John Milton's Paradise Lost
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Paxton Hehmeyer l
Alex McKee l
Laura Miller
THE PLEASURES AND DANGERS OF THE EYE:
From (Physical) Sight to (Spiritual) Vision
Historical context: Milton's actual blindness (from around 1650 on)
Proem's optical metaphors of spiritual enlightenment:
Ex.: Milton's opening prayer to the "Heavenly Muse": "Éwhat in me is dark / Illumine" (I.22-23).
I. Hell as the paradoxical place of "darkness visible" (I.63):
Epic similes about mistaken identity, uncertain vision I.100-08; I.768-87
A. Our first sight of Adam and Eve (IV.285-326)
B. Eve's first sight of herself and Adam (IV.449-91)
III. After the Fall: Lust as visually cued = bad sex, conjugal breakdown!
Adam's "lascivious eyes" (IX.1014); Eve's "eye dart[ing] contagious fire" (IX.1036)
When they wake, knowledge of good and evil in visual metaphors:
"É their eyes how opened, their minds
How darkened. Innocence, that as a veil
Had shadowed them from knowing ill, was gone" (IX.1053-55).
IV. God's Promise (via Christ's sacrifice):
Even though we have lost Eden (Paradise), if we work for it, we will be able to obtain "A paradise within thee, happier far" (XII.587)
Suggests the conversion of physical sight into an internalized, spiritualized VISION (like that of the blind Christian poet-hero) : "restoration" with a difference.
V. The Entrance into History: XII.641-49.
"They looking back, / Hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow, /
Through Eden took their solitary way."