[Milton-L] Milton and Gardens: queries on JM's aesthetics
Salwa Khoddam
skhoddam at cox.net
Tue Jun 23 00:11:24 EDT 2009
Did anyone mention A. Bartlett Giamatti's The Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance Epic (Norton, 1989)? Giammati discusses all the traditional garden motifs from the Greeks to Milton's time. I found his book as well as Stanley Stewart's the most useful in writing my article "The Enclosed Garden in C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia" published in CSL: The Bulletin of The New York C.S. Lewis Society 37.1 (2006): 1-10.
Salwa Khoddam
----- Original Message -----
From: Campbell, W. Gardner
To: 'John Milton Discussion List'
Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 5:41 PM
Subject: RE: [Milton-L] Milton and Gardens: queries on JM's aesthetics
I’ve tried to work through some of these arguments myself in a couple of conference papers (esp. one called “Milton Bound”) as well as in “Paradisal Appetite and Cusan Food in *Paradise Lost*” (*Arenas of Conflict: Milton and the Unfettered Mind*, 1997). In my view, the Empsonian arguments are not so much wrong as incomplete. I think Milton is shaping the complexities of these situations much more deliberately and provocatively—and in a richer, more nuanced theological manner—than Empson believed him to be.
Gardner Campbell
From: milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu [mailto:milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu] On Behalf Of Michael Bryson
Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 12:32 PM
To: John Milton Discussion List
Subject: Re: [Milton-L] Milton and Gardens: queries on JM's aesthetics
As one who has been accused of making too-large leaps myself, I'd like to chime in on behalf of both leap-making, and the idea of associating the garden walls with both restriction (for Adam and Eve) and focus (perhaps for Adam and Eve, but definitely for Satan).
It is true that not all of the boundaries in the epic are equivalent, but that is a truth not particularly revelatory. What would be more to the point, I think, is to argue for/against a construction of which boundaries *are* equivalent, or at least functionally similar. The walls of Hell and the walls of Eden are--at least to this reader--similar in a crucial way. They *seem* designed to keep inhabitants (temporarily) inside, but neither does in the end. In each case, an encounter with Sin and/or sin leads to moving outside the walls. In fact, in each case, the boundaries have the effect of bringing the potential sinner in contact with the object of, and opportunity for sin. Almost an arranged marriage of sin and sinner, it seems...at the very least, a nicely set up blind date. Without the walls, Satan may never be reunited with that touching little family of his (and without the family, he never would have managed to get outside the walls), and without the walls of Eden, Satan would, at the very least, have had to expend more time and effort to find and tempt Adam and Eve (can't have one's intended victims simply wandering all about, now can one?).
And coming to a richer knowledge of creation through horticultural tasks? That is one of the loveliest euphemisms for manual labor I've encountered in the years since I have been fortunate enough not to have to support myself by sweating in the noonday sun. It is also a lovely euphemism for the Near Middle Eastern mythic motif of humans being created as agricultural worker drones, labor-saving devices for the gods. In the epic Atrahasis, man is created specifically as a servant or beast of burden: "So that he may bear the yoke... / So that he may bear the yoke, the work of Ellil, / Let man bear the load of the gods!"
The Genesis accounts include agricultural labor, but do not cast that labor as something done to ease the divine workload. They do, however, offer conflicting perspectives on the significance, location, and division of the labor--The El/Elohim creation story in Genesis 1 has man (both male and female) subduing the *entire* earth (no mean feat, that), while the Yahweh creation story of Genesis 2-3 has man (Adam) tending the garden of Eden only, and then Adam and Eve tossed out of the garden into the wider world, where hard agricultural labor awaits Adam and hard pregnancy labor awaits Eve. Milton, as so often, seems to be attempting to mix these two perspectives from Genesis, with Adam *and* Eve sharing the "horticultural" labor in the garden, and dividing their "labors" after their expulsion therefrom.
It has been a while since I read Richard Strier's article, but I remember quite clearly the Newberry Library Milton Seminar presentation he gave based on the material therein, and the sense I had was that he was arguing at least as much from a "criticizing Milton's Heaven" perspective as anything else (and that seemed to rile up certain audience members rather nicely--an object lesson in the value of certain kinds of contrarian arguments).
And Raphael has always seemed to me to be a bit of a joke, though one that is important to the plot. "Here's the knowledge! Here's the knowledge!...now, now...don't be *too* curious..." Much of Satan's temptation--in terms of technique, items of appeal, and even specific arguments, has its source in Raphael's garrulous nature (his big mouth). Satan never even gets the chance to "excite their minds / With more desire to know" (4.522-23), because Raphael beats him to it. Withholding astronomical knowledge is, by that point, another in a series of gestures that suggest the idea that Adam and Eve will have to "open to themselves" (7.158), not only "the way / Up hither" but the way to all knowledge, and that the opening to themselves is going to require the experience of transgression, taking something that is forbidden, crossing a boundary. After that--after the transgression, after the taking, after the crossing--*then* repentance, contrition, obedience will bring "Fruits of more pleasing savour [...] / than those / Which, his own hand manuring, all the trees / Of Paradise could have produced, ere fallen / From innocence" (11.26-30). But not before.
Michael Bryson
---- Original message ----
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:39:26 -0400
From: "Jeffrey Theis" <jtheis at salemstate.edu>
Subject: Re: [Milton-L] Milton and Gardens: queries on JM's aesthetics
To: "John Milton Discussion List" <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
>I would strongly agree with Jeffery Hodges that Alexandra Dimakos is
>making too big a leap in associating the garden walls with Raphael's
>warning Adam off from astronomical knowledge. There are many boundaries
>in this epic, and they are not all equivalent. As Hodges correctly
>notes, Adam and Eve would have populated the entire earth, not just
>Eden. Thus prohibition of knowledge of the rest of the earth does not
>seem a compelling argument here. I also think of Richard Strier's
>argument that Eden is better than heaven as a nice reminder that staying
>in Eden is no punishment--it is world and pleasure enough.
>
>I do think that it helps to think of boundaries not only as markers of
>control or power (though they often serve that function); rather, they
>also have a means of focusing one's attention. If we remember that Adam
>and Eve are charged to till and keep nature, it is a more feasible
>occupation if the two of them do not have to take on the entire planet
>right away. The walls allow for a kind of focus that does not really
>keep out knowledge or keep Adam and Eve ignorant. Instead, the walls
>focus their attention so that they are a) near the interdicted tree (as
>Jeffery nicely argues), and b) come to a richer knowledge of creation
>itself as they engage in their horticultural tasks.
>
>Stella's advice to look at John Evelyn is also a very good idea. I'd
>recommend Douglas Chambers' *The Planters of the English Landscape
>Garden: Botony, Trees, and the Georgics.* Yale UP, 1993. Also look at
>Chambers' essay, “‘Wild Pastorall Encounter’: John Evelyn, John
>Beale and the Renegotiation of Pastoral in the Mid-Seventeenth
>Century.” In Culture and Cultivation in Early Modern England:
>Writing and the Land, edited by Michael Leslie and Timothy Raylor,
>173-94. Beale and Evelyn engaged in an interesting discussion of adding
>wildness/wilderness to English gardens. Beale is a bit more radical in
>his reform ideas than is Evelyn.
>
>
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Jeffrey S. Theis
>Assistant Professor; Department of English
>233 Meier Hall
>Mailing Address:
> Salem State College
> 352 Lafayette Street
> Salem, MA 01970-5353
>Phone:(978) 542-6845
>E-Mail: jtheis at salemstate.edu
>SSC Web Profile: https://www.salemstate.edu/profile/jtheis/
>Home Page: http://www.salemstate.edu/~jtheis/
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>
>>>> Horace Jeffery Hodges <jefferyhodges at yahoo.com> 6/19/2009 6:07 PM
>>>>
>Alexandra Dimakos suggests that "the walls are meant to keep a curious
>Adam from exploring the outside world," and she cites Raphael's words to
>Adam in Book VIII:
>
>Dream not of other Worlds, what Creatures there
>Live, in what state, condition or degree,
>Contented that thus far hath been reveal'd
>Not of Earth only but of highest Heav'n. (8:175-78)
>
>>From the context, however, Adam and Raphael would seem to be speaking
>of astronomy and worlds beyond the earth. I don't yet see strong
>evidence that this also includes the "outside world" beyond the Garden's
>walls.
>
>I do agree that Adam and Eve are expected to remain within the Garden,
>for they have work to do there. Eventually, however, they would be able
>to leave, for with their offspring borne to populate the earth, the
>Garden would one day grow too restricted. Presumably, their work in the
>Garden would have prepared them for making a garden of the entire earth
>. . . though they would ultimately (perhaps) have sublimated their
>grossly corporeal bodies into subtler spirit (or some such wording).
>
>The walls also serve to keep the two within range of the provoking
>object, that interdicted, testing tree.
>
>On keeping Satan out . . . well, the walls of Hell were intended to
>keep Satan in but give him an out if he should choose to defy God's
>limits anyway. By leaving Satan free to escape Hell and break into
>Paradise, God leaves open Satan's path toward greater damnation -- a
>puzzling economy of damnation that seems less than economical, but it
>appears to be part of Milton's great argument.
>
>Jeffery Hodges
>
>
>--- On Fri, 6/19/09, Alexandra Dimakos <adimakos at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>From: Alexandra Dimakos <adimakos at gmail.com>
>Subject: Re: [Milton-L] Milton and Gardens: queries on JM's aesthetics
>To: "John Milton Discussion List" <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
>Date: Friday, June 19, 2009, 4:01 PM
>
>
>Hi Susan,
>
>Your statement "I am not certain of the roots but "Paradise" might come
>from 'walled garden.' " sparked my curiosity as I have been recently
>researching and writing about this idea.
>
>I've found that in Michael Lieb's article "'Holy Place': A Reading of
>Paradise Lost" that "the Renaissance understanding of the 'paradise'
>itself -- pairidaeza formed on pairi ('around') and diz ('to mould,'
>''to form') -- not only as a 'park' or 'pleasure ground' but also,
>significantly, as an 'enclosure' or a 'place walled in''" (135).
>
>I also wanted to address Michael's idea or question: "As to why the
>whole Garden needs to be fenced off from the rest of the world."
>
>Although there are many theories, it seems to me that Eden is fenced
>off because it is meant from keeping Adam and Eve from leaving. I
>understand that many will say that the wall is meant to keep Satan out
>of the garden. But, does it work? Satan doesn't have much trouble
>"jumping the fence" and entering into Eden. If the walls are there to
>protect Adam and Eve, they do not serve them well.
>
>In contrast, the walls are meant to keep a curious Adam from exploring
>the outside world. Raphael tells Adam in Book IIX:
>
>
>
>
>
>Dream not of other Worlds, what Creatures there
>Live, in what state, condition or degree,
>Contented that thus far hath been reveal’d Not of Earth only but of
>highest Heav’n. (8:166-78)
>
>
>The walls may also serve this purpose: to keep Adam from exploring the
>"other Worlds" that lay beyond Eden. Also there is only one Gate that
>leads in and out of Eden, but Adam and Eve are only allowed to cross
>that threshold when they are expelled from their home. They are never
>told they can freely enter and exit Eden at their leisure. There is a
>great sense of control that stems from these walls and this one gate.
>
>
>
>
>On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 12:39 PM, Susan Allison <jbase484 at gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>
>I am not certain of the roots but "Paradise" might come from "walled
>garden." Of course that is not the only reason but "Paradise" may have
>retained that meaning.
>Susan
>
>
>
>
>
>As to why the whole Garden needs to be fenced off from the rest of the
>world, that’s an interesting question.
>
>Michael
>
>
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