[Milton-L] Heaven

[Michael Gillum]

But Carol, didn¹t Milton believe that everything real has a material basis?

No doubt the vision of Heaven in PL is ³accommodated,² but that means it
intends to be the best possible approximation of  the reality that Milton
can imagine. Since God¹s first draft of the human future was that the
unfallen would evolve to be more like the angels and would have access to
Heaven, I suppose the  the resurrected would be a kind of being somewhere
between the unfallen Adam and Eve and the angels of PL. [25 words:] Their
lives might resemble the lives of the good angels of PL, but both the
resurrected and the angels would be more closely united with God [/25
words]. 

The most original feature of PL¹s Heaven is its having a ³wild nature² to
contrast with the ³built environment.²

Michael


On 5/18/09 11:55 AM, "Carol Barton" <cbartonphd1 at verizon.net> wrote:

> I think Milton's vision of heaven is less material than he represents it for
> the purposes of reader accommodation, Roy: something like the ecstacy one
> experiences in a moment of true "meeting of the minds," when two or more
> people have been wrestling with a complex and difficult to articulate concept,
> and suddenly one of them finds a way of stating the seemingly ineffable in a
> way that expresses what the other participants are feeling--only in heaven,
> such mind-merges don't end, and they include the Mind of God. I'm not talking
> about the sort of terrestrial thing that one might witness taking place in an
> international accord (it's intellectual rather than political), and it happens
> very rarely in a lifetime--a glimpse of the eternal, with a felt rather than
> understood apprehension that this is "unity" in its highest form, for two
> separate and distinct human beings. He suggests such a vision in DDD, which in
> its most eloquent moments is far more an encomium to true marriage than a
> defense of its dissolution.
>  
> Best to all,
>  
> Carol Barton
> 
> 
> May 18, 2009 11:34:57 AM, milton-l at lists.richmond.edu wrote:
>> Milton seems to have a pretty clear notion of what Heaven is supposed to be
>> like, before and after the Fall. Angels live there, and they eat real food,
>> and they have sex. But what will happen after death in the fallen world: will
>> Milton meet a perfected Mary Powell Milton? Will his daughters talk to him?
>> 
>> These aren't merely frivolous questions, though the humor calls attention to
>> some of the inconsistencies in any depiction of Heaven, which is usually
>> static, harmonious, and well, a little dull, at least in visual art. Even
>> Michelangelo still has more fun with damned souls, putting his own effigy in
>> a flayed skin.
>> 
>> How do the list-members conceive of Milton's Heaven, in 25 words or less, as
>> compared with any "evolved" modern perspective of Heaven? Is the general
>> attitude, "Well, I don't know what it is, but it must feel good, and I am
>> sure I'm going there"?
>> 
>> Roy Flannagan 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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