"What Surmounts the Reach of Human Sense": Milton's Literary Iconoclasm in Paradise Lost

• Main Authors: Lai Hung-chuan, 賴弘專
• Other Authors: Chiang Tai-fen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2002
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/36240996927863132581

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 外國語文學系研究所 === 90 === In the introduction I will explore Milton's literary iconoclasm by drawing on his Areopagitica and several recent studies on this issue. As an inquiry into truth, Milton's literary iconoclasm endeavors to make the reader aware of his carnal attachment to verbal images, and their inability to represent truth. According to Milton, truth far surpasses our fallen understanding. Once we presume to represent truth in any tangible form--signs, pictures, verbal images--we immediately fall into idolatry. Thus, its basic strategy is to present a verbal image before the reader's eye, and soon discard it when he supposes it to be the final version of truth. Such a process will be repeated again and again until the reader knows how far the verbal image (and he) is from truth. With this self-awareness he is forced to give up his dependency on any external form. Paradoxically, this destruction of his carnal sight is the birth of his inner vision: the reader becomes able to penetrate the transitory signs in the endless search for divine truth. Based on the model established above, I will analyze several episodes in Paradise Lost that are concerned with iconoclasm. In the first chapter I will focus on three Edenic scenes: the entering scene of Adam and Eve, the pool scene, and Adam's dialogue with Raphael on his love for Eve. In the first one the reader is confronted with a verbal picture whose images radically challenge his apprehension. In the other two Eve and Adam, respectively, are tempted to fall prone to certain sensory object. While the first scene demonstrates our distance from the original innocence, the other two show the unfallen couple in their fullest iconoclastic power. Together, the three passages reflect Milton's endeavor to approximate man's unfallen "beatific vision." It is a vision in which all signs and sensory experiences terminate in the great signified, God. In the second chapter I will concentrate on the Fall and its consequences. The tragic action should be viewed as an interpretive failure to see beyond the sign the magnanimity of God. In perceiving the Fruit as something divine in itself, Adam and Eve's actually commit idolatry. Such a mental state can be understood in the light of the Roman Church's notion of the Eucharist, "Transubstantiation," which Milton repudiates as idolatry. The Fall initiates the rupture between signs and divine truth. And as a consequence human beings are limited by their sensory experiences, unable to see divine providence. From that time on, they have been caught in the labyrinth of floating signs: they get lost in every effort to "bind" truth in visible icons. In the Conclusion I will briefly discuss Adam's interpretation of the Flood and the Rainbow in the vision Michael shows him. This marks the regeneration of his inner vision, a real iconoclastic move after his Fall. And Adam's turn becomes a hope and an example for the reader: to learn to see divine grace through ceaselessly transcending the limitation of signs, in this fallen world.