創世記とミルトン「楽園喪失」にみるアダムとイヴ像

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Eve, in the Bible story of creation, is the first woman and the wife of Adam, the first man. She is in a sense the prototype of the Western ideal of woman. Her image is, in certain sense, positive as the mother of all living things. But she has also a strongly negative image as the very source of all the evils in the world. Woman is, according to the second account of Genesis, created out of a rib of man, and it is woman (Eve) who yielded to the temptation of the serpent and ate the forbidden fruit and offered the fruit to Adam. By this disobedience, man and woman were expelled from the Garden of Eden. Such an image of Eve as a temptress to evil was dominant and influential through out human history, culminating in Eve in Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost. The close analysis of the two accounts of the human creation in Genesis suggested that man and woman were created equal by God, and both Adam and Eve are equally responsible for their fatal choice, their rebellion toward God. Strongly male oriented Judeo Christian tradition and its theology and man's desire to take the initiative over woman, rather than Milton alone, has enforced such negative image of Eve over the years. The Anglo-Norman play, Jeu d'Adam, and the Biblical plays performed at the time of the feast of Corpus Christi in England are some good examples to show the traditional male perspective. Milton's Adam is superior to Eve in reason, the highest faculty of humankind. He is heroic enough to resolve to perish with Eve, who succumbed to the temptation of the serpent, the Satan incarnate. But in his fit of indignation, Adam curses Eve, woman, as a creature created out of a defective rib of man, taken from his left side, that is, the evil side. This expression of misogyny is not specially peculiar to Milton, but an embodiment of male chauvinism, an echo of myths well-known in Milton's time. Milton has often been regarded as a complete misogynist and a strong supporter of patriarchy, but he has to be studied from many aspects and to be reevaluated from today's viewpoint.
大妻女子大学の論文

著者

斉藤恵子
大妻女子大学比較文化学部

創世記とミルトン「楽園喪失」にみるアダムとイヴ像

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