THE EDENIC DISCIPLINE OF THE SELF AS A SHADOW

概要

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In the composition of the first human encounter in Paradise Lost, Milton activates essential features of the Western idealistic tradition of love from Plato through St. Augustine to Renaissance neo-Platonic and Protestant marriage topos, which all specify that love is the way of a shadow's union with the substance. They are rendered to shape the paradisaical relationship of Adam and Eve in love. The plot of the scene is designed to make a providential use of Eve's apparent narcissistic bent to actualize her consciousness of the self as a shadow. The critical moment of Eve's turning away from Adam is benignly devised for her to see the self of her own as a being endowed with discursive reason to choose. And Adam's gentle seizure of Eve finally makes her see the true self not in a given self of hers but in Adam as her substance. Thus the first experience of love gives them the disciplne for their being in Paradise, that is, the lesson of their trinitatis substance-image structure of the Creator, Adam, and Eve.
一般財団法人日本英文学会の論文
1976-03-30