Cosmos and Character in Paradise Lost

2012. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-137-00699-8
Verlag: Palgrave MacMillan Us

Buch, Englisch, 236 Seiten, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 218 mm, Gewicht: 408 g

This book offers a fresh contextual reading of Paradise Lost that suggests that a recovery of the vital intellectual ferment of the new science, magic, and alchemy of the seventeenth century reveals new and unexpected aspects of Milton's cosmos and chaos, and the characters of the angels and Adam and Eve. After examining the contextual references to cabalism, hermeticism, and science in the invocations and in the presentation of chaos and Night, the book focuses on the central stage of the epic action, Milton's unique cosmos, at once finite and infinite, with its re-orientation of compass points. While Milton relies on the new astronomy, optics and mechanics in configuring his cosmos, he draws upon alchemy to suggest that the imagined prelapsarian cosmos is the crucible within which vital re-orientations of authority could have taken place.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sarkar, M.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Invocations: Milton as Moses 'Unoriginal Night' and Milton's Chaos 'This Pendent World': The Cosmos of Paradise Lost 'The Visible Diurnal Sphere': Space and Time Satan and Astronomical Signs Milton's Angels and Celestial Motion The Galileo Question Adam, Eve and the 'Virtuous Touch' of Alchemy

Über Autor(innen)

Malabika Sarkar was a professor and head of the Department of English at Jadavpur University. She is now elected Life Member of Clare Hall.