Search engine for discovering works of Art, research articles, and books related to Art and Culture
ShareThis
Javascript must be enabled to continue!

Naming Milton's Eve

View through CrossRef
The present article explores Paradise Lost's fixing on the identity of the first woman, as given and found in her name, from Adam's and God's initial, “quasi-baptismal” speech-acts, to Eve's analogization to legendary fallen or vanquished females, heroes, and heroines, to Eve's name in relation to both the Miltonic Fall-motif of woe and the word “live” in Paradise Lost. If classical allusions and received literary motifs seem to draw Eve into a fatal past, or to anticipate a tragic or doomed future, Milton also makes clear that “reason is also choice,” and we must suspend disbelief in foregone conclusions—that is, in favor of free will—until Adam and Eve have reasoned about (and made) their own fatal choices.
The Pennsylvania State University Press
Title: Naming Milton's Eve
Description:
The present article explores Paradise Lost's fixing on the identity of the first woman, as given and found in her name, from Adam's and God's initial, “quasi-baptismal” speech-acts, to Eve's analogization to legendary fallen or vanquished females, heroes, and heroines, to Eve's name in relation to both the Miltonic Fall-motif of woe and the word “live” in Paradise Lost.
If classical allusions and received literary motifs seem to draw Eve into a fatal past, or to anticipate a tragic or doomed future, Milton also makes clear that “reason is also choice,” and we must suspend disbelief in foregone conclusions—that is, in favor of free will—until Adam and Eve have reasoned about (and made) their own fatal choices.

Related Results

Eve in Anglo-Saxon Retellings of the Harrowing of Hell
Eve in Anglo-Saxon Retellings of the Harrowing of Hell
A spate of recent articles attests to a growing interest in Eve in criticism of Old English literature. However, these same articles demonstrate the narrowness of this interest, as...
“Uncloister'd Virtue”: Adam and Eve in Milton's Paradise
“Uncloister'd Virtue”: Adam and Eve in Milton's Paradise
ABSTRACT Milton, following Genesis, dates man's Fall from his eating the fruit of the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” yet in Paradise Lost Adam and Eve kno...
Peninsula Lost: Mapping Milton’s Celtiberian cartographies
Peninsula Lost: Mapping Milton’s Celtiberian cartographies
In A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle (1634), John Milton depicts Comus “ripe and frolic of his full grown age, Roving the Celtic and Iberian fields.” While Milton’s complex engagem...
No "Sombre Satan": C. S. Lewis, Milton, and Re-presentations of the Diabolical
No "Sombre Satan": C. S. Lewis, Milton, and Re-presentations of the Diabolical
AbstractC.S. Lewis is most often read as a staunch "anti-Satanist" and critic of romanticized readings of Milton's Satan, a view derived largely from his Preface to Paradise Lost. ...
Milton's God: Authority in “Paradise Lost”
Milton's God: Authority in “Paradise Lost”
ABSTRACT Milton's God consistently evokes an unfavorable reaction in the modern reader, the result not so much of our emotional response to Christianity as of our an...
Paradiastole, Lost and Regained
Paradiastole, Lost and Regained
ABSTRACT The rhetorical figure of paradiastole (the redescription of vices as virtues) offers important insight into Satan’s temptation discourse in Paradise Lost. T...
Milton's Eve and the Neoplatonic Graces
Milton's Eve and the Neoplatonic Graces
Some of Milton's classical allusions are stylistically supplemental, but more often than not they function with illuminating homology. Milton's description of Eve as Queen of the G...
Speech in “Paradise Lost”
Speech in “Paradise Lost”
ABSTRACT In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries several treatises (religious, philosophical, and rhetorical) discussed the Fall of Man as involving a corruption ...

Back to Top