“My Native Element”: Milton's Paradise and English Gardens

ABSTRACT Although Milton's Paradise has classical and pastoral antecedents, it contains many native English elements. The herbals, gardening manuals, and “Paradise” gardens of Milton's day feed his epic, making his Garden more real than the “feigned” gardens of mythology. It is Milton's willingness to incorporate in his “delicious Paradise” some of the features of the actual gardens of his day and the practices of contemporary gardeners that makes him able to bridge the gap between the mythical and the real, between Art and Nature. The comparison of eight horticultural features of Milton's Garden with English garden materials (location, pure air, trees, flowers, furnishings, walks and alleys, bower, gardening) brings out the vitality of his Paradise and shows his epic couple participating in a thoroughly human experience.