Milton's Uncertain Eden: Understanding Place in Paradise Lost PDF
Preview Milton's Uncertain Eden: Understanding Place in Paradise Lost
Studies in Major Literary Authors Edited by William E. Cain Professor of English Wellesley College A Routledge Series Studies in Major Literary Authors William E. Cain, General Editor “No Image There and the Gaze Remains” Creating Yoknapatawpha The Visual in the Work of Jorie Graham Readers and Writers in Faulkner’s Fiction Catherine Sona Karagueuzian Owen Robinson “Somewhat on the Community-System” No Place for Home Fourierism in the Works of Nathaniel Spatial Constraint and Character Flight in the Hawthorne Novels of Cormac McCarthy Andrew Loman Jay Ellis Colonialism and the Modernist Moment The Machine that Sings in the Early Novels of Jean Rhys Modernism, Hart Crane, and the Culture of Carol Dell’Amico the Body Gordon A. Tapper Melville’s Monumental Imagination Ian S. Maloney Influential Ghosts A Study of Auden’s Sources Writing “Out of All the Camps” Rachel Wetzsteon J.M. Coetzee’s Narratives of Displacement Laura Wright D.H. Lawrence’s Border Crossing Colonialism in His Travel Writings and Here and Now “Leadership” Novels The Politics of Social Space in D. H. Lawrence Eunyoung Oh and Virginia Woolf Youngjoo Son Dorothy Wordsworth’s Ecology Kenneth R. Cervelli “Unnoticed in the Casual Light of Day” Philip Larkin and the Plain Style Sports, Narrative, and Nation in the Tijana Stojković Fiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald Jarom Lyle McDonald Queer Times Christopher Isherwood’s Modernity Shelley’s Intellectual System and its Jamie M. Carr Epicurean Background Michael A. Vicario Edith Wharton’s “Evolutionary Conception” Modernist Aesthetics and Consumer Darwinian Allegory in Her Major Novels Culture in the Writings of Oscar Paul J. Ohler Wilde Paul L. Fortunato The End of Learning Milton and Education Milton’s Uncertain Eden Thomas Festa Understanding Place in Paradise Lost Andrew Mattison Reading and Mapping Hardy’s Roads Scott Rode Milton’s Uncertain Eden Understanding Place in Paradise Lost Andrew Mattison Routledge New York & London Routledge Routledge Taylor & Francis Group Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue 2 Park Square NewYork,NY10016 Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN © 2007 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business Transferred to Digital Printing 2009 International Standard Book Number-10: 0-415-98134-4 (Hardcover) International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-415-98134-7 (Hardcover) No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mattison, Andrew, 1976- Milton’s uncertain Eden : understanding place in Paradise lost / by Andrew Mattison. p. cm. -- (Studies in major literary authors) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-415-98134-4 1. Milton,John,1608-1674.Paradiselost.2. Edeninliterature.3.Place (Philosophy) in literature. I. Title. PR3562.M38 2007 821’.4--dc22 2006102721 ISBN10: 0–415–98134–4 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–415–80301–2 (pbk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–98134–7 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–80301–4 (pbk) Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at http://www.taylorandfrancis.com and the Routledge Web site at http://www.routledge.com For Susan Brisman and Ken Weedin This Page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Chapter One The Withdrawn Landscape: Vergil, Poetic Rereading, and the Genre Problem 21 Chapter Two The Environs of Imagination: Paradise Lost 7 and 8 53 Chapter Three Urgency and Delay in Eden: Description and the Inverted Rhetoric of Paradise Lost 9 81 Chapter Four Collapse and Consolation: The Postlapsarian Environment 115 Conclusion 155 Notes 159 Bibliography 183 Index 187 vii This Page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments This book grew out of a long series of conversations with William Flesch, and owes much of its form and scope to those conversations and to Billy’s ways of thinking about literature. Ramie Targoff and Jeff Dolven made essential sug- gestions regarding structure and approach; John Burt, Mary Campbell, and Christopher Ricks provided helpful comments on particular sections; and Alice Mattison read the entire manuscript with thoughtfulness and precision. Like so many Miltonists, of several generations, I am indebted to Roy Flan- nagan for his support. I am grateful also to Shannon Hunt, Tom King, Sue Lanser, Lisa Pannella, and Sarah Pikcilingis for advice and assistance, and to Mary Ellen Burd, Michael Gilmore, Evan Hirsch, Alan Levitan, Sara Lund- quist, Ben Mattison, Edward Mattison, Meir Rinde, and Matthew Wikander for aid and encouragement. Throughout its development, this book, like its author, has benefitted from Lara Bovilsky’s critical insight and erudition. For their patience and kindness, and for teaching me how to read, I dedicate this book to Susan Brisman and Ken Weedin, my teachers at Vassar College, with gratitude. Chapter Two is a slightly longer version of an essay, “‘Thine Own Inven- tions’: The Environs of Imagination in Paradise Lost 7 and 8,” previously published in Milton Quarterly. ix
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