perhaps
an almanac can set down the time to plant, but to a farmer the time is
written in the soil, the sky, the wind: if winter lingers, the farmer will wait
on the time to plant; if spring is early, the farmer will rush out to meet the
appointed planting season.
In what can almost be called a post-structural approach, by offering a
series of binary structures inopposition, the Book of Ecclesiastes destabilizes
the conventional idea that time can be directed and retained. Instead the
future will hold birth/death, planting/harvesting, killing/healing, break-
down/build-up, weeping/laughing, mourning/celebrating each couplet
The inuence of time on place 115
itself an endless play of absence and presence. But which half of each dyad
will be the one that occurs? and when? All this will come to pass in Gods
appointed time, not before, not after. He hath made every thing beautiful
in his time [emphasis added] (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
In Paradise Regained, Satans central temptations offer the Son what, in
the best of possible futures, he will have: the Sonwill not only be possessdof
Davids Throne (3.357) but he will have power even greater than Roman
and Parthian (3.362). In a seeming paradox, the Son will only achieve
this power and Davids Throne if he resists them. This becomes less of a
paradox when we think of the time (kairos) being not yet ripe for the Son
to fulll his destiny. When Satan presses the argument that the Son should
do something soon, he responds: My time I told thee (and that time for
thee / Were better farthest off ) is not yet come (3.39697). As the brief
epic nears its end, the Son makes known his understanding of appointed
time as he echoes Ecclesiastes 3: All things are best fullld in their due
time, / And time there is for all things (4.18283). In response to this
declaration by the Son, a frustrated Satan then attempts to convince him
that his time (kairos) has indeed come: Now at full age, fulness of time,
thy season / When Prophecies of thee are best fullld (4.38182), so that
the Son should not reject Satans offers as The perfet season offerd with
my aid (4.468) will gain Davids Throne.
Satans promise to the Son reveals his understanding of kairos: that he
believes he can bring about the appointed season: The perfet season offerd
with my aid [emphasis added] (4.468). Satans difculty is simply that he
refuses to wait on Gods time (kairos), instead he would bring things about
in his own time. The Son, however, accepts and understands his manifestly
human role as one of waiting on both waiting on the appointed time
and waiting on his Father as Gods servant. Had the Son taken the unripe
fruit Satan offered, his story would have ended as tragically as Eves. Yet
with every minute the Son waits, the bitter fruit with which Satan tempts
grows sweeter. In the hands of a less competent devil (for example, Belial
in Paradise Regained, or one on the many portrayals of Satan in medieval
theology), the Son would have been tempted entirely with fruit truly for-
bidden, such as carnal pleasures. However, Miltons Satan exploits the Sons
burgeoning understanding of his mission by tempting with the very fruit
that the Son is coming to understand he is meant to take.
Similarly, in so many medieval accounts, the reckless sensual abandon
Satan offers Eve is truly forbidden: human beings should never abandon
themselves to such excessive pleasure not now, not in the future, not ever.
By contrast, in Miltons account Satan tempts Eve with the prospect that
116 Part II: The underlying importance of place
she might no longer be low and ignorant (9.705), but as in the dream he
induces, be raised to a high exaltation (5.90). But this is precisely what
Raphael has suggested to Adam may happen: by degrees of merit raisd /
They [humanity] open to themselves at length the way / Up hither, under
long obedience trid / And Earth be changd to Heavn, and Heavn to
Earth (7.15760). Miltons Satan does not tempt Eve with what she should
never have, but rather with what, in the best of possible futures, she most
denitely should possess. Eves fatal mistake is momentarily to forget that
only with the support of roots slowly grown in the Earth can she hope to
reach such great heights. Eve took a fruit meant to be enjoyed when it was
not yet ripe when it was still forbidden.
In the Ludlow Mask Comus tempts with pleasures both sensuous and
sensual. Though we might expect the Lady categorically to reject what is
offered, she surprises us through her acceptance that good men can give
good things (l. 703). Hardly a prude, the Lady knows that one day she will
have the pleasures offered. But because the Lady has a wel-governd and
wise appetite (l. 705), she resists the unripe fruit. Far frombeing forbidden
fruit, in the best of possible futures, the Lady will have everything Comus
offers. Indeed, as something of a small reward for waiting (and a promise
of the reward to come), both Paradise Regained and the Ludlow Mask end
with a banquet at least equal to what the tempters rst offered. Because
Eve fails to wait on the appointed season, her story has a less celebratory
ending.
The central temptations in Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and the
Ludlow Mask are championed not only by the devils but also, astonishingly,
by the clear-thinking protagonists themselves. What makes each of the
temptations an evil and not a good is entirely a consequence of kairos. If
kairos were of no consequence, when Satan suggested to Eve (or Raphael
to Adam) that human beings could reach as high as heaven, Eve (or Adam)
would have immediately acted on the suggestion, And Earth be changd to
Heavn, and Heavn to Earth (7.15960). If kairos were of no consequence,
whenthe Sonrst realizedthe Throne of Davidwouldbe his (either fromhis
reading of prophecy or through Satans suggestion), he would have assumed
the Throne which would have become like a tree / Spreading and over-
shadowing all the Earth (ll. 14648). If kairos were of no consequence,
the Lady would have enjoyed something delicious (l. 704) with either
Comus or that single one of the good men (l. 703) for which she waits.
But the major consequence in each of these stories does hinge on kairos:
the fruit is only forbidden when it is not yet ripe, otherwise it is to be
enjoyed. Of course, the growth of the Son, Eve, and the Masks Lady is also
The inuence of time on place 117
subject to kairos when each of their respective times come, it will come in
part because they themselves have ripened. They themselves are completely
subject to kairos.
By making forbidden fruit merely unripe, Milton clearly makes prob-
lematic a great deal of medieval theology. In the case of the forbidden fruit
in Paradise Lost, Milton has not only (as I noted in the section dealing with
Paradise Lost) inverted medieval theologys notion that the forbidden fruit
is Earthy by making heavenly fruit in part the object of Eves desire, but
the poet claries that Eves tragic quest for heaven was actually the proper
pursuit, though improperly timed. In the case of Eve this certainly mitigates
much of her sin; in Paradise Regained, even if the Son had taken the Throne
of David when Satan offered it, it would be difcult to nd a great deal of
fault with his well-meaning intentions why then should we subscribe to
medieval theologys vicious cynicism regarding Eves intentions? Though
poorly timed, Eves attempt at a premature ascent (and consequent Fall) is
at least understandable, though certainly not free of fault.
In considering the environmental signicance of kairos, it is clearly the
case that we have, in our Christian-Greco-Roman-Judaic tradition, adopted
Satans approach to time seeking to have what we want when we want
it. As Heidegger once said, humans should not turn night into day nor
day into a harassed unrest,
5
referring to our new-found propensity to hold
day through night with electric lighting and our technological harassing
of the days of the Earth which should be allowed to unfold in their own
time. When Miltons Son says that All things are best fullld in their due
time, / And time there is for all things (4.18283), though he is referencing
the time when his mission will begin, as echoing Ecclesiastes 3 he is also
disclosing, in terms of the appointed season (zem-awn / kairos), his belief
that human beings should serve in the unfolding of Gods plan, in Gods
appointed time, and not seek (like Satan) to unfold a plan of our own in
our time.
In a world increasingly using technology to unfold a human plan,
Miltons emphasis on kairos may be as well-suited to our age as to his.
Through the late Heideggers environmental maxim of standing reserve
(das Bestand), it is possible to explicate the environmental implications of
kairos. By having his protagonists tempted with the prospect of appointing
their own time, thereby ignoring kairos, it can be argued that Milton is sug-
gesting that neither human beings nor the Earth should stand in reserve
for solely human needs, but quite the contrary, human beings should stand
in wait for the Earth to present its gifts in Gods time. These ideas will
be especially clear when we return to the Ludlow Mask after considering
118 Part II: The underlying importance of place
in greater depth Heideggers environmentally powerful notion of standing
reserve.
Heidegger explains that, everywhere, everything is ordered to stand
by, to be immediately at hand, indeed to stand there just so that it may
be on call for further ordering, we call this idea standing reserve [das
Bestand].
6
This perspective on Nature could be understood by asking a
simple questionpertaining tohumans andthe Earth: Just whois waiting on
whom? Heidegger maintains that the traditional answer, given by peasant
farmers, is essentially we wait on the Earth. For example, traditional
peasant farmers must wait on the rain often for excruciatingly long
periods to irrigate their crops. In contrast to this peasant approach to
the question of who is waiting on whom, modern technological thinking
in terms of standing reserve answers that the Earth waits on us. Modern
agri-business does not nd it necessary to wait on the rain, but rather taps
into underground aquifers, which, in the view of technology, have water
standing in reserve, waiting on human beings to make use of it. If these
underground reserves are not adequate, then technology will allow us to
build dams, aqueducts, or storage tanks to ensure that the places water is
indeed waiting on us to use it. Simply put, the peasant farmer waits on
the (unknown) appointed time of rain, while modern agri-business, having
no such patience, takes it upon itself to appoint the time of forced (from
the Earth) irrigation. In the case of the peasant as well as that of modern
technology, it should be noted that I am also suggesting that waiting on
means waiting on someone for a period of time, as well as waiting on
someone as one who serves. The traditional peasants viewis that we wait to
serve the place, while, on the other hand, as standing reserve to technological
human beings, the place waits to serve us.
To understand the ecological import of kairos in a Christian context
(something Heidegger never attempts to do), it will be helpful rst to
quote from Jesus Sermon on the Mount:
Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought [merimnas anxious thought] for your
life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall
put on . . . Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap,
nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them . . . Which of you
by taking [anxious] thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take
ye [anxious] thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the eld, how they grow;
they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon
in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. . . . Wherefore, if God so clothe
the grass of the eld, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall
The inuence of time on place 119
he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no [anxious]
thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall
we be clothed? . . . for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these
things . . . Take therefore no [anxious] thought for the morrow: for the morrow
shall take [anxious] thought for the things of itself (Matthew 6:2534).
What Jesus is suggesting here is that by sharing the practices of the fowls
of the air, the lilies of the eld, and the grass of the eld, we might
learn the correct posture towards life and the future.
With the great power technology offers, the notion of kairos and much
of the import of the story of the lilies of the eld naturally might seem a
little alien to our modern lives. Why, for example, should we wait for an
appointed time for anything related to the Earth? Granted, the appointed
time of each of our Deaths, as well as the Parousia to Christians, may be
unknown, but whatever anxieties these uncertainties might cause, what
need is there nowadays to be anxious over literally what ye shall eat, or
what ye shall drink . . . [or] . . . what ye shall put on in the morrow?
Technology has long ago assured most of us in the developed world that
there is a standing reserve of food, water, and clothing for nearly everyone
not only for the morrow but for each day after it. It would be absurd
and altogether frightful for a modern people to wait on spring for
the appointed season (kairos) to arrive when crops could be grown to end
hunger and starvation. One of the motives behind the massive deforestation
of the South American Rain Forests, whether we wish to acknowledge it
or not, was to provide an off-season source of food for North America a
reserve standing in South America just waiting on us to use it. Through
countless technological practices, we human beings now appoint the time
(as we have taken control of kairos) for all of our needs.
It is clear that in many ways, though Christ is believed to stand past Death
for the faithful, technology undeniably now stands (or at least promises to
stand) between all human beings and Death. Technology has put an end to
much of the play of presence and absence in our lives. Because of the success
of technology in providing for our needs in the morrow, few human beings
today are so anxious over the indenite future that they offer prayers to a
higher Power to spare their lives before an upcoming winter. One could
argue that technology is now functioning to ease our anxiety towards our
lives in the same way that belief in gods once did. Though in a far more
consistent way than any of the old gods: in comparison to unreliable
gods which allowed human beings to freeze in winter, technology, when
properly deployed, is always Present and always Powerful. And the bonus
120 Part II: The underlying importance of place
is that technology is through-and-through a human creation, giving to us
the power over our future previously held by gods.
Incomparisonto the immense technological achievements of the Greeks,
followed by the Romans, in architecture, agriculture, and city building,
Jesus himself brought attention to previously ignored teachers, the birds
and lilies (who were utterly marginalized as their habitat and growing space
was taken by the human activities of architecture, agriculture, and city
building), who would serve as masters to apprentice the faithful to a
way of life which seemed utterly foolish to the prevailing Greek mindset.
With the technological might of the Greeks and Romans within their grasp,
Christians were to shunthe ability to overcome kairos as they assumed a pos-
ture of weakness, gratefully receiving whatever their Gods grace bestowed
upon themin His appointed time (kairos), even when it was no-thing (com-
plete absence). Like the paradigm Christ, who was believed to have been
able to wield immense power, yet resisted the temptation, Christs follow-
ers were also to resist the temptation of power as they lived in a moment
looking forward to eternity.
This idea of resisting the temptation of the power to appoint time (in
the form of technological power towards the morrow), while accepting
the weakness of appointed time (though one might have the immense
technological power within ones grasp to appoint time), may be one of
Christianitys most signicant, though seemingly ignored, contributions to
ecological thinking.
7
Christians, in following the example of their teachers,
the lilies and birds, most authentically live in a Time their God unfolds
through the Earth not in moments folded back upon themselves as we
seek constant presence at the Earths expense.
What does this all come to environmentally? Clearly this is very radical
thinking. A people who held to Christs command that thou shalt be as
the birds, as they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns
(Matthew 6:26), would clearly eschew agriculture, to say nothing of the
avalanche of technology that followed it. This would certainly put these
extraordinarily devoted Christians in the company of the most radical
of environmentalists, who hold that much of our environmental woe is
caused precisely because we do not live like birds, lilies, and the rest of
life on Earth. Followers of Deep Ecology hold that vast areas of the Earth
should be mandated as wilderness, and as such be largely free of human
inuence, except for certain indigenous people.
8
But since such tactics as
slash and burn land appropriations have been practiced by indigenous
peoples for hundreds of thousands of years, this wilderness model clearly
is problematic. But if a tribe or two of these dutiful Christians, living in
The inuence of time on place 121
absence andpresence like birds andlilies, were releasedinto wilderness, their
convictions would insure that they resisted the temptation of technological
power. Only a people who lived like birds and lilies, resisting the temptation
of the next day, could be stewards of wilderness.
Prior to the Fall in Paradise Lost, the above described practices also apply
to Adam and Eve: they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into
barns . . . [nor take anxious] . . . thought, saying, What shall we eat? or,
What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (Matthew6:26,
31).
9
In the space opened up in his narrative of Paradise, Milton has depicted
a place which makes literal some of the most practical (though seemingly
im-practical) teachings of Jesus especially regarding kairos. In the Garden
Adam and Eve live in accordance with kairos, they do not see the Earths
bounty as reserve standing as some sort of re-source to wait upon their
needs. (As mentioned earlier, the living example of the Bower as opposed
to the dead material used to build Pandemonium makes this especially
clear.) On the contrary, through their gardening practices Adam and Eve
wait on the needs of their place, the Garden. Indeed, Eves concern for
the needs of the Garden is so great that she fears her labors inadequate to
wait on the place:
Adam, well may we labor still to dress
This Garden, still to tend Plant, Herb and Flour,
Our pleasant task enjoynd, but till more hands
Aid us, the work under our labours grows,
Luxurious by restraint; what we by day
Lop overgrown, or prune, or prop, of blind,
One night or two with wanton growth derides
Tending to wilde. Thou therefore now advise
Or hear what my minds rst thoughts present,
Let us divide our labours. (9.20514)
It is clear fromthis passage that Eve not only does not take anxious thought
for What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we
be clothed? (Matthew 6:31), which might make her wish to have the Earth
stand in reserve to meet her needs, but quite the contrary, her anxious
thought is for the needs of the place. Consequently, Eve is quite willing (even
though, as we know all too well, it puts her in jeopardy) to wait on the
place, even if it means separation from Adam.
In terms of kairos, the ecological importance of Miltons portrayal of
the prelapsarian life in the Garden cannot be overstressed. By inverting the
anxious thought Adam and Eve have for the morrow not to be for their
uncertain future, but the uncertain future of the place which One night or
122 Part II: The underlying importance of place
two with wanton growth derides (9.211), Milton has, with respect to time,
come very close to laying out a geocentric position as opposed to the
ecological perilous homocentric posture of much of the modern West.
Even if they followed the letter of the Sermon on the Mounts law not to
have anxious thought for their future, Miltons Adam and Eve could have
taken this to mean that they should have no anxious thought for the future
at all and therefore attempted to live in the moment, oblivious to an
uncertain future. But Eves above quoted speech in Paradise Lost (9.20514)
makes it clear that she is very much concerned for the future the future
of the place. As mentioned before, one of the great tragedies of Paradise
Lost is that Eves strong desire to care for the Garden (especially, as I have
been presently arguing, for the future of the place) should precipitate her
inadvertent turning away from her place.
It is important to note that kairos also appears frequently in Milton,
almost all unfailingly negative (in John Mulryans words
10
), as the Greek
goddess Occasion or Fortune. To the Greeks, if the goddess Occasion hap-
pened to be moving towards you, opportunity was approaching (hence, to
the Romans Occasion became the god Opportunus), giving you the chance
to seize her by her long braided forelock (literally to seize the moment)
before Occasion (the moment) past. If you failed to lay hold of the moment
as it approached, the loss was yours, since Occasion being bald at the back,
made it impossible to capture the moment once it was past, as Occasion
continued towards a future you missed.
It is this sense of kairos as Occasion that Satan tempts the Son in Paradise
Regained: If Kingdom move thee not, let move thee Zeal, / And Duty;
Zeal and Duty are not slow; / But on Occasions forelock watchful wait
(3.17173). Later, however, the Son explicitly claries that any occasion
afforded by kairos (here called Fortune) must be the work of God, and not
(as the Stoic philosophers held) merely human actions: And in themselves
[the Stoic philosophers] seek vertue, and to themselves / All glory arrogate,
and to God give none, / Rather accuse him under usual names, Fortune
and Fate, as one regardless quite / Of mortal things (4.31418). Milton
himself illuminates this idea in his prose: But the name of fortune, as was
said above, grew out of ignorance of causes . . . For fortune surely is to be
placed in heaven, but its name should be changed and it should be called
divine providence.
11
Kairos, then, is misunderstood as the Greek goddess
Fortune, as kairos in the New Testament (like zem-awn in the Old) is time
appointed only by God.
As Milton clearly saw, the Christian interpretation of kairos is a radical
reversal of the Greek notion that time may be appointed by human beings.
The inuence of time on place 123
In some sense, John Mulryan makes much the same point, as he draws
attention both to Satans attempt to convince the Son that his time has
come (Paradise Regained 3.17173) and the elder brothers concern in the
Mask that Danger will wink on opportunity (l. 401) as some evil might
befall his sister. In Mulryans words: Thus Milton turns the tradition of
Occasion or Opportunity on its head: the devil tries to make Christ move
with haste before due time, while the second brother warns the rst that
the really vigilant ones looking for an opportunity are the evil ones . . . Of
course what one is supposed to nd through Opportunity is Fortune,
wealth, whatever one most desires.
12
Crucial here is that both Satan and
Comus, opportunists rmly rooted in the Greek understanding of kairos,
believe that they can appoint the time for either the Son or the Lady fully to
realize their destiny, but both characters understand that neither the time
nor their own development has reached maturity.
That this Christian notion of kairos has profound environmental conse-
quences is made clear in the Ladys rebuff to Comuss idea that the Earth
would be strangld with her waste fertility (l. 729): in the Ladys words,
if only we were to live according to her sober laws, / And holy dictate
of spare Temperance . . . every man who now pines with want would
have a moderate and beseeming share (l. 76669). To quote Wendell
Berry again, this is a prototype of the ecological argument of our own
time . . . humans can have a decent, permanent place in the earthy house-
hold only by knowing precisely the extent of their beseeming share and by
using no more.
13
Kairos becomes crucial to knowing that our beseeming
share is not appointed by human beings but rather by the place which
gives forth its bounty in its own time or in Miltons understanding, by
God who has the Earth bring forth her bounty in a time not appointed by
human needs or technology.
As Comus would, entirely irrespective of the place, appoint the time for
the place to bring forth, he stands as a chilling harbinger of how a broad
swath of human beings was already beginning to approach the Earth in
Miltons era. On the other hand, most actions of the traditional peasant
farmers were dictated by God, who appointed a time to every purpose
under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant,
and a time to pluck up that which is planted (Ecclesiastes 3:12). Because
these appointed times were unknown to human beings, many individuals
felt that the need to be the appointers of time warranted their turning away
fromscripture. Milton provides a scorching indictment of those who would
appoint time: in both Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained the character
who seeks most to appoint time is Satan. To express this notion another
124 Part II: The underlying importance of place
way, to Milton the character of those who would appoint time is mostly
Satanic.
The ecological importance of time on place is perhaps most conspicuous
in the Mask at Ludlow, which presents a single argument that is a prototype
of both modern ecological and feminist thinking. To echo Luce Irigaray, As
for woman, she is place,
14
and it is the place of the womans body which is
also under assault in the Mask. In terms of the Ladys body, it is resoundingly
clear that it is entirely her decision when her body will be shared. There are
no mitigating arguments put forth by Comus that succeed in convincing
the Lady (or the Masks readers) that he should have any say in this decision.
In terms of the place on Earth at Ludlow, the same arguments marshaled
on behalf of the Ladys body also apply: when the place is shared is entirely
dependent on the place and God. Though this might seem an untenably
weak position for some of the human beings residing in the place (but by
no means all, the peasant farmers of the place being as good an example as
is the Lady), what Milton has said in his prose must be remembered: that
the name of Kairos or Fortune should be changed and it should be called
divine providence.
15
9
Place, body, and spirit joined: the EarthHuman
wound in Paradise Lost
whose tallest Pines,
Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest Oaks
Bowd thir Stiff necks, loaden with stormy blasts,
Or torn up sheer: ill wast thou shrouded then,
O patient Son of God, yet only stoodst
Unshaken
(Paradise Regained, 4.41721)
In terms of my earlier discussions on the necessity in continuing to feel the
wound opened up at the Fall, the need to confront in fear and trembling
the fallen human state is forever connected in Paradise Lost to the wounded
state of the Earth. Miltons unique contribution is that, with the image
of a wounded Earth, he is able to connect both Old and New Testament
wisdoms by exploiting the typology surrounding both the Fall and Christs
crucixion. To understand how this is achieved we need to consider, in
terms of typology, the wounding of the Earth.
Although it is not surprising that Eve feels wounded at the Fall, it is
rather unexpected that Miltons sentient Earth feels the wound. Given
that, as Diane McColley has noted, in the iconography of Miltons time
there was a tradition approaching a typology of regeneration, making
the Fall a type of Crucixion,
1
it would seem far more likely that if an
account of the Fall depicted a common wound being opened at all, it
would have been shared by humanity and Christ. In the chronology of
Paradise Lost, long before Eves lapse, the Son has offered life for life
(3:236) as Atonement for human Sin. This said, and with the tradition of
typology in mind, not to mention an intimation of the wound Christ
would receive in his side at the Crucixion (John 19:34), if any character
in Paradise Lost, other than Adam and Eve, was to have been wounded
at the Fall one certainly might have expected the Son to have felt the
Wound (9.782) he knew he was destined to receive. As Milton has placed
the wounding of the Earth where we might have expected the wounding of
125
126 Part II: The underlying importance of place
the Son, this leads to what I take to be a rather provocative question: just
what is the relation between the wound the Earth felt and the wound Christ
received? To consider this further, it will be helpful to consider the typology
concerning Christs wound, which, interestingly, is often connected with
the Creation of Eve.
The Creation of Eve is generally associated with either the emergence of
the sacraments fromthe wound Christ receives inhis side at the Crucixion,
or, more commonly, the origin of the Church from this wound. In the
iconography of Eves Creation, this is especially clear in those images which
show Eve directly emerging, fully formed, from Adams side.
2
Though
Milton does deviate somewhat from this tradition by portraying God
as craftsman, fashioning Eve from Adams rib through the work of the
hands, this typology is nonetheless suggested by Miltons description of
the wound opnd in Adams side from which cordial spirits warme, /
And Life-blood streamed:
Who stooping opnd my left side, and took
From thence a Rib, with cordial spirits warme,
And Life-blood streaming fresh; wide was the wound,
But suddenly with esh lld up and heald:
The Rib he formed and fashiond with his hands;
Under his forming hands a Creature grew,
Manlike, but different sex. (8.46571)
Compare Miltons account with Richard Hookers explication of the
typology:
The Church is in Christ as Eve was in Adam. Yea by grace we are every one of us
in Christ and in his Church, as by nature we are in those our rst parents, God
made Eve of the rib of Adam. And his Church he frameth out of the very esh, the
very wounded and bleeding side of the Son of man . . . the words of Adam may
be tly the words of Christ concerning his Church, esh of my esh and bone of
my bones, [Genesis 2:23] a true native extract out of mine own body.
3
Though it seems clear that Miltons depiction of the Creation of Eve is in
the same typological tradition as Hookers account, what may be less clear
is how the wound shared by the Earth and humanity in Paradise Lost ts
into this tradition. So, to understand how these wounds are related and to
recap what I have said about the wound Earth felt in Paradise Lost, it will
be helpful to enumerate the characteristics of these wounds one by one.
The wounds are quite unusual as something of consequence actually
emerges from them. In most wounds what is of most importance is what
leads up to the wounding, the wounding itself, and the consequences to
Place, body, and spirit joined 127
the wounded. While it is true that in Miltons account of the Creation
of Eve God does stoop down to reach into Adams side to obtain the rib,
the actual act of opening up the wound fades from signicance (like that
nameless Roman soldier who inicted Christs wound) as all attention turns
to Eve, who emerges from the wound. Indeed, as stated above, in many
of the images depicting Eves Creation, the opening up of the wound (the
wounding) is altogether absent, as Eve simply rises up out of Adams
side.
4
What is most signicant in the typological tradition is that which
emerges fromthese very unusual wounds: Eve and the Church, in Hookers
words the true native extract. If Miltons description in Paradise Lost
of the wound Earth received entirely involved something striking at the
Earth, it would be difcult to see the commonality of the wounds which
Adam, Christ, and the Earth incurred, but, as I have been arguing, the very
unusual wound the Earth receives in Miltons unusual description of the
events surrounding the Fall does involve something being taken from the
Earth: humanity, the true native extract.
The wound connects the wounded and what emerges from the wound
in a mystical way. In speaking both of the connection of the Church to
Christ and woman to man, Paul says that men ought to love their wives
as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man
ever yet hated his own esh; but nourisheth it and cherisheth it, even as the
Lord the church: For we are all members of his body, of his esh, and of his
bones . . . This is a great mystery; but I speak concerning Christ and the
Church (Ephesians 5:2832). In Miltons words in Of Church Doctrine, the
union and fellowship of the regenerate with the Father and Christ, and
among the member of Christs body among themselves, result in the mys-
tical body called the invisible Church.
5
Invisible and mystical, the wound
is the site of the connection (for it is out of the wound that the Church
emerges in the typological tradition) which holds the Church to Christ
and, too, woman to man.
In postmodern parlance, we could say that the Self should feel for the
Other what it feels for it-Self, or, in Pauls words concerning the man-
woman bond: He that loveth his wife loveth himself. Augustine draws
attention to this bond between man and woman when he offers an expla-
nation for the Creation of Eve from Adam: Gods purpose in choosing to
produce mankind from but one man was not merely to unite the human
race in an alliance based on natural likeness but also to bind it up by the tie
of kinship, as it were, into a single harmonious whole held together through
the bond of peace [pacis vinculo].
6
It is this bond of peace that also con-
nects the human race into a single harmonious whole with the Earth.
128 Part II: The underlying importance of place
The peasant (from the Latin pangere) has a similar invisible and mystical
connection to the Earth, indeed it is believed that pangere is derived from
the prehistoric Indo-European pag/pak root, which simply means just that:
a connection or bond. Though in one sense, Eve broke the bond she had
with the Earth at her Fall, in another sense an invisible bond emerges from
the wound. When Eve rst learns of the wound, the unexpected stroke,
worst than of Death (11.268), her lament is an acknowledgment that she
feels the invisible and mystical wound that bonds her with her place on the
Earth.
Eves painful lament brings us the next characteristic of these wounds:
the wound must be continually felt. With an allusion to the wound in
Christs side, Paul says,
lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations,
there was given to me a thorn in the esh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me,
lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice,
that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufcient for thee:
for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather
glory in my inrmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (2 Corinthians
12:79)
Though Paul sought to have the wound healed (through having the thorn
removed), he comes to realize that the thorn allows him to feel what Christ
felt, so that like Christ, his strength is made perfect in weakness. Letting
the wound heal over would risk having the bond forgotten. Although
Eves lament at feeling the stroke, worst than of Death (the worse than
mortal stroke Eve inicted upon herself and the Earth) may be painful
even to read, it is necessary for her to feel the wound if she is to keep her
bond with her place on the Earth. Since feeling the wound holds humans
and the Earth together, in Miltons assessment the wound is as much the
site of connection as it is of separation.
Finally, these wounds are alike inthat the bondbetweenthe woundedand
what emerges fromthe wound is described in three ways: as a sort of birth;
as a relation among parts of the body; and as the relation of roots to a tree.
Althoughthese three approaches helpus to understandthe bondindifferent
ways, because these metaphors are frequently mixed(inscripture, inMilton,
andinbiblical explication), confusionis oftenunavoidable. Indeed, upuntil
this point I have beenswitching, rather indiscriminately, betweendescribing
the EarthHuman bond as either a rootedness in place or, in the terms
Richard DuRocher introduced, as something like childbirth. Considering
Place, body, and spirit joined 129
the typology surrounding the wounds Adam and Christ received will add
greater precision to our discussion of the wound Earth felt at the Fall in
Paradise Lost.
As mentioned earlier, the iconography surrounding Eves Creation often
depicts her emerging fully formed from Adams side a sort of birth.
As McColley notes, the emergence of the Church from Christs wound
was also depicted as a birth: In the Bible Moralisee in the Bodleian
Library . . . the Creation of Eve, in which the Creator raises her from
the wrist, is matched with a Crucixion: not with water and blood, but
withanactual child being extracted fromChrists side as Eve is fromAdams,
to reinforce the analogy between Eve and the Church.
7
Not surprisingly,
feminists have taken this type of birth, in which Adam (or Christ) usurps
the womans childbearing role, as troubling. Milton does, however, mit-
igate this difculty by having God form Eve outside of Adams body, as
opposed to having Adams body directly bear Eve. While Milton may have
shared modern feminists uneasiness with the typological tradition of hav-
ing Adam directly giving birth to a fully formed Eve, the poet certainly has
no such reticence in Paradise Lost towards Mother Earth, who straight /
Opning her fertile Womb teemd at a Birth / Innumerous living Creatures,
perfet forms, / Limbd and full grown (7.45456).
The connection between this ability of the Earth to give birth in Miltons
epic and the wound Earth felt at the Fall becomes clear when we look
to the passage in Paradise Lost where Mammon and his cohorts with
impious hands / Rid the bowels of thir mother Earth / For Treasures better
hid. Soon his crew / Opnd into the hill a spacious wound (1.68689).
DuRocher makes clear the typological connection between these wounds:
the Devils opening of a spacious wound may recall the wound opened
in Christs side during the Crucixion. Certainly the devils plunder of
ribs of gold echoes the Yahwistic account of Eves creation from Adams
rib (p. 98). From a consideration of this early wounding of the Earth in
Paradise Lost, DuRocher compellingly argues that The Wound the Earth
feels upon Eves Fall is at rst unlocalized, but as the depiction of the Earth
after Adams Fall indicates, it is felt in the vital, creative part of Mother
Earth, her womb (p. 114). Though, as I have argued, there is a danger in
interpreting this birth too literally, DuRocher makes a compelling case
for a birth from the wound Earth felt at the Fall in Paradise Lost.
The second approach to understanding Adams (and Christs) wound is
through the idea that the Church is part of a body shared with Christ.
The notion that the Church and Christ are one in body is a persistent one
130 Part II: The underlying importance of place
in the NewTestament, found in Colossians (And he [Christ] is the head of
the body, the church [1:18]), 1 Corinthians (nowye are the body of Christ,
and members in particular [12:27]), Romans (So we, being many, are one
body in Christ [12:5]), and elsewhere. In the following passage, which
has become infamous in feminist circles, Paul himself helps to establish
the typological tradition we have been considering when he notes that the
bodily relation between Christ and the Church is also the relation of man
(as in Adam) to woman (Eve):
For the husband is the head of the wife; even as Christ is head of the church. . . . So
ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth
himself. For no man ever yet hated his own esh; but nursisheth it and cherisheth
it, even as the Lord the church: For we are all members of his body, of his esh,
and of his bones. (Ephesians 5:2330)
As I mentioned earlier, Paul concludes this thought by noting, concerning
Christ and the Church, that This is a great mystery (Ephesians 5:32).
We have here the notion that, though separate and distinct, Christ and the
Church (like men and women) share a single mystical connection expressed
through the image of a shared body. As Adam expresses it to Eve in Paradise
Lost: So forcible within my heart I feel / The Bond of Nature draw me to
my own, / my own in thee, for what thou art is mine; / Our state cannot
be severd, we are one, / One esh (9.95559).
My earlier argument (which made a play on words by suggesting that
Miltons deconstruction not only destabilized medieval theologys dualistic
spirits in esh, but went further than Luthers spirits of esh destruc-
tion by suggesting that human beings are spirits of place) was a way of
expressing this bodily relation. When Luther deconstructed spiritesh
duality, the spirit and the esh were in-corporated into a corporality which
was (bodily) esh and spirit. Miltons innovation is that he in-corporates
place, a region of the Earth, into this corporality, so that not only are
human beings an embodiment of spirit and esh but also of place in
simple terms, when Sabrina or Edward King became a genius loci, their
body, the corporal aspect of their being, was the region of the Earth they
inhabited. In Paradise Lost, then, though Adam and Eve have human bod-
ies, as spirits of place in the tradition of Sabrina and Edward King, they
also have something of this bodily connection to the Earth they are
indeed both Adams (in Hebrew creatures made of Earth). This bodily
connection to the Earth is further suggested by the fact that the Creation of
Adam, both in scripture and in Paradise Lost, is similar in type to both the
Creation of Eve and the Creation of the Church, as the Lord God formed
Place, body, and spirit joined 131
man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life; and man became a living soul (Genesis 2:7).
Thoughthe typological traditiondoes not generally connect the Creation
of Adam with the Creation of either Eve or the Church, Milton is careful
to join Eves Creation with Adams as both are directly formed (Raphael
informs Adam that he [God] formed thee, Adam [7.514], while from a
rib Eve was formed and fashiond with his [Gods] hands; / Under his
forming hands a Creature grew [8.4701]) by God, whereas the animals
emerge from Mother Earths womb as perfet forms, / Limbd and full
grown (7.45556) without the need of Gods direct handiwork. Though
Milton does not refer to the place where Adam was taken from the Earth
as a wound, there is nonetheless a similarity which suggests that Adam
and the Earth may share a common body in the same way that Eve does
with Adam and the Church with Christ. The wound Eve opened up at her
Fall in Paradise Lost might then be likened to a self-destructive tearing at
ones own body, with the unfortunate effect that, as the body is shared with
an other (the Earth), Eve also horrically harmed the Earth through her
self-destructive act.
Finally, Adams (and Christs) wound can be understood in terms of a
rootedness. This generally seams to have come about in two ways: rst,
biblical commentators such a John Calvin interpreted passages such as
Colossians 1:18 (And he [Christ] is the head of the body, the church
which clearly referred to the body Christ shared with the Church) in
organic terms, with Christ like a root, from which the vital energy is
diffused through all the members. Just like a root the head provides life
for all its members.
8
Second, in reference to Adam, Paul Bayne mixes
the body and rooted metaphors as all who have descended, and shall
descend, from the rst Adam, are a compete body natural under Adam, the
head and root of them.
9
Though Eve is not a descendant of Adams per se
(nonetheless, as commentators have noted, in her biblical birth she is
certainly derivative of Adam), Bayne is also referring here to Pauls notion
(Ephesians 5:23) that Man is also the head of Woman, though in Bayne
the relation of head to body is also expressed as root to plant.
In addition to commentaries which interpreted the Church as being
rooted in Christ (as Eve was rooted in Adam), the New Testament
itself introduces organic metaphors, such as when Jesus declares I am the
true vine (John 15:1), which caused such commentators as Richard Hooker
to intermix the body and vine metaphors for the Church by suggesting that
heretics are branches cut off from the body of the true vine.
10
Similarly,
in Romans Paul suggests to Roman converts that they might be grafted
132 Part II: The underlying importance of place
onto the Church to replace those native branches broken off because of
unbelief: And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a
wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with thempartakest of the
root and fatness of the olive tree (11:17). Milton is certainly well aware of
this tree metaphor for the Church: in Of Christian Doctrine, in a chapter
entitled Of Being Ingrafted in Christ, and its Effects, Milton quotes
Ephesians 3:17 (which speaks of members of the Church being rooted and
grounded in love [emphasis added]) when he describes how new members
of the Church are ingrafted into Christ.
11
In addition to my earlier references to the poetry of Paradise Lost which
suggest that Eve is indeed rooted in the Earth, we can further see how the
above tree metaphor is at work in Miltons poetry by briey considering
the portrayal of the Son in Paradise Regained. Though the most dramatic
scene in Paradise Regained occurs when the Son stands on the pinnacle, this
ability of his to stand against Satan had been intimated earlier in the epic
during a storm Satan brings about:
Fierce rain with lightning mixt, water with re
In ruine reconcild: nor slept the winds
Within thir stony caves, but rushd abroad
From the four hinges of the world, and fell
On the vext Wilderness, whose tallest Pines,
Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest Oaks
Bowd thir Stiff necks, loaden with stormy blasts,
Or torn up sheer: ill wast thou shrouded then,
O patient Son of God, yet only stoodst
Unshaken (4:41221)
Like a tree rooted deep as high, the Son stoodst / Unshaken. This is a
remarkable way to describe Jesus. Compare it with the previously quoted
Heidegger passage: The oak itself proclaimed that all that lasts and bears
fruit is founded on such growth alone; that growth means to lie open to
the span of the heavens and, at the same time, to have roots in the dark
earth, that everything real and true only prospers if mankind fullls at the
same time the two conditions of being ready for the demands of the highest
heaven and being safe in the shelter of the fruitful earth.
12
certainly not
the position of Christian asceticism which seeks to pull free of the roots.
What gives Miltons Son the ability to withstand Satans storm is the
future Saviors roots, which reach as deep into the Earth as he rises above it.
As Neil Forsyth has noted, the trees described weathering Satans storm are
unique in the Classical tradition, with only Virgil describing a similar tree
whose crown thrusts upward to the heavens as far / As the roots stretched
Place, body, and spirit joined 133
down to Tartarus. Forsyth notes that Virgils tree (like Miltons) may well
be the cosmic tree of European and Asian myth, the very axis mundi
which mythically obtains a spiritual center.
13
In Paradise Regained, Milton
has not only depicted the most un-Earthy human being in Christian history
as being as deeply rooted in the Earth as he is able gloriously to rise above it,
but it is this very Earth-rooted posture that gives Miltons Son his spiritual
center a stability unequaled in human history.
In direct terms of the wound he will receive on the cross, in Paradise
Regained the Son comes to realize that his kingdom can only come about
after his time has come, which, as we know, is only after his being mortally
wounded on the cross. But after his mortal wounding, when my season
comes to sit / On Davids throne, it shall be like a tree / Spreading and
overshadowing all the earth (4:14648). In a sense, we can say that out of
the fatal wound the Son receives on the cross, not only the Church (as in
the typological tradition) but also the promised (millennial) Kingdom will
emerge as a tree rooted in the wound.
By using the wound Earth felt to connect the Fall with the Creation of
Eve and the Church, Milton uses the typological tradition to throwlight on
the invisible and mystical bond between Humanity and the Earth which
emerged fromthe wound opened up at the Fall. Furthermore, if this wound
(which, in a seeming paradox, both bonds us to the Earth and reminds us
of the severed connection) is to remain intact, it must be continually felt
in our postlapsarian world as a thorn in our sides. Through his use of
typology, Milton suggests that our relation to Mother Earth is not only
that of a mother who gave birth to humanity but also as the Earth we
must be deeply rooted in if we are to grow towards Heaven. Withal, as this
mystical bodily connection we share with the Earth runs as deep as our
bond to Heaven rises above it, we should be as responsible to the Earth as
we are to our own bodies.
Geoffrey Hartman once wrote of Milton that His lines in the Nativity
ode on the parting Genius left their imprint on almost every major poet
in the following century
14
as they diffused into the countryside in search
of the exiled Genius. What they failed to see, however, was that, perhaps
with greater insight, Milton had already caught a glimpse of the Genius
as the poet himself pined for a more authentic Christian encounter with
their place on the Earth. Earlier I made reference to Oswald Spengler to
suggest that his enterprise (in a limited way) parallels Miltons own, in
that both thinkers proceed from the conviction that human beings were
once so thoroughly rooted in the Earth that (because of this humble peasant
rootedness in place) the Earth was nothing less than a Paradise. To Spengler
134 Part II: The underlying importance of place
this was not a question of biblical interpretation but rather a historical fact.
This said, we can view Milton as having delivered Christianity to the fold
of environmentalists who hold that our foolish acts have brought ecological
devastation to the Earth. Indeed, Milton goes so far as to suggest that this
foolish uprooting of ourselves from our place on the Earth was the pivotal
act in human history and the source of all our current sorrow. But it
is this sorrow that may offer the greatest hope to renew our Earth-bound
peasantry that was lost with Paradise. Because feeling the wound may offer
the best chance at healing our shared loss with the Earth, Miltons poetry
may be seen as an attempt to have us again confront our Original Sin of
believing anything less than that we are all Adams (literally creatures
made of Earth), who, faced with our Earth-bound nature, may either
choose to renew the bond or scorn it along with our future.
Notes
I NTRODUCTI ON
1. Martin Heidegger, The Country Path, trans. Michael Heron in Envoy, 3.11
(1950), 71.
2. The Riverside Milton. Ed. Roy Flannagan (NewYork: Houghton Mifin, 1998),
11.26870. All references to Milton are to this edition and are cited parenthet-
ically in the text.
3. For seventeenth-century deforestation in England, see John Perlins A Forest
Journey: The Role of Wood in the Development of Civilization (New York, 1989),
16390.
4. The history of English farm literature in the seventeenth century is covered by
Lord Ernles Obstacles to Progress, in Agriculture and Economic Growth in
England 16501815, ed. E. L. Jones (London, 1967), 4965.
5. For the replacement of indigenous plants with new monocultures in the sev-
enteenth century, see L. A. Clarksons The Pre-Industrial Economy in England
15001750 (New York, 1972), 5759.
6. Cecil is quoted from John Perlins A Forest Journey, 186.
7. For the importing of foodstuffs in mid-century, see Joan Thirsks Agricultural
Policy: Public Debate and Legislation, in The Agrarian History of England and
Wales, ed. Joan Thirsk (Cambridge, 1985), V.II.309.
8. For the development of conscatedland, see JoanThirsks Agricultural Policy,
V.II.311.
9. Sylvanus Taylor, Common Good; or, The Improvement of Commons, Forests, and
Chases by Enclosure, quoted by Thirsk, 310.
10. See Joan Thirsks Agricultural Policy, 316.
11. Robert Pogue Harrison, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (Chicago, 1992),
100.
12. Ibid.
CHAPTER 1
1. Wendell Berry, A Native Hill, in Recollected Essays: 19651980 (New York,
1981), 74. Berry is here speaking about his familys place a hill in Kentucky
where his people have lived and farmed for generations.
135
136 Notes to ch. 1
2. Paradise Lost, in The Riverside Milton, ed. Roy Flannagan (New York, 1998),
11.268. All references to Milton, unless otherwise noted, are to this edition and
are cited parenthetically in the text.
3. Christopher Fitter, Native Soil: The Rhetoric of Exile Lament and Exile
Consolidation in Paradise Lost, Milton Studies 20, ed. James D. Simmonds
(Pittsburgh, 1984), 147.
4. Jon Whitman, Losing a Position and Taking One: Theories of Place in Paradise
Lost, MiltonStudies 29 (1992), 2134. Thoughmuchof McColleys writing, both
incontent and form, is deeply ecological, see especially her Miltons Eve (Urbana,
1983) and Benecent Hierarchies: Reading Milton Greenly, in Spokesperson
Milton: Voices in Contemporary Criticism, ed. Charles W. Durham and Kristin
Pruitt McColgan (Selinsgrove, 1994). Berrys works will be reviewed in some
detail in the present chapter. Richard J. DuRocher, The Wounded Earth in
Paradise Lost, Studies in Philology 93 (1996). See also Jeffery S. Theis, The
Environmental Ethics of Paradise Lost: Miltons Exegesis of Genesis IIII,
Milton Studies 34, ed. Albert C. Labriola (Pittsburgh, 1996).
5. As George Sessions notes, The classic ecocentric / Deep Ecology essays of
the 1960s and early 70s are Lynn Whites Historical Roots of our Ecological
Crisis (1967); Paul Shepherds Ecology and Man (1969); Gary Snyders Four
Changes (1969); and Arne Naesss Self-Realization: An Ecological Approach to
Being in the World, Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century (Boston, 1995),
101. In an effort to portray Deep Ecology fairly, I shall quote from each of these
authors, though in the case of Snyder and Naess I shall refer to more recent
essays which focus directly on the question of place.
In addition to being known as the ecocentric position, Deep Ecology is also
closely related to what is known as geopiety or ecopiety. As Hwa Yol Jung
and Petee Jung explain: What then is piety? It is the sacrament of coexistence
in which man attunes himself reverentially to other people and things . . . .
Homopiety is mans care and reverence for other men and women. . . . Geopiety
underscores the idea that man is bound by space or place . . . geopiety concerns
itself with a web of his connatural relationships with the surrounding world. As
I shall argue in the following section, in Paradise Lost Eve exhibits a reverence
for place which even the most geopious would nd remarkable. The Way
of Ecopiety: A Philosophic Minuet for Ethological Ethics, in Commonplaces:
Essays on the Nature of Place, ed. David W. Black, Donald Kunze, and John
Pickles (Lanham, 1989), 87.
6. Delores LaChapelle, Earth Wisdom (Colorado, 1978), 130.
7. Arne Naess, Self-Realization: An Ecological Approach to Being in the World,
in Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century (1995), 231.
8. See, for example, Naesss Four Modern Philosophers: Carnap, Wittgenstein,
Heidegger, Sartre (Chicago, 1965).
9. We cannot think of any object apart from the possibility of its connection
with other things. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logio-Philosophicus. Trans.
D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (London, 1961), 2.0121.
Notes to ch. 1 137
10. Freya Mathews, Conservation and Self-Realization: A Deep Ecology Perspec-
tive, Environmental Ethics 10 (1988), 351.
11. Arne Naess, Self-Realization, 232.
12. Paul Shepard, Ecology and Man A Viewpoint, in Deep Ecology for the
Twenty-First Century, ed. George Sessions (Boston, 1995), 13334. Although
unsaid, clearly Shepard is here squaring off against what he understands as
the consolidated view of Christianity: that the body is a prison and earth a
shoddy way station as the soul makes its way back to God.
13. Bill Devall, Simple in Means, Rich in Ends: Practicing Deep Ecology (Salt Lake
City, 1988), 46. In an essay entitled The Body and the Earth, Wendell Berry
also connects our bodies with place through a series of long-asked and unasked
questions: The question of human limits, of the proper denition and place
of human beings within the order of Creation, nally rests upon our attitude
toward our biological existence, the life of the body in the world. What value
and respect do we give our bodies? What use to we have for them? What relation
do we see, if any, between body and mind, or body and soul? What connections
or responsibilities do we maintain our bodies and the earth? . . . our bodies
are . . . joined inexorably both to the soil and to the bodies of other living
creatures. The Unsettling of America: Cultural and Agricultural (San Francisco,
1977), 97.
14. Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley, 1997),
233.
15. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. C. Smith (New
York, 1962), 251.
16. Jim Dodge, Living By Life, CoEvolution Quarterly 32 (Winter 1981), 6.
17. Gary Snyder, Re-Habitation, in The Deep Ecology Movement: An Introductory
Anthology, ed. Alan Drengson and Yuichi Inoue (Berkeley, 1995), 6869.
18. Bill Devall, Simple in Means, Rich in Ends, 48.
19. Delores LaChapelle, Earth Wisdom, 10001.
20. Wendell Berry, ANative Hill, 7980, 105. This profound connection to place
also plays prominently in Berrys ction. In A Place on Earth, the ending of the
novel and the ending of the protagonists life are inexorably linked with
place: He feels the great restfulness of that place, its casual perfect order. . . . The
leaves brightly falling around him, Mat comes into the presence of the place.
It lies clearly and simply before him, radiant as though a alight in the ground
has become visible. He has come into a wakefulness as quiet as sleep. (San
Francisco, 1983), 317.
21. Bill Devall, Simple in Means, Rich in Ends, 48.
22. Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley, 1997),
142.
23. Ibid., xvi.
24. Joan Thirsk, Agricultural Policy, V.II.313.
25. Wendell Berry, A Native Hill, 85.
26. Ibid., 74, 105.
138 Notes to ch. 1
27. Jeffery S. Theis, The Environmental Ethics of Paradise Lost, 64.
28. Wendell Berry, A Continuous Harmony, 67.
29. Wendell Berry, The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricul-
tural (New York, 1981), 278. The additional references to Berry in the present
paragraph are to this work, pp. 27879.
30. Christopher Fitter, Native Soil, 150. Hereafter references to Fitter are to
this essay and cited parenthetically in the text.
31. Not at all the misogynist statement that it may seem(that manis tolead; woman
follow), traditional notions of fertility are here destabilized: it is woman who
carries the Promisd Seed (12.623) and man who provides the place to plant
it.
32. Though abide is infrequently used in Paradise Lost, just after declaring that
Which way I ie is Hell; my self am Hell (4.75), Satan remarks, How dearly
I abide that boast [that he could subdue God] so vain (4.87). As Satan comes
to realize all too well, clearly that which abides is lasting in Paradise Lost.
33. Piotr Hoffman, Death, Time, History: Division II of Being and Time, in The
Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. Charles Guignon (Cambridge, 1993),
195.
34. Robert Pogue Harrison, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization (Chicago, 1992),
109.
35. John S. Tanner, Anxiety in Eden: A Kierkegaardian Reading of Paradise Lost
(Oxford, 1992), 161.
36. Liddell and Scotts GreekEnglish Lexicon (Oxford, 1978), ousia.
37. John S. Tanner, Anxiety in Eden, 145, 164.
38. Ibid, 164.
39. Wendell Berry, Standing by Words (San Francisco, 1983), 153.
40. John S. Tanner, Anxiety in Eden, 161.
41. Wendell Berry, Standing by Words, 153. The reference to Shelly is directed
towards A Defense of Poetry, Selected Poetry, Prose and Letters, ed. A. S. B.
Glover (New York, 1951), 1052.
42. Ibid., 161.
43. Ibid., 183.
44. For the mindbody relation in Fallon, see his Milton Among the Philosophers
(Ithaca, 1991), 2228, 6877, 98107, and 11923 (Ithaca, 1991). In his re-
cent Matter Versus Body: The Character of Miltons Monism, Phillip J.
Donnelly has suggested that Fallon may err in treating matter (materia) and
body (corpus) as synonymous, Milton Quarterly 33 (October 1999), 79.
45. Delores LaChapelle, Earth Wisdom, 130.
46. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott
Parsons (London, 1930), 181.
47. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queen, ed. Edwin Greenlaw (Baltimore, 1933),
II.XII.42 29.
48. While acknowledging that the Latin domus quite obviously derives from the
Greek domus (and is akin to the Sanskrit da

mas), Eric Partridge has further

suggested the Greek demein as possibly an additional source for the Latin
Notes to chs. 12 139
domus. Eric Partridge, Origins, A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern
English (London, 1958), 162.
49. Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West: Perspectives of World History, Volume 2,
trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York, 1928), 90, his emphasis. Although
I have used Atkinsons translation of the German throughout, the rst use of
the phrase peasants dwelling in the quotation is my own, while the second
is Atkinsons. For reasons unknown, Atkinson uses farmhouse for the rst
occurrence of the original Bauernhaus and peasants dwelling for the second.
For reasons of continuity in Spenglers text (and admittedly my own) I have
used peasants dwelling for both.
50. Diane McColley, Miltons Eve, 119.
51. Wendell Berry, The Long-LeggedHouse, inRecollected Essays 17651980 (New
York, 1981), 70.
52. William Leiss, The Domination of Nature (New York, 1972), 32.
53. Gary Snyder, Re-Habitation, in The Deep Ecology Movement, 69.
CHAPTER 2
1. Henry David Thoreau, Walden. Ed. Joseph W. Krutch (New York, 1962), 67.
2. On the matter of Miltons monism, Stephen M. Fallon has persuasively
argued that the mature Milton developed a monistic conception of the rela-
tionship between body and soul which was an affront to any of the available
dualistic conceptions, including the Platonic, the Christianized Aristotelian,
and the Cartesian (Milton Among the Philosophers [Ithaca, NY, 1991], 99). My
present work, which contends that Milton deconstructed medieval theologys
dualistic representations of Christianity, is in many respects built upon Fal-
lons general arguments regarding the monism (especially Hebraic) at work in
Paradise Lost.
3. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Spivak (London, 1974), xlix.
4. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward
Robinson (New York, 1962), 44.
5. Heidegger, Being and Time, 44.
6. See Edward John Van Buren, The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King
(Bloomington, Ind., 1994). Also see Caputo below for additional research
connecting Luther and destruction.
7. John D. Caputo, Heidegger and Theology, in The Cambridge Companion to
Heidegger, ed. Charles Guignon (Cambridge, 1993), 272.
8. Martin Luther, Luther: Lectures on Romans, ed. and trans. William Pauk, The
Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia, 1959), 214.
9. Martin Luther, Selected Writings of Martin Luther, ed. and trans. T. G. Tappert
(Philadelphia, 1967), 337.
10. Van Buren, The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King, 162, 161.
11. Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West: Perspectives of World History, Volume 2,
trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York, 1928), 8990. All references to
Spengler are to this edition and are cited parenthetically in the text.
140 Notes to ch. 2
12. However, both pagan and peasant rst derive from the Latin pagus. In the
words of Eric Partridge: pagus in all probability derives from pangere, to stick
(something) into (esp. the ground), to x rmly, and therefore akin to pax.
Origins: AShort Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (London, 1958), 463.
Also see nn. 13 and 14 below.
13. Generally Theodosius I is credited with attaching our present meaning of
pagan to pagus at around 400 bc. Certainly by the time of Augustine, pagus
as pagan was widely in use.
14. This interpretation (which is admittedly my own) of pagans origin from
pagus is certainly debatable. Though it has been suggested from the sixteenth
century onward (probably beginning with Denys Godefroy) that pagans
means civilians since they stand in opposition to Christians as the soldiers of
Christ, more recently Pierre Chuvin, while acknowledging that pagus suggests
a man whose roots . . . are where he lives, takes this to mean that pagans
are quite simply people of the place, town or country, whereas the alieni, the
people from elsewhere, were increasingly Christian. A Chronicle of the Last
Pagans, trans. B. A. Archer (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 89.
15. Let me be quite clear in stating that I am not arguing that Milton, master
wordsmith, is forging a new meaning for either the word peasant or pagan
directly, as each word is used by the writer only once in his poetry. I merely
wish to suggest that, in a broader sense, Milton is challenging us to reconsider
just what we mean by pagan and Christian.
16. Serano Della Salandra, Adamo Caduto, trans. Watson Kirkconnell, in Kirk-
connell, The Celestial Cycle (Toronto, 1952), 29293.
17. William Kerrigan, The Sacred Complex: On the Psychogenesis of Paradise Lost
(Cambridge, Mass., 1983), 279.
18. Bruce W. Foltz, Inhabiting the Earth: Heidegger, Environmental Ethics, and the
Metaphysics of Nature (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1995), 164.
19. For a further analysis, see Martin Heideggers Nietzsche, Volume 1: The Will to
Power as Art, trans. David Farrell Krell (New York, 1979), 20010.
20. As Nietzsche succinctly puts it, in Platos doctrine the true world is attainable
for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man; he lives in it, he is it, while in Niet-
zsches understanding of Christianity the true world is unattainable for now,
but promised for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man. Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Portable Nietzsche. Trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, 1954), 485.
21. Lynn White, Jr., The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis, in The
Ecocriticism Reader, ed. Cheryl Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (Athens, Ga.,
1996), 10. The immediately following references to White are also to this
page.
22. Stella Revard, Milton and the Tangles of Neaeras Hair: The Making of the 1645
Poems (Columbia, Mo., 1997), 74.
23. Cedric Brown, John Miltons Aristocratic Entertainments (Cambridge, 1985),
54.
24. Richard Neuse, Metamorphosis and Symbolic Action in Comus, ELH 34
(1967), 58.
Notes to ch. 2 141
25. For a consideration of Miltons sources of the Sabrina myth, see John D. Cox,
Poetry and History in Miltons Country Masque, ELH 44 (1977), 634.
26. Arne Naess, Self-Realization: An Ecological Approach to Being in the World,
in Deep Ecology for the Twenty-First Century, 231.
27. Bill Devall, Simple in Means, Rich in Ends: Practicing Deep Ecology (Salt Lake
City, 1988) 46.
28. Diane Kelsey McColley, Miltons Eve (Urbana, Ill., 1983), 126.
29. Anexplanationof my use of dominion is inorder here. Inthe aforementioned
paper by environmentalist Lynn White Jr., the charge is made that much of the
ruthlessness towards nature in the modern West can be attributed to Genesis
1:28, where man is indeed given dominion over the Earth. While for two
decades Whites viewgainedinuence, in1989 Jeremy Cohenpublisheda book-
length treatment onthe inuence of Genesis 1:28, concluding that, with regard
to Genesis 1:28 itself, the ecologically oriented thesis of Lynn White and others
can now be laid to rest. Rarely, if ever, did premodern Jews and Christians
construe this verse as a license for the selsh exploitation of the environment.
Jeremy Cohen, Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It: The Ancient
and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text (Ithaca, 1989), 5.
Building in part on Cohens work, Jeffery Theis recently explored, in en-
vironmental terms, the inuence of the early chapters of Genesis on Paradise
Lost. Considering not only Genesis 1:28 but Genesis 2:15, where human beings
are put into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it, Theis notes that,
unlike in the history of the modern West, there is a literal interpretation (and
thus, a misinterpretation) of [Genesis] 1:2628 in Paradise Lost: Satans un-
derstanding of dominion and rule. By contrast, Theis argues that in the epic
Adamand Eves perception of their relation to the Earth is largely derived from
Genesis 2:15 (echoed in Paradise Lost in the instruction Adam receives to Till
and keep Paradise [7:320]) which Adam and Eve choose to interpret through
physical actions that culminate in an environmental practice which fuses work
in Eden with worship. As was intimated by McColley, through their garden-
ing practices Adamand Eve reveal their interpretation of dominion as to Till
and keep the specic place (the Garden) they inhabit. Therefore, instead of
standing outside of nature and subduing it, says Theis, Adam and Eve stand
within it, and their task of tilling and keeping the land helps complete the
natural world. Jeffery S. Theis, The Environmental Ethics of Paradise Lost:
Miltons Exegesis of Genesis IIII, 74, 71, 64. I believe my argument that Eve
is a genius loci in Paradise Lost, caring for the specic place called the Garden,
builds upon Theiss insights.
30. Michael Lieb has noticed that when Adam and Eve led the Vine / To wed
her Elm (5.21112) there is also a blending of fertility and fecundity: the
underlying image undeniably relates to the basic sexual metaphor of propa-
gation. Adam and Eve cause a wedding to occur between plant and plant, so
that barrenness may be avoided. The Dialectics of Creation: Patterns of Birth
and Regeneration in Paradise Lost (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), 73. Jeffery Theis
builds upon Liebs insight by suggesting that the marriage metaphor . . . links
142 Notes to chs. 23
the controlling act of gardening with the loving and productive act of mar-
riage . . . This creates a complex whole within which nature and human
beings are (in modern environmental terms) an interrelated ecosystem. The
Environmental Ethics of Paradise Lost: Miltons Exegesis of Genesis IIII,
72.
31. Not only do the Genius of the Northern Wood and Adam and Eve rise in their
morning to brush off the dew and otherwise tend their respective places, but
angels also have a similar vocation, as in Heavn the Trees / Of life ambrosial
frutage bear, and vines / Yield Nectar, though from the boughs each Morn /
We brush melliuous Dewes (5.42629). So it seems angels may not be, as
Lynn White suspected, mobile as the Saints themselves, but rmly rooted in
the heavenly place they tend. Lynn White, Jr., The Historical Roots of Our
Ecological Crisis, 10.
32. Donald M. Freedmanhas aptly remarked of these lines: inresponse to its nurse
[Eve] the natural world of growing things grows, fullls its intrinsic nature,
becomes more like itself under her tutelage. Milton intensies the point by his
play on gladier, in which the attributed delight of the owers on encountering
Eve is registered as more emphatic and healthier growth. The natural response
to the hand of Eve is for vegetation to grow better and happier. The Lady
in the Garden: On the Literary Genetics of Miltons Eve, Milton Studies 35
(1997), 130.
CHAPTER 3
1. Wendell Berry, Standing by Words (San Francisco, 1983), 178.
2. Stephen M. Fallon, Milton Among the Philosophers (Ithace, 1991), 136.
3. I am, of course, speaking in a very general (and admittedly imprecise) way
about Christianity which unfortunately is often the case with many envi-
ronmentalists. Certainly many medieval theologians followed Augustine in
holding that he who extols the nature of the soul as the chief good, and con-
demns the nature of the esh as it were evil, assuredly is eshy both in his love
of the soul and hatred of the esh. The City of God Against the Pagans. Trans.
Philip Levine (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), Vol. 4, 28183.
4. Diane McColley, Eves Dream, Milton Studies 12 (1978), 39.
5. Ibid., 40. Van den Vondels passage is also quoted from this page.
6. For one of the many identications of the temptation to sensuality in Paradise
Lost, see Balachandra Rajan, who argues that Milton goes out of his way to
draw attention to Eves gluttony. Paradise Lost and the Seventeenth Century
Reader (London, 1947), 70. In Miltons own time this view of the Fall was
well depicted, as in Hugo Grotiuss Adamus Exul (The Exile of Adam, 1601):
because of Satans temptation, Man has withdrawn his eyes from Heaven to
earthy / things. Trans. Watson Kirkconnell, in Kirkconnell, The Celestial Cycle
(Toronto, 1952), 211.
7. Though not with direct reference to the Earth, a related understanding of the
Fall resulting froman upward pull on Eve who aspires to intellectual equality
Notes to chs. 34 143
with angels was suggested by M. M. Mahood, Poetry and Humanism (New
York, 1970), 221. Similarly, Patrick Cullen noted Eves avarice for knowledge
is a Faustian parody of the contemplative life. Infernal Triad: The Flesh, the
World, and the Devil in Spenser and Milton (Princeton, 1974), 109.
8. Walter M. Kendrick, Earth of Flesh, Flesh of Earth: Mother Earth in the
Faerie Queen, Renaissance Quarterly 27 (1974), 537.
9. Richard J. DuRocher, The Wounded Earth in Paradise Lost, Studies in Philol-
ogy 93 (1996), 94. All references to DuRocher are to this text and are cited
parenthetically in the text.
10. My source for this denition is The Oxford English Dictionary, pang, 1.
11. In a sense, the interpretation by Miltons Adam is in accordance with more
recent translations of the Bible: To the woman he said, I will greatly multiply
your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. The Revised
Standard Bible (Texas, 1952), Genesis 3:16. Obviously Miltons interpretation
follows the Authorized Bible.
12. Bauce W. Foltz, Inhabiting the Earth: Heidegger, Environmental Ethics, and the
Metaphysics of Nature (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1995), 4.
13. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologia, ed. and trans. Thomas Gilby and T. C.
OBrien (New York, 1963), Vol. 26, 91. The Latin is also quoted from this
volume. Though generally overlooking Aquinas, Merritt Y. Hughes considers
the obvious (John Donne) and the obscure (Guillaume de Salluste) literary
sources of the tradition that Earth was wounded by Original Sin in his Earth
Felt the Wound, ELH 36 (1969), 193214.
14. Paul Shepard, Ecology and Man A Viewpoint, in Deep Ecology for the
Twenty-First Century, ed. George Session (Boston, 1995), 13334.
15. Wendell Berry, A Native Hill, in Recollected Essays: 17651980 (New York,
1981), 7980, 105.
16. Wendell Berry, The Long-Legged House, in Recollected Essays: 19651980
(New York, 1981), 52.
17. Diane McColley, Miltons Eve (Urbana, 1983), 110, 146, 112.
18. Wendell Berry, The Long-Legged House, 52.
CHAPTER 4
1. Martin Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking, trans. John M. Anderson and
E. Hans Freund (New York, 1966), 48.
2. As Barbara Lewalski succinctly reminds us, in De Doctrina Milton denes
Christs kingdomas existing in two stages, the Kingdomof Grace (the invisible
church), whichis at hand, andthe Kingdomof Glory (the millennial kingdom),
which is to come. Though both are given by Christ, the Kingdom of Grace
will, through Gods grace and human action, do much to regenerate the here
and now into a Paradise assuming humans take the initiative to attempt to
regenerate the here and now. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Miltons Brief Epic: The
Genre, Meaning, and Art of Paradise Regained (Providence, 1966), 257.
3. Henry David Thoreau, Walden, ed. Joseph W. Krutch (New York, 1962), 67.
144 Notes to ch. 4
4. Cedric Brown, John Miltons Aristocratic Entertainments (Cambridge, 1985),
129.
5. Stella Revard, Milton and the Tangles of Neaeras Hair: The Making of the 1645
Poems (Columbia, Mo., 1997), 136.
6. For a consideration of Miltons sources of the Sabrina myth, see Variorum(The
Minor English poems), 95673. Also, John D. Cox, Poetry and History in
Miltons Country Masque, ELH 44 (1977), 634.
7. Cedric Brown, John Miltons Aristocratic Entertainments, 124.
8. Wendell Berry, The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural
(New York, 1981), 278. The additional references to Berry in this paragraph are
to this work, pp. 27879.
9. John Knott, Miltons Pastoral Vision (Chicago, 1971), 12122.
10. James Obertino, Miltons use of Aquinas in Comus, Milton Studies 22 (1986),
33.
11. Roy Flannagan, from his introduction to A Mask at Ludlow in The Riverside
Milton, 109.
12. For a splendid account of howin Paradise Lost Miltonextracts a poets revenge
from the metaphysical philosophers by dressing the philosophies of Descartes
and Hobbes in diabolic clothing as the poet gives Satan and other devils in the
epic the dualistic metaphysical views of Miltons age, see Stephen M. Fallon,
Milton Among the Philosophers (Ithaca, 1991), 136. I am, of course, suggesting
that Milton gives the medieval theologians a similar treatment in the Ludlow
Mask through the inclusion of the Attendant Spirit.
13. Roy Flannagan, from his introduction to A Mask at Ludlow in The Riverside
Milton, 109.
14. E. M. W. Tillyard, Milton (New York, 1966), 47.
15. To Nietzsche, in Platos doctrine the true world is attainable for the sage he
lives in it, he is it, while in Christianity the true world is unattainable for now,
but promised for the sage, the pious, the virtuous man. Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York, 1954), 485.
16. As Stephen Fallon succinctly comments on this section (ll. 46163) of the Mask:
In this Neoplatonic version of the body and soul, creatures are arranged along
an emanative hierarchy; the purer the soul the more rened the body. The
step from Platos strict dualism to Neoplatonism and its monistic tendencies
is mediated by Pauline dualism constructed as it is on a Hebraic monistic
conception of soul and body. Though Nietzsche would take exception to
Platos strict dualism, believing Platonic doctrine not strictly dualistic, Fallon
does make the case that Milton was reclaiming the Apostle Pauls original
sense of esh, sarx, which arguably only became the eshsoul dichotomy in
medieval theology. Stephen M. Fallon, Milton Among the Philosophers, 82.
17. OED denition 6b for the substantive use of rind.
18. The pilot . . . / With xed anchor in his skaly rind / Moors by his side under
the Lee (Paradise Lost 1.20710). Cited by the OED as denition 5 for the
substantive use of rind.
Notes to chs. 45 145
19. Others whose fruit burnisht with Golden rinde (Paradise Lost 1.249). OED
denition 3b for rind as substantive.
20. Stephen M. Fallon, Milton Among the Philosophers, 82.
21. Richard Neuse, Metamorphosis and Symbolic Action in Comus, ELH 34
(1967), 58.
22. Cedric Brown, John Miltons Aristocratic Entertainments, 66.
23. Ibid., 69.
24. A. J. Hoover, Friedrich Nietzsche: His Life and Thought (Westport, 1994), 8.
25. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche, 51819.
26. A. S. P. Woodhouse and Douglas Bush, A Variorum Commentary on the Poems
of John Milton: Volume Two, The Minor English Poems (New York, 1972), 769.
27. For a history of Philostratus and his inuences, see Frederick Charles Cople-
ston, A History of Philosophy, Volume 1 (New York, 1993).
28. A. S. P. Woodhouse and Douglas Bush, A Variorum Commentary, 76971.
29. Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, trans. Chung-yuan Chang in Tao, A New Way of
Thinking (New York, 1978), 72.
30. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Portable Nietzsche, 518.
31. The Oxford English Dictionary; which credits the Mask at Ludlow for introduc-
ing cateress into English.
32. Wendell Berry, Standing by Words (San Francisco, 1983), 112.
33. The OED references this line (779) of the Ludlow Mask for denition 2b of
crams: to eat greedily or to excess, to stuff oneself; to stuff. Though the
second meaning of Miltons phrase, which suggests forced sexual intercourse,
is certainly implied as crams derives from (as the OED reminds us) the Old
English crummen, to insert. Still Miltons second use of crams here seems
unprecedented, perhaps underscored by the fact that the poet needed to clarify
that the described action not only blasphemes, but is done with besotted
base ingratitude.
CHAPTER 5
1. Colossians 2:8, translation mine. All future references to the Bible, unless
otherwise noted, are to the Authorized Version and are cited parenthetically in
the text.
2. Dayton Haskin, Miltons Burden of Interpretation (Philadelphia, 1994), 1.
3. Ibid., 2.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., xiv.
6. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Trans. Talcott
Parsons (London, 1930), 181. In an environmental continuation of Webers the-
sis, Raymond Murphy argues that The stripping of resources, the accumula-
tion of waste, and in general the degradation of the environment risk producing
an environment less capable of meeting human needs. Extending Webers anal-
ysis leads to the following conclusion. Whereas the Puritan wanted asceticism,
146 Notes to ch. 5
materialist humans (or their decedants) may be forced into asceticism because
their transformationof natures resources into waste andpollutionhas degraded
the natural environment and diminished its future capacity to supply the
resources necessary to produce material goods. Religious asceticism has led
to secular materialism, which in turn threatens to lead to secular asceticism.
Rationality and Nature: A Sociological Inquiry into a Changing Relationship
(Boulder, 1994), 3536. While, as I have argued earlier, Milton also saw the
two-fold danger of asceticism and rampant consumption in Protestantism,
Murphys is a chilling continuation of this line of thinking. We can only hope
that Miltons alternative, which is to live fully in place (as Adam and Eve did
before the Fall in the Garden and Deep Ecologists and Wendell Berry now
urge us all to do), will instead be heeded.
7. Martin Heidegger, Language in the Poem, in On the Way to Language, trans.
Peter D. Hertz (New York, 1971), 16162.
8. James Shiel, Greek Thought and the Rise of Christianity (New York, 1968), 1.
9. Quoted and trans. Edward John Van Buren, The Young Heidegger: Rumor of
the Hidden King (Bloomington, Ind., 1994), 147.
10. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarie and Edward Robinson
(New York, 1962), 44.
11. John D. Caputo, Heidegger and Theology, in The Cambridge Companion
to Heidegger, ed. Charles Guignon (Cambridge, 1993), 272. See also the above
note to Caputo for additional research connecting Luther and destruction.
12. Edward John Van Buren, The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King, 162,
161. To be clear, it should be added that this is not to say that this Christian
origin of deconstruction is the origin of deconstruction. There is evidence
to suggest that Heideggers destruction was also inuenced by the practical
writings (which often struck a note of discord with the more theoretical work)
of Plato, Aristotle, and Seneca. See Van Buren, The Young Heidegger: Rumor
of the Hidden King, 165 ff. For an excellent consideration of how Heideggers
de-struction, at least prior to and including Being and Time (the period I have
been referencing), is very much akin to deconstruction, see WilliamV. Spanos,
Heidegger and Criticism: Retrieving the Cultural Politics of Destruction, foreword
Donald E. Pease (Minneapolis, 1993).
13. McGrath, Luthers Theology of the Cross: Martin Luthers Theological Break-
through (Oxford, 1988), 181, 167.
14. In fairness, it should be noted that two of Heideggers colleagues at the Uni-
versity of Marlburg during part of his decades of silence, theologians Rudolf
Bultmann and Paul Tillich, both held from the start the opinion that Heideg-
gers work owed a massive debt to Lutheran and Catholic Christianity. In 1952
Heideggers lifelong friend Bultmann states, Above all, Martin Heideggers
existential analysis seems to be only a profane philosophical presentation of
the New Testament. Rudolf Bultmann, New Testament and Mythology, trans.
Schubert M. Ogden (Philadelphia, 1984), 23. And of Heideggers philosophy,
Tillich noted in 1936 that, by its explanation of human existence it establishes a
doctrine of man, though unintentionally, which is both the doctrine of human
Notes to ch. 5 147
freedom and human niteness; which is so closely related with the Christian
interpretation of human existence that one is forced to speak of a theonomous
philosophy, in spite of Heideggers emphatic atheism. Though read in light
of the recent work by Van Buren, Heidegger may have been far more inten-
tional in his appropriation of Christian thinking than Tillich realized, de-
spite his emphatic atheism. Paul Tillich, The Interpretation of History, trans.
N. A. Rosetski (NewYork, 1936), 40. Moreover, Heideggers friend and student
Hans-Georg Gadamer stated simply that Heideggers inspiration came from
the young Luther, while the Luther scholar Edmund Schlink held bluntly that
Heideggers analytic of human Dasein is a radical secularization of Luthers
anthropology. Both Gadamer and Schlink are quoted in Van Buren, The
Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King, 150.
15. Heidegger, Being and Time, 44.
16. From an early lecture by Heidegger, quoted and translated by Van Buren, The
Young Heidegger, 15960.
17. Ibid., 160.
18. Ibid., 161.
19. I should note that, in the argument I am advancing, I am reading the Greeks
[who] seek after wisdom of 1 Corinthians in the same way that Luther and the
young Heidegger readit: as the Classical Greek philosophers. InLuthers words,
Consider, moreover, whether Paul himself is not citing the most outstanding
among the Greeks when he says it was the wiser among them who became
fools . . . Tell me, does he not here touch the sublimest achievements of Greek
humanity their reasonings? For this means their best and loftiest ideas and
opinions, which they regard as solid wisdom. Martin Luther, On the Bondage
of the Will, trans. and ed. Philip S. Watson and B. Drewey (Philadelphia, 1969),
296.
But scholarship since Heidegger, such as the groundbreaking work of Willi
Marxsen, has argued that given an early Gnostic inuence on the Church at
Corinth, 1 Corinthians is an early account of Christianitys response by way of
Paul with Greek Gnosticism. Willi Marxsen, Introduction to the NewTestament,
trans. G. Buswell (Oxford, 1968), 74 ff. Nonetheless, as my argument is centered
on the danger of dualistic thinking which promotes an asceticism which seeks
freedomfromEarthly bondage even as it seeks power over the Earth, it could
equally apply to the dualistic philosophy characteristic of Greek Gnosticism
or the Classical Greek tradition which helped to promote those very ideas. Or,
more simply, the aspect of Greek Gnosticism attacked by Paul was the extant
Classical Greek tradition.
Perhaps building on Marxsens work, feminist thinkers such as Carolyn
Merchant have presented general arguments which could suggest that the
Greeks [who] seek after wisdom [sophia] might have a special meaning,
as in certain Gnostic religions The divine mother was named Wisdom, or
Sophia, a Greek translation of the Hebrew hokhmah. Wisdom was the creative
force . . . Her wisdom was bestowed on men and women. Human nature,
like God, consisted in a unity of equal malefemale principles. Evidence for
148 Notes to chs. 56
the appeal of Gnostic androgyny to women is indicated by their attraction
to these heretical groups during the period ad 15020, when Christianity was
struggling to gain its stature as a worlds religion.
Though Merchant (c. Merchant, The Death of Nature; Women, Ecology, and
the Scientic Revolution [San Francisco, 1980], 6768) makes no direct reference
to 1 Corinthians I will destroy the wisdom [sophia] of the wise, I suspect she
would take this as a direct assault on what she sees as a life-giving, non-
patriarchal, deity. Nonetheless, in 1 Corinthians it is clear that what the Greeks
have is a wisdom [sophia] of words [emphasis added] (1 Corinthians 1:17),
and not wisdom as a deity. What is specically in question in 1 Corinthians is
the Christian foolish propensity towards manifest weakness, as opposed to
the Greek wisdom of strength, yet the foolishness of God is wiser than men;
and the weakness of God is stronger than men (1 Corinthians 1:25). Simply
put, it is not a deity (Sophia) that Pauls God wishes to destroy here, but rather
his God would deconstruct the empowered stance towards the world that the
Greeks have achieved through their wisdom of words through philosophy
and science.
20. Rudolf Bultmann, Essays Philosophical and Theological, trans. J. C. G. Greig
(London, 1955), 83.
21. Only a God Can Save Us, quoted in an interview for the German Magazine
Der Spiegal, 31 May 1976.
22. Hubert Dreyfus, Heidegger on the Connection between Nihilism, Art, Tech-
nology, and Politics, in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. Charles
Guignon (Cambridge, 1993), 31011.
23. This is not to say that the Greeks did not embrace opposition: as Nietzsche
so laboriously argued, the play of the Apollonian and Dionysian against each
other was a salient feature not only of Greek tragedy but of Greek life itself.
Nonetheless, what the early Church put forth was not merely an alternative
presence, as the intellectual is to the physical, but rather absence itself, as utter
poverty is to wealth or weakness to strength.
24. Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology (Salt Lake City, 1985), 98.
25. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 44.
CHAPTER 6
1. John Milton, Paradise Regained, 2.324.
2. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Miltons Brief Epic: The Genre, Meaning, and Art of
Paradise Regained (Providence, 1966), vii. Lewalski is hardly alone in nd-
ing Paradise Regained perplexing to mention just a few of the quizzical
responses to the poem: Georgia B. Christopher argues that Miltons sec-
ond epic is a great enigma, if not a great poem, in her The Secret Agent in
Paradise Regained, Modern Language Quarterly 41.2 (June 1980), 131. Moreover,
as William B. Hunter, Jr. observed in his The Double Set of Temptations
in Paradise Regained, It has long been recognized that the construction of
Paradise Regained presents one of the most difcult problems in the entire eld
Notes to ch. 6 149
of Milton interpretation. Milton Studies 14 (1980), 183. Indeed, this has been
recognized for so long that Charles A. Huttar notes that For most of the
eighteenth century Paradise Regained was something of an embarrassment in
his The Passion of Christ in Paradise Regained, English Language Notes 19.3
(March 1992), 236.
3. Martin Luther, Selected Writings of Martin Luther, ed. and trans. T. G. Tappert
(Philadelphia, 1967), 337.
4. This may be somewhat misleading in that Aristotle, in the Metaphysics (Book
X, ch. 4, and elsewhere) and the Logic (Categories: chs. 810, for example),
certainly allowed a category of privation which was not complete deprivation.
Such privation denoted a profound difference of type, though not necessarily
complete absence. But in the case of values such as courage, cowardliness
signied no-thing other than the lack of courage, though Aristotle, clever
fellow that he was, realized that opposite of cowardliness was not courage, but
foolhardiness. Therefore we should all strive for a mean between the extremes
of absence (cowardliness) and presence (foolhardiness). While this approach
does somewhat mitigate the desire completely to marginalize absence, as we all
should be as much cowards as fools, it still both set up the presenceabsence
dyadic structure and held that cowardliness was no-thing. This set the stage
for less enlightened thinking, especially as adapted into Roman culture.
5. Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, In Dubious Battle Skepticismand Fideismin Paradise
Regained, The Huntington Library Quarterly: Studies in English and American
History and Literature 53.2 (Spring 1990), 100.
6. Louis L. Martz, Poet of Exile: A Study of Miltons Poetry (New Haven, 1980),
26566.
7. Donald Swanson and John Mulryan, The Sons Presumed Contempt for
Learning in Paradise Regained; A Biblical and Patristic Resolution, Milton
Studies 27 (1991), 25456.
8. E. M. W. Tillyard, Milton (New York, 1966), 258.
9. Douglas Bush, English Literature in the Seventeenth Century, 16001660 (Oxford,
1962), 412.
10. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Miltons Brief Epic, 164.
11. A. S. P. Woodhouse, Theme and Pattern in Paradise Regained, University of
Toronto Quarterly 25 (195556), 173. Expressed even more simply by Rushdy,
Jesus has understood his own life through the temptations. Ashraf H. A.
Rushdy, Of Paradise Regained: The interpretations of a Career, Milton Studies
24 (1988), 271.
12. John Milton, Paradise Regained, The Riverside Milton, ed. Roy Flannagan (New
York, 1998), 1.15558. All references to Milton are to this edition and are cited
parenthetically in the text.
13. Stanley Fish, Things and Actions Indifferent: The Temptation of Plot in
Paradise Regained, Milton Studies 17 (1983), 165.
14. Because the wilderness is a sort of black clothagainst whichthe temptations are
played out, largely an anti-image (as Albert Cook has noted), it wonderfully
stands as a positive manifestation of the sort of absence and no-thingness which
150 Notes to ch. 6
the Son would bring out of the desert as some-thing real and present to invert
the paradigm of how human beings should behave. Albert Cook, Imaging in
Paradise Regained, Milton Studies 21 (1985), 220. The desert of Matthew 4:1
is eremos, but as Liddell and Scott remind us, eremos has long meant just this
sort of no-thingness as a void or simply the state of being without. Liddell
and Scotts GreekEnglish Lexicon (Oxford, 1978), eremos, denition 2.
15. Strong, Strongs Exhaustive, Concordance (Grand Rapids, 1983), praus, denition
4,239.
16. Donald Swanson and John Mulryan, The Sons Presumed Contempt for
Learning in Paradise Regained, 256.
17. Stanley Fish, Inaction and Silence: The Reader in Paradise Regained, in Calm
of Mind: Tercentenary Essays on Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes in Honor
of John S. Diekhoff, ed. Joseph Anthony Wittreich, Jr. (Cleveland, 1971), 34.
18. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Miltons Brief Epic, 257.
19. Not all would agree with this conclusion. Swanson and Mulryan hold that
the favorable view of Socrates in Book 3 is Miltons true belief and that The
disparagement of Socrates in the forth book seems to be little more than
a tongue-in-cheek debating play to beat the devil at his own dissembling
game. However, given that the reference to Socrates in Book 3 makes only
minor reference to Classical learning, the context instead involving Socrates
method of passive resistance at his death (which made Socrates Equal in
fame to proudest Conquerours [3.99]), does make the conclusion reached by
Swanson and Mulryan somewhat tenuous: The Sons concealment in Book
IV of his true respect for classical learning is illustrated by the inconsistency
of his positive (III, 9598) and negative (III, 29194) verdict on Socrates.
(Swanson and Mulryans second citation here [III, 29194] should read [IV,
29194] there appears to have been a slight misprint in the otherwise reliable
Milton Studies.) Donald Swanson and John Mulryan, The Sons Presumed
Contempt for Learning in Paradise Regained, 255, 258.
20. Donald Swanson and John Mulryan, The Sons Presumed Contempt for
Learning in Paradise Regained, 244.
21. As Wyman Herenden noted, a generation before Milton, writers such as
Spenser began referring to Classic myths to demonstrate that the new golden
age of literature was established on English banks, that Apollo and his troupe of
nymphs could survive in Thames water. Wyman H. Herenden, From Land-
scape to Literature: The River and the Myth of Geography (Pittsburgh, 1986),
225.
22. I am, of course, beginning from the position that Paradise Regained is one
of Miltons last works, in spite of the argument put forth by John Shawcross
that the brief epic was begun after Samson Agonistes and before Paradise Lost.
John T. Shawcross, Paradise Regained: Worthy Thave Not So Long Unsung
(Pittsburgh, 1988), 9. If Shawcross is correct, it may be that the tension Milton
felt with regard to the Greco-Roman tradition weighing so heavily upon him
as he composed Paradise Lost that he felt especially compelled to nish Paradise
Regained. It certainly is the case that the question of accepting the Classical
Notes to ch. 6 151
tradition had weighed on Miltons conscience for some time, as the De Doctrina
urges that we should not rely upon our predecessors or upon antiquity, but
rather to the Bible only. John Milton, Complete Prose Works of John Milton.
Ed. Don M. Wolfe et al. 8 vols. (New Haven, 195382), Vol. VI, 591.
23. Roy Flannagan, from his introduction to Paradise Regained in The Riverside
Milton, 715.
24. See Barbara Lewalskis Miltons Brief Epic, especially pp. 1036.
25. Louis L. Martz, Poet of Exile: A Study of Miltons Poetry, 24849.
26. Donald Swanson and John Mulryan, The Sons Presumed Contempt for
Learning in Paradise Regained, 256.
27. Dayton Haskin, Miltons Burden of Interpretation (Philadelphia, 1994), 16061.
28. Donald Swanson and John Mulryan, The Sons Presumed Contempt for
Learning in Paradise Regained, 243.
29. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Miltons Brief Epic, 291.
30. See Thomas Kuhns The Structure of Scientic Revolution (Chicago, 1970).
31. Dayton Haskin, Miltons Burden of Interpretation, 151, 54.
32. Ibid., 151.
33. It is surprising that Heidegger seems to have largely stopped his historical
investigation of deconstruction at the early Church, and not Jesus. On the one
hand, it is certainly true that the intellectual trend of the time, perhaps best
represented by Bultmann, was to demythologize Christianity, shrugging off
all the mythical aspects of the faith as early Christian thinking was placed
into a modern context, regardless of alleged events in the life of Jesus. As
Bultman once remarkably said, The message of Jesus is a presupposition for
the theology of the New Testament rather than a part of that theology itself.
(Rudolf Bultman, Theology of the New Testament [London: 1965], Vol. 1, 3.)
On the other hand, as I shall argue in terms of Paradise Regained, the Jesus
of the Gospels can clearly be understood as rst initiating the deconstructive
enterprise taken up by Paul, Luther, and Heidegger.
Even a cursory look at the Gospels suggests that it was Jesus, not Paul or
Luther, who rst substituted weakness for power, the lowly for the elevated,
the ordinary for the extraordinary, a physical God for a meta-physical God,
the insignicant for the signicant, a kingdomnot here for a kingdomhere, an
absent God (until the Parousia) for an ever-present God, humiliation for glory,
faith for reason, poverty for wealth. Jesuss deconstruction, though expounded
throughout the Gospels, can perhaps best be seen in what is arguably the New
Testaments version of the Ten Commandments given at the beginning of
the Sermon on the Mount. In these famous lines presented in the Gospels of
Matthew and Luke, each starting with Blessed are (Makarios), Jesus not only
dramatically reveals that Greek values are only one half of dyadic structures,
but goes far further in laying out the mindset which privileges the other half
of the couplet: what to the Greeks was simply no-thing.
Starting in Matthew 5:3, lack of exalted spirit is exchanged for richness in
spirit, mourning replaces celebration, meekness strength, wanting righteous-
ness for having it, mercy for vengeance, peace-making for war-making, being
152 Notes to chs. 67
persecuted for escaping (or worse, dispensing) persecution, and, nally, being
reviled is privileged over being exalted (Matthew 5:311). Similarly when this
sermon is recounted in the Gospel of Luke, poverty is exchanged for wealth,
hunger for being lled, weeping for laughing, being hated for being exalted,
being rejected by society for being accepted, and being thought of as evil for
being though of as good (Luke 6:2122). Seen in this light, this sermon, and
indeed many of Jesus teachings, can be read as a systematic deconstruction of
prevailing Greek and Judaic thinking.
34. Dayton Haskin, Miltons Burden of Interpretation, 150.
35. WilliamB. Hunter, Jr., The Double Set of Temptations in Paradise Regained,
Milton Studies 14 (1980), 190.
36. Ibid., 19091.
CHAPTER 7
1. John Donne, Holy Sonnet 19.
2. Herman Rapaport, Milton and the Postmodern (Lincoln, 1983), 219, 19.
3. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Miltons Brief Epic: The Genre, Meaning and Art of
Paradise Regained (Providence, 1966), 291.
4. Ibid., 291302. As this text will be carefully considered in the following section,
all references to Lewalski are to this edition and are cited parenthetically in the
text.
5. Septuaginta, ed. Alfred Rahils (Stuttgart, 1935), Vol. 2, 317.
6. Augustine, De Trinitate 12.14.2223, trans. A. W. Haddan, in Works, ed. Marcus
Dods (Edinburgh, 1877), 302. Quoted in Lewalski, Miltons Brief Epic, 292.
7. Eugene R. Rice, Jr., The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom (Cambridge, Mass., 1958),
3. Quoted in Lewalski, Miltons Brief Epic, 294.
8. Augustine, De Trinitate 12.14.2223. Quoted as it appears in Lewalski, Miltons
Brief Epic, 292.
9. Nathanael Culverel, An Elegant and Learned Discourse on the Light of Nature
(London, 1652), 128, 20304. Quoted as it appears in Lewalski, Miltons Brief
Epic, 296.
10. Augustine, De Trinitate 12.14.2223.
11. Francisco Filelfo, De Morali Disciplina, Book II, quoted and trans. Lewalski,
Miltons Brief Epic, 294.
12. Nathanael Culverel, An Elegant and Learned Discourse on the Light of Nature,
203.
13. Ibid.
14. Edward John Van Buren, The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King
(Bloomington, Ind., 1994), 18687.
15. Liddell and Scotts GreekEnglish Lexicon (Oxford, 1978), theosebia.
16. Augustine, De Trinitate 12.14.2223.
17. John D. Caputo, Instants, Secrets, and Singularities: Dealing Death in
Kierkegaard and Derrida, in Kierkegaard and Post/Modernity, ed. Martin J.
Notes to ch. 7 153
Matusik and Merold Westphal (Bloomington, Ind., 1995), 216. Published prior
to anEnglishtranslationof Donner la mort, Caputo is translating andquoting
from Jacques Derridas Donner la mort, LEthique du don: Jacques Derrida
et la pensee du don (Paris, 1992). However, since Caputos essay, an English
translation of Donner la mort is now available: Jacques Derrida, The Gift of
Death, trans. David Wills (Chicago, 1995).
18. John D. Caputo, Instants, Secrets, and Singularities, 219.
19. Though I amquoting fromPhilippians, the idea of fear and trembling is tied
to weakness in 1 Corinthians, where Paul relates to the Church at Corinth
that he was with themin weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling (2:3).
20. John D. Caputo, Instants, Secrets, and Singularities, 220.
21. Edward John Van Buren, The Young Heidegger, 186.
22. John D. Caputo, Instants, Secrets, and Singularities, 220.
23. Liddell and Scotts GreekEnglish Lexicon, eidos.
24. Martin Luther, Luthers Works, ed. and trans. WilliamPaul (Philadelphia, 1955),
Vol. 42, 127.
25. Michael Lieb, Our Living Dread: The God of Samson Agonistes, in Milton
Studies 33, ed. Albert C. Labriola (Pittsburgh, 1996).
26. Similarly, David Lowenstein has questioned the whole notion of rational,
progressive revelation in Miltons poetry. Milton and the Drama of History:
Historical Visions, Iconoclasm, and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge, 1990),
133.
27. Actually, it is the Kierkegaard scholar Gordon D. Marino who rst called
Tanners connection of Kierkegaard and Milton exquisite. Anxiety in The
Concept of Anxiety, in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. Alstair
Hannay & Gordon D. Marino (Cambridge, 1998), 328.
28. John S. Tanner, Anxiety in Eden: A Kierkegaardian Reading of Paradise Lost
(Oxford UP, 1992), 18. All references to Tanner are to this edition and are cited
parenthetically in the text.
29. In his History of the Concept of Time, translated by Theodore Kiesiel (Blooming-
ton, Indiana, 1985), Heidegger says It should be noted here that the explication
of these structures of Dasein has nothing to do with any . . . theory of orig-
inal sin. Then, seemingly both to cover up for the fact that these structures
coincide with an existential understanding of the Christian Fall and the fact
that he spent over a decade of his life studying those Christian structures, Hei-
degger adds, It is possible, perhaps necessary, that all of these structures will
reoccur in a theological anthropology, I am in no position to judge how, since
I understand nothing of such things (283). Heidegger is not known for his
strong sense of ethics . . .
30. Hubert L. Dreyfus, Being in the World: A Commentary on Heideggers Being and
Time, Division I (Cambridge, 1991), 31314. All emphasis by Dreyfus.
31. Rudolf Bultmann, Essays Philosophical and Theological, trans. J. C. G. Greig
(London, 1955), 83.
32. Thomas Nagel, The View From Nowhere (New York, 1986).
154 Notes to ch. 8
CHAPTER 8
1. The Authorized Version reads To every thing there is a season. I have altered
the translation of the Hebrew zem-awn from simply season to appointed
season. In the Old Testament zem-awn is alternatively translated as either
season or appointed season, depending on which book is being translated.
For example, the four occurrences in the Book of Numbers are all rendered as
appointed season, though those in Ecclesiastes are translated as season. As
I shall argue in this section, appointed season seems a better translation of
zem-awn for this verse in Ecclesiastes.
2. LeonardMustazza, Language as WeaponinMiltons Paradise Regained, Milton
Studies 18 (1983), 195.
3. A great deal of work has been done on Milton and kairos. See especially: Laurie
B. Zwicky, Kairos in Paradise Regained, ELH(1964), 27177; A. B. Chambers,
The Double Time Scheme in Paradise Regained, Milton Studies 7 (1975), 189
205; also Mother M. Christopher Percheux for a rather surprising large number
of works by Milton which deal with kairos, Milton and Kairos, Milton Studies
12 (1978), 209, n. 1.
4. Although my emphasis is on zem-awn, it should be noted that the Hebrew
word repeatedly used in Ecclesiastes 3 for time is ayth, which also carries the
meaning of season. The distinction here is that zem-awn, as it is used in
Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Ecclesiastes is associated with Gods action, I
will give you rain in due season [zem-awn] [emphasis added] (Leviticus 26:4);
while ayth is associated with human action, a time [ayth] to be born, and a time
[ayth] to die (Ecclesiastes 3:14). This is a small but important distinction, for
while God appoints the season (zem-awn), it is up to human beings to know
the time (ayth) to receive the gift of this season.
5. Martin Heidegger, Building Dwelling Thinking, in Poetry, Language,
Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York, 1971), 150.
6. Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, trans. William Lovitt
(New York, 1977), 17.
7. Resisting the temptation of power while accepting weakness also puts Chris-
tianity in the company of certain schools of Buddhism that call for human
beings to let things be. By urging human beings to let things be, Mahayana
Buddhism is suggesting that we allow all things to emerge in their own time. In
response to the desire to direct and control kairos, Mahayana Buddhism main-
tains that we should take a hands-off approach, witnessing and esteeming the
creation as it unfolds around us, but never inhibiting the emergence.
8. See Andrew McLaughlins The Heart of Deep Ecology, in Deep Ecology for
the Twenty First Century (Boston, 1995), 87.
9. It is important to note that while in English Adam and Eve do reap the
Gardens bounty, in the NewTestament Greek reap is therizo, which, as James
Strong tells us, is the two part proverbial expression for sowing and reaping
[emphasis added]. In holding to this denition, it is interesting that at no
point in Paradise Lost does Milton have Adam and Eve sow plants the sowing
Notes to chs. 89 155
is done by the sovran Planter (4.691). Moreover, therizo has another more
destructive connotation to which the New Testaments Jesus may have been
drawing attention: to cut off, destroy . . . as crops are cut down with a sickle.
Strongs Exhaustive Concordance (Grand Rapids, 1983), therizo.
10. John Mulryan, Through a Glass Darkly: Miltons Reinvention of the Mythological
Tradition (Pittsburgh, 1996), 119.
11. John Milton, Art of Logic, in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Don M.
Wolfe et al., 8 vols. (New Haven, 195382), 8.229.
12. John Mulryan, Through a Glass Darkly, 121.
13. Wendell Berry, Standing by Words (San Francisco, 1983), 112.
14. Luce Irigaray, Place, Interval: A reading of Aristotle, Physics IV, in An Ethics
of Sexual Difference, trans. C. Burke and G. C. Gill (Ithaca, 1993), 35.
15. John Milton, Art of Logic, in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, 8.229.
CHAPTER 9
1. Diane McColley, A Gust for Paradise (Urbana, 1993), 5859.
2. For the iconography of the Creation of Eve in the visual arts, see Diane
McColleys A Gust for Paradise, 2324, 40.
3. Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, intro. Christopher Morris,
2 vols. (London, 1963), Vol. 2, 229.
4. For two of these Renaissance images, see Diane McColleys A Gust for Paradise,
gs. 5 and 18.
5. John Milton, The Works of John Milton, ed. Frank A. Patterson, 18 vols. (New
York, 1933), Vol. 16, 64.
6. Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans, trans. Philip Levine (Cambridge,
Mass., 1966), 14.1. The Latin is also quoted from this Loeb edition.
7. Diane McColley, A Gust for Paradise, 28.
8. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians,
Colossians, and the Thessalonians, trans. John Pringle (Grand Rapids, 1948), 152.
9. Paul Byrne, An Entire Commentary Upon the Whole Epistle of St. Paul to the
Ephesians . . . , ed. Rev. Thomas Smith (Edinburgh, 1866), 107.
10. Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Vol. 2, 339.
11. John Milton, The Works of John Milton, Vol. 16, 211.
12. Martin Heidegger, The Country Path, Envoy 3.11, trans. Michael Heron
(1950), 71.
13. Neil Forsyth, Having Done All to Stand: Biblical and Classical Allusions in
Paradise Lost, Milton Studies 21 (1985), 209. The passage from Virgil (Aeneid
4:44243) is quoted from Forsyth, his translation.
14. Geoffrey H. Hartman, Romantic Poetry and the Genius Loci, in Beyond
Formalism: Literary Essays 19581970 (New Haven, Conn., 1970), 317.
Select bibliography
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologia, ed. and trans. Thomas Gilby and T. C.
OBrien. New York, 1963.
Augustine, De Trinitate. Trans. A. W. Haddan, in Works, ed. Marcus Dods.
Edinburgh, 1877.
The City of God Against the Pagans, trans. Philip Levine. Cambridge, Mass.,
1966.
Berry, Wendell. AContinuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural. NewYork,
1972, 67.
The Unsettling of America: Cultural and Agricultural. San Francisco, 1977.
The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural. New York, 1981,
178.
Recollected Essays: 19651980. New York, 1981.
A Place on Earth. San Francisco, 1983, 317.
Standing by Words. San Francisco, 1983, 178.
Brown, Cedric. John Miltons Aristocratic Entertainments, Cambridge, 1985.
Bultmann, Rudolf. Essays Philosophical and Theological, trans. J. C. G. Greig. Lon-
don, 1955.
Theology of the New Testament. London, 1965.
New Testament and Mythology. Trans. Schubert M. Ogden. Philadelphia, 1984.
Bush, Douglas. English Literature in the Seventeenth Century, 16001660. Oxford,
1962.
Byrne, Paul. An Entire Commentary Upon the Whole Epistle of St. Paul to the
Ephesians . . . , ed. Rev. Thomas Smith. Edinburgh, 1866.
Calvin, John. Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Philippians,
Colossians, and the Thessalonians, trans. John Pringle. Grand Rapids, 1948.
Caputo, John D. Heidegger and Theology, in The Cambridge Companion to
Milton, ed. Charles Guignon. Cambridge, 1993.
Instants, Secrets, and Singularities: Dealing Death in Kierkegaard and
Derrida, in Kierkegaard and Post/Modernity, ed. Martin J. Matusik and
Merold Westphal. Bloomington, 1995.
Casey, Edward S. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Berkeley, 1997.
Cato, Marcus Porcius. On Agriculture, trans. William Davis Hooper. Cambridge,
1967.
156
Select bibliography 157
Chambers, A. B. The Double Time Scheme in Paradise Regained. Milton Studies
7 (1975).
Christopher, Georgia B. The Secret Agent inParadise Regained. ModernLanguage
Quarterly 41.2 (June 1980).
Chuvin, Pierre. A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, trans. B. A. Archer. Cambridge,
1990.
Cohen, Jeremy. Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It: The Ancient
and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text. Ithaca, 1989.
Cook, Albert. Imaging in Paradise Regained. Milton Studies 21 (1985).
Copleston, Frederick Charles. A History of Philosophy, Volume 1. New York, 1993.
Cox, John D. Poetry and History in Miltons Country Masque, English Language
Notes 44 (1977).
Cullen, Patrick. Infernal Triad: The Flesh, the World, and the Devil in Spenser and
Milton. Princeton, 1974.
Culverel, Nathanael. An Elegant and Learned Discourse on the Light of Nature.
London 1652.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Spivak. London, 1974.
Donner la mort, LEthique du don: Jacques Derrida et la pensee du don. Paris,
1992.
The Gift of Death. Trans. David Wills. Chicago, 1995.
Devall, Bill. Simple in Means, Rich in Ends: Practicing Deep Ecology. Salt Lake City,
1988.
Devall, Bill and George Sessions. Deep Ecology. Salt Lake City, 1985.
Dodge, Jim. Living By Life, CoEvolution Quarterly 32 (Winter 1981).
Donnelly, Phillip J. Matter Versus Body: The Character of Miltons Monism.
Milton Quarterly 33 (October 1999).
Dreyfus, Hubert L. Being in the World: A Commentary on Heideggers Being and
Time, Division I. Cambridge, 1991.
Heidegger on the Connection between Nihilism, Art, Technology, and
Politics, in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. Charles Guignon.
Cambridge, 1993.
Duncan, Anthony. The Elements of Celtic Christianity. Shaftesbury, 1992.
DuRocher, Richard J. The Wounded Earth in Paradise Lost. Studies in Philology
93 (1996).
Fallon, Stephen M. Milton Among the Philosophers. Ithaca, 1991.
Fish, Stanley. Inaction and Silence: The Reader in Paradise Regained, in Calm of
Mind: Tercentenary Essays on Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes in Honor
of John S. Diekhoff, ed. Joseph Anthony Wittreich, Jr. Cleveland, 1971.
Problem Solving in Comus, in Illustrious Evidence: Approaches to English Lit-
erature in the Early Seventeenth Century, ed. and intro. Earl Miner. Berkeley,
1975.
Things and Actions Indifferent: the Temptation of Plot in Paradise Regained.
Milton Studies 17 (1983).
Fitter, Christopher. Native Soil: The Rhetoric of Exile Lament and Exile Con-
solidation in Paradise Lost. Milton Studies 20 (1984).
158 Select bibliography
Fletcher, Harris, ed. The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton. Cambridge, Mass.,
1941.
Foltz, Bruce W. Inhabiting the Earth: Heidegger, Environmental Ethics, and the
Metaphysics of Nature. New Jersey, 1995.
Forsyth, Neil. Having Done All to Stand: Biblical and Classical Allusions in
Paradise Lost. Milton Studies 21 (1985).
Freedman, Donald M. The Lady in the Garden: On the Literary Genetics of
Miltons Eve. Milton Studies 35 (1997).
Furman, Wendy and Virginia James Tufte. Metaphysical Tears: Carlotta
Petrinas Re-Presentations of Paradise Lost, Book IX. Milton Studies 36
(1998).
Gouwens, David J. Kierkegaard as Religious Thinker. Cambridge, 1996.
Grotius, Hugo. Adamus Exul, trans. Watson Kirkconnell, in Kirkconnell, The
Celestial Cycle. Toronto, 1952.
Gurwitsche, Aaron. Human Encounters in the Social World. Pittsburgh, 1979.
Harrison, Robert Pogue. Forests: The Shadow of Civilization. Chicago, 1992.
Hartman, Geoffrey H. Romantic Poetry and the Genius Loci, in Beyond For-
malism: Literary Essays 19581970. New Haven, 1970.
Haskin, Dayton. Miltons Burden of Interpretation. Philadelphia, 1994.
The Country Path, trans. Michael Heron in Envoy 3.11 (1950).
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward
Robinson. New York, 1962.
Discourse on Thinking, trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund. New
York, 1966.
Building Dwelling Thinking, in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert
Hofstadter. New York, 1971.
Language in the Poem, in On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz. New
York, 1971.
Only a God Can Save Us, quoted in an interview for the German Magazine
Der Spiegal (31 May 1976).
The Question Concerning Technology, trans. William Lovitt. New York, 1977.
Where Do I Stay in the Provinces, trans. Thomas J. Sheehan, in Listening:
Journal of Religion and Culture 12.3 (Fall 1977).
Nietzsche, Volume 1: The Will to Power as Art, trans. David Farrell Krell. New
York, 1979.
History of the Concept of Time, trans. Theodore Kiesiel. Bloomington, Ind.,
1985.
Herenden, Wyman H. From Landscape to Literature: The River and the Myth of
Geography. Pittsburgh, 1986.
Hoffman, Piotr. Death, Time, History: Division II of Being and Time, in
The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. Charles Guignon. Cambridge,
1993.
Hooker, Richard. Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, intro. Christopher Morris.
2 vols. London, 1963.
Hoover, A. J. Friedrich Nietzsche: His Life and Thought. Westport, 1994.
Select bibliography 159
Hughes, Merritt Y. Earth Felt the Wound. English Language Notes 36 (1969).
Hunter, William B. Jr. The Double Set of Temptations in Paradise Regained.
Milton Studies 14 (1980).
Huttar, Charles A. The Passion of Christ in Paradise Regained. English Language
Notes 19.3 (March 1992).
Irigaray, Luce. Place, Interval: A Reading of Aristotle, Physics IV, in An Ethics of
Sexual Difference, trans. C. Burke and G. C. Gill. Ithaca, 1993, 35.
Jung, Hwa Yol and Petee Jung. The Way of Ecopiety: A Philosophic Minuet for
Ethological Ethics, in Commonplaces: Essays on the Nature of Place, ed. David
W. Black, Donald Kunze, and John Pickles. Lanham, 1989.
Kendrick, Walter M. Earth of Flesh, Flesh of Earth: Mother Earth in the Faerie
Queen. Renaissance Quarterly 27 (1974).
Kerrigan, William. The Sacred Complex: On the Psychogenesis of Paradise Lost.
Cambridge, Mass., 1983.
Kierkegaard, Soren. Christian Discourses and the Lilies of the Field and the Birds of
the Air, trans. and intro. Walter Lowrie. London, 1940.
Kirkconnell, Watson. The Celestial Cycle. Toronto, 1952.
Knott, John. Miltons Pastoral Vision. Chicago, 1971.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientic Revolution. Chicago, 1970.
LaChapelle, Delores. Earth Wisdom. Colorado, 1978.
Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. Miltons Brief Epic: The Genre, Meaning, and Art of Par-
adise Regained. Providence, 1966.
Liddell and Scotts GreekEnglish Lexicon. Oxford, 1978.
Lieb, Michael. The Dialectics of Creation: Patterns of Birth and Regeneration in
Paradise Lost. Cambridge, Mass., 1970.
Poetics of the Holy: A Reading of Paradise Lost. Chapel Hill, 1981.
Our Living Dread: The God of Samson Agonistes. Milton Studies 33 (1996).
Lowenstein, David. Milton and the Drama of History: Historical Visions, Iconoclasm,
and the Literary Imagination. Cambridge, 1990.
Luthers Works, ed. and trans. William Pauk. Philadelphia, 1955.
Luther, Martin. Luther: Lectures on Romans, ed. and trans. William Pauk. Philadel-
phia, 1959.
Selected Writings of Martin Luther, ed. and trans. T. G. Tappert. Philadelphia,
1967.
On the Bondage of the Will, ed. and trans. Philip S. Watson and B. Drewey.
Philadelphia, 1969.
Mahood, M. M. Poetry and Humanism. New York, 1970.
Marino, Gordon D. Anxiety in The Concept of Anxiety, in The Cambridge
Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. Alstair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino.
Cambridge, 1998.
Marjara, Harinder Singh. Analogy in the Scientic Imagery of Paradise Lost.
Milton Studies 26 (1990).
Martz, Louis L. Poet of Exile: A Study of Miltons Poetry. New Haven, 1980.
Marxsen, Willi. Introduction to the NewTestament, trans. G. Buswell. Oxford, 1968.
160 Select bibliography
Mathews, Freya. ConservationandSelf-Realization: ADeepEcology Perspective.
Environmental Ethics 10 (1988).
McColley, Diane, Eves Dream. Milton Studies 12 (1978).
Miltons Eve, Urbana, 1983.
A Gust for Paradise. Urbana, 1993.
Benecent Hierarchies: Reading Milton Greenly, in Spokesperson Milton:
Voices in Contemporary Criticism, ed. Charles W. Durham and Kristin Pruitt
McColgan. Selinsgrove, 1994.
McGrath, Alister E. Luthers Theology of the Cross: Martin Luthers Theological
Breakthrough. Oxford, 1985.
McLaughlin, Andrew. The Heart of DeepEcology, inDeep Ecology for the Twenty-
First Century. Shambhala, 1995.
Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature; Women, Ecology, and the Scientic Revo-
lution. San Francisco, 1980.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. London, 1966.
Milton, John The Works of John Milton, ed. Frank A. Patterson, 18 vols. New York,
1933.
Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Don M. Wolfe et al. 8 vols. NewHaven,
195382.
The Riverside Milton, ed. Roy Flannagan. New York, 1998.
Mulryan, John. Through a Glass Darkly: Miltons Reinvention of the Mythological
Tradition. Pittsburgh, 1996.
Murphy, Raymond. Rationality and Nature: A Sociological Inquiry into a Changing
Relationship. Boulder, 1994.
Mustazza, Leonard. Language as Weapon in Miltons Paradise Regained. Milton
Studies 18 (1983).
Naess, Arne. Four Modern Philosophers: Carnap, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Sartre.
Chicago, 1965.
Self-Realization: An Ecological Approach to Being in the World, in Deep
Ecology for the Twenty-First Century, ed. George Sessions. Boston, 1995.
Nagel, Thomas. The View From Nowhere. New York, 1986.
Neuse, Richard. Metamorphosis and Symbolic Action in Comus. English
Language Notes 34 (1967).
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufman. New York,
1954.
Obertino, James. Miltons Use of Aquinas in Comus. Milton Studies 22 (1986).
Oram, William A. The Invocation of Sabrina. Studies in English Literature 24
(1984).
Partridge, Eric. Origins: AShort Etymological Dictionary of Modern English. London,
1958.
Pascal, Blaise. Pensees. Trans. H. F. Stewart. New York, 1967.
Percheux, Mother M. Christopher. Milton and Kairos. Milton Studies 12 (1978).
Plotinus. Enneads. Trans. A. H. Armstrong. vol. 7. Cambridge, 1984.
Poggeler, Otto. Destruction and Moment, in Reading Heidegger from the Start:
Essays in his Earliest Thought, ed. Theodore Kisiel and John van Buren Albany,
1994.
Select bibliography 161
Poole, Roger. The Unknown Kierkegaard: Twentieth-century Receptions, in
The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. Alstair Hannay and Gordon
D. Marino. Cambridge, 1998.
Quarles, Francis. Emblemes. Intro. A. D. Cousins. New York, 1991.
Rapaport, Herman. Milton and the Postmodern. Lincoln, Neb., 1983.
Revard, Stella. Milton and the Tangles of Neaeras Hair: The Making of the 1645
Poems. Columbia, 1997.
Rice, Eugene R. Jr. The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom. Cambridge, Mass., 1958.
Rushdy, Ashraf H. A. Of Paradise Regained: The Interpretations of a Career.
Milton Studies 24 (1988).
In Dubious Battle: Skepticismand Fideismin Paradise Regained. The Hunting-
ton Library Quarterly: Studies in English and American History and Literature
53.2 (Spring 1990).
Salandra, Serano Della. Adamo Caduto, trans. Watson Kirkconnell, in Kirkcon-
nell, The Celestial Cycle. Toronto, 1952.
Septuaginta, ed. Alfred Rohils. Stuttgart, 1935.
Sessions, George. Western Process Metaphysics Heraclitus, Whitehead, Spinoza,
in Deep Ecology. Salt Lake City, 1985.
Ecocentrism and the Anthropcentic Detour, in Deep Ecology for the Twenty-
First Century, ed. George Sessions. Boston, 1995.
Shawcross, John T. ANote on the Piedmont Massacre. Milton Quarterly 6 (1972).
Paradise Regained: Worthy Thave Not So Long Unsung. Pittsburgh, 1988.
Shepard, Paul. Ecology and Man A Viewpoint, in Deep Ecology for the Twenty-
First Century, ed. George Sessions. Boston, 1995.
Shiel, James. Greek Thought and the Rise of Christianity. New York, 1968.
Snyder, Gary. Buddhism and the Possibilities of a Planetary Culture, Appendix
G to George Sessionss Deep Ecology. Salt Lake City, 1985.
Re-Habitation, in The Deep Ecology Movement: An Introductory Anthology, ed.
Alan Drengson and Yuichi Inoue. Berkeley, 1995.
Spanos, William V. Heidegger and Criticism: Retrieving the Cultural Politics of De-
struction, foreword Donald E. Pease. Minneapolis, 1993.
Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queen. Ed. Edwin Greenlaw. Baltimore, 1933.
Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West: Perspectives of World History, Volume 2,
trans. Charles Francis Atkinson. New York, 1928.
Strong, James. Strongs Exhaustive Concordance. Grand Rapids, 1983.
Svendsen, Kester. Miltons Sonnet on the Massacre in Piedmont. The Shakespeare
Association Bulletin 20 (1945).
Swanson, DonaldandJohnMulryan. The Sons PresumedContempt for Learning
in Paradise Regained; a Biblical and Patristic Resolution. Milton Studies 27
(1991).
Theis, Jeffery S. The Environmental Ethics of Paradise Lost: Miltons Exegesis of
Genesis IIII. Milton Studies 34 (1996).
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden, ed. Joseph W. Krutch. New York, 1962.
Tillich, Paul. The Interpretation of History, trans. N. A. Rosetski. New York, 1936.
Tillyard, E. M. W. Milton. New York, 1966.
Tzu, Lao. Tao Te Ching, trans. Chung-yuan Chang. New York, 1978.
162 Select bibliography
Van Buren, Edward John. The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King.
Bloomington, Ind., 1994.
Varro, Marcus Terentius. On Agriculture, trans. William Davis Hooper.
Cambridge, 1967.
Watts, Alan. The World is Your Body, in The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing
Who You Are. New York, 1966.
Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons.
London, 1930.
White, Lynn, Jr. The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis, in The Ecocriti-
cism Reader, ed. Cheryl Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. Athens, 1996.
Whitman, Jon. Losing a Position and Taking One: Theories of Place in Paradise
Lost. Milton Studies 29 (1992).
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logio-Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears and B. F.
McGuinness. London, 1961.
Woodhouse, A. S. P. Theme and Pattern in Paradise Regained. University of
Toronto Quarterly 25 (1955).
Zwicky, Laurie B. Kairos in Paradise Regained. English Language Notes 31 (1964).
Index
Appolonius of Tyana 68
Aquinas, Thomas 52
Aristotle 32, 78, 8688, 99, 100, 104, 109, 149
Augustine 10308, 127, 142
Bayne, Paul 131
Berry, Wendell 8, 11, 14, 17, 1819, 21, 2324, 29,
4354, 59, 71, 123, 135, 137
Bower in Paradise Lost 4, 19, 2529, 4041
Bridge from Hell in Paradise Lost 1617
Brown, Cedric 36, 58, 59, 67
Bultmann, Rudolf 83, 112, 146, 151
Bush, Douglas 90
Calvin, John 131
Caputo, John D. 79, 80, 85, 10708
Casey, Edward S. 15
Cecil, Sir William 2
Childrearing, in Eden 2728
Clarkson, L. A. 135
Cohen, Jeremy 141
Cook, Albert 149
Crasset, Edward 3
Culverel, Nathanael 10406
Deconstruction 56, 3035, 52, 8688
Deep Ecology 34, 1115, 22
Deforestation 13
Derrida, Jacques 7, 30, 31, 83, 98, 10609
Descartes, Ren e 4, 21, 22, 23, 47
Devall, Bill 13, 14, 38
Dionysus 6768, 69
Dominion: in Paradise Lost 4, 18, 2529, 32, 39;
in Paradise Regained 9394
Donne, John 102
Donnely, Phillip J. 138
Dreyfus, Hubert L. 84
Dualism 4, 1213, 22, 23, 3035, 44, 47, 52, 56,
65, 69, 11415
DuRocher, Richard J. vi, 11, 4849, 12534,
136
Earths wound in Paradise Lost 4951, 58, 60
Education, in Eden 2729
Ernle, Lord 135
Eve, in Paradise Lost viii, 1, 45, 7, 8, 11, 1921,
25, 3942, 4354, 6061, 62, 6365, 11517,
12122, 12534
Existential hero 2324
Evelyn, John 3
Fall, in Paradise Lost 3, 45, 16, 20, 4354, 56, 57,
63
Fallon, Stephen M. 24, 47, 139, 144
Fens, draining of 2, 17
Filelfo, Francisco 10607
Fish, Stanley 91
Fitter, Christopher 11, 1921, 136
Fitzherbert, John 2
Flannagan, Roy 61, 96, 135
Foltz, Bruce W. 35, 50
Forestry, Miltons critique of 2627
Forsyth, Neil 132
Freedman, Donald M. 142
Gadamer, Hans-Georg 147
Genius loci: Attendent Spirit in The Ludlow
Mask as 66; Eve as 29, 30, 3542, 43, 5154,
5758, 130; in the 1645 Poems 4, 5; Sabrina in
The Ludlow Mask as 37, 5862, 66, 70, 130
Geopiety. See Deep Ecology
Godefoy, Denys 140
Googe, Barnabe 2
Harrison, Robert Pogue 21, 135
Hartman, Geoffrey H. 133
Haskin, Dayton 75, 98, 99
Heidegger, Martin 1, 56, 7, 8, 11, 12, 15, 30,
3132, 55, 77, 7885, 8788, 96, 97, 98, 102,
111, 112, 11718, 132, 135
Herenden, Wyman H. 150
Hobbes, Thomas 47
Hoffman, Piotr 21
163
164 Index
Hooker, Richard 126, 127, 131
Hughes, Merritt Y. 143
Hunter, William B. 100, 148
Huttar, Charles A. 149
Irigaray, Luce 124
Jung, Hwa Yol 136
Jung, Petee 136
Kairos 7, 11324
Kendrick, Walter M. 48
Kerrigan, William 34
Kierkegaard, Soren 6, 7, 8, 77, 107, 10912
Knott, John 60
Kuhn, Thomas 99
Labriola, Albert vi
LaChapelle, Delores 12, 14, 24, 136
Lao Tzu 70
Leiss, William 29
Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer 86, 90, 95, 97, 98,
10206, 143
Lieb, Michael 109, 141
Luther, Martin 6, 30, 3132, 52, 8688, 96, 97,
102, 10809, 130, 147
Mahood, M. M. 143
Marino, Gordon D. 159
Martz, Louis L. 89, 97
Marxsen, Willi 147
Mathews, Freya 12
McColley, Diane vi, vii, viii, ix, 3, 11, 28, 47, 53,
125, 129, 136
Merchant, Carolyn 147
Milton, John: Arcades 3637, 3842, 60;
Lycidas 36, 37, 60; De Doctorina Christiana
70; Divorce phamplets 75; Il Penseroso 36,
60; The Ludlow Mask 5, 7, 37, 46, 113, 11617,
12324; The Nativity ode 36, 51, 5872;
Paradise Lost viiiix, 1, 2, 3, 45, 78, 11,
1529, 3942, 4354, 5557, 6061, 62, 86,
9798, 11012, 113, 11517, 12122, 123, 12534;
Paradise Regained 67, 38, 55, 5758, 62, 64,
76, 85, 86101, 113, 11517, 12223, 125, 13233;
Samson Agonistes 38, 109; The History of
Britian 37, 58
Mulryan, John 89, 92, 96, 97, 98, 122, 123,
150
Murphy, Raymond 145
Mustazza, Leonard 113
Naess, Arne 11, 12, 13, 20, 37, 136
Nagel, Thomas 112
Neuse, Richard 37, 65
Newton, Isaac 15
Nietzsche, Friedrich 8, 31, 3435, 48, 63, 6768,
70, 7172, 140
Obertino, James 60
Pagan, origins of term 3334, 128
Pandemonium, in Paradise Lost 18, 24, 27, 29,
11012, 121
Paul, Apostle 56, 7585, 86, 102, 113, 12728,
130, 131
Perlin, John 135
Philostratus the elder 68
Plato 22, 50, 6263, 64, 67, 76, 78, 8182, 99,
100, 108, 109
Radzinowicsz, Mary Ann 109
Rajan, Balachandra 142
Rapaport, Herman 102
Revard, Stella 36, 58
Rushdy, Ashraf H. A. 88, 149
Salandra, Serano Della 34, 140
Sapientia 10203
Sartre, Jean-Paul 111
Scientia 10307
Septuagint 102, 103
Sessions, George 136
Shawcross, John T. 150
Shelley, Percy Bysshe 2324, 138
Shepard, Paul 11, 13, 52, 136, 137
Shiel, James 78
Snyder, Gary 11, 14, 136
Sophia 147
Source/Resource distinction in Paradise Lost
2627, 28
Spengler, Oswald 26, 33, 133, 139
Spenser, Edmund 25, 48, 58, 60
Subjectivism, danger of in Paradise Lost 2124,
31
Swanson, Donald 89, 92, 96, 98, 150
Tanner, John S. 2123, 10911
Taylor, Sylvanus 23
Theis, Jeffery S. vi, 18, 136, 141
Thirsk, Joan 17, 135
Thoreau, Henry David 30
Tillich, Paul 146
Tillyard, E. M. W. 8990
Tusser, Thomas 2
Uprooting, in Paradise Lost 4354, 56, 60
Van Buren, Edward John 3132, 7879, 80, 81,
85, 108, 146
Index 165
Varro, Marcus Terentius 162
Virgil 132
Vondel, Joost van de 47
Weber, Max 2425, 7677
White, Lynn 11, 35, 136, 141, 142
Whitman, Jon 11, 15, 136
Wisdom. See Sophia, Sapientia
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1213, 98, 136
Woodhouse, A. S. P. 90
Yarranton, Andrew 2