Paradises lost: innocence and excremental whiteness in John Milton and James Baldwin

Abstract Juxtaposing John Milton’s Paradise Lost with James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, this essay interrogates models of virtue with reference to Milton’s theology in dialogue with ideas “remastered” by Baldwin in resistance to the racialized assumptions of white America. Theoretically framed by the theological work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and radical Black theology, the comparison of Milton and Baldwin is undertaken to assess reparative reading as a practice, focusing on three key questions: what constitutes ethical heroism? How does it relate to a virtue that proves itself through trial? What is the specific role of the literary imagination in dramatizing each of these, allowing them to be experienced through reading? Reparative reading entails a notion of virtue that depends for its fulfilment on a model of contamination and contagion, “improper love,” explicated by Milton’s notion of “excremental whiteness” and Baldwin’s “stink of love.” Operating at the intersection of theology, race, and literature, this essay contributes to discussions about constructions of radical selfhood in Milton and Baldwin, theologies of race, and a practice of reparative reading embodying a hermeneutics that deconstructs rather than reinscribes familiar models of victimhood.