"Paradise Lost" as Archetypal Myth

Author(s): Winston Weathers

Source: College English, Vol. 14, No. 5 (Feb., 1953), pp. 261-264
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/371876
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 "Paradise Lost" as Archetypal Myth
WINSTON WEATHERS1

IT HAS been said that any great mythicalwork

tale of each individual as un-
of literature has within it allegorical doubtedlyim-Milton perceived it in himself.
plications, chiefly because anyAdam literary
in the garden of Eden is man's
work which reflects accurately and sig-
childhood, of course. It is that pre-pu-
nificantly even the particularsberty of human
state of sexual and social innocence
experience cannot fail to represent, on nudity and idleness in
that tolerates
the anagogical level of which Dante human experience, in which our affec-
spoke, certain universals. In Milton, tions and delights are seen as natural
however, we do not have so obvious an consequences of our response to a healthy
allegory as is found in Spenser, nor so environment. Adam's inquiry is the in-
precious a symbolism as in Bunyan orquiry of the curious if not precocious
Dante, for Milton is recording myth child's mind, and instruction occurs
which is by definition a literal even somewhat parental from Raphael. With-
though fanciful explanation (though not in Adam at this time is the willing accept-
always etiological) of human experience.ance of truth as it is presented to him;
In a semihistorical manner Milton has later he does not understand truth when
arranged in Paradise Lost mythic prin-Michael presents it to him-Adam then
ciples which illustrate essential human
is like the college boy or young adult,
phenomena, and what we wish to dodoubting,
is skeptical, though eager.
to suggest from what portion of human Eve's temptation is sexual. Milton
experience these phenomena are distilled
tells us that. The apple becomes sym-
and to what extent we can find in the bolic of physical maturity; the intoxi-
whole canon of Milton his philosophical
cating effect of the apple is equatable
myth. with that clandestine intoxication of
Paradise Lost records essentially the
early sexuality. Adam and Eve in their
fall of man. Milton of course means theindulgence are like teen-agers with first
historical fall of man, but beyond the cigarettes or diluted cocktails. Adam and
Miltonic intention we find a contem- Eve's shame is the same as that self-
porary significance. Actually Milton's consciousness of adolescence-the awk-
myth is one of the fall of the individual ward retreat from society, the hiding
man-from innocence into degradation. from God in the bushes. Adam's anger
If Satan and God are the polarities of with Eve is that bitter antifeminism that
evil and good in human experience then accompanies young masculinity when it
Adam is truly Everyman, and in the de-is at last realized, and Adam's intense
cline and fall of Adam we can find the loneliness in Book X is the same old lone-
liness of Goethe's melancholy youths.
1 Cottey College, Nevada, Missouri. Poet, play-
wright, and author whose work has appeared inter Adam's regeneration is not that of
alia in the Prairie Schooner, Arizona Quarterly,
Christian
Minnesota Quarterly, and Tiger's Eye and selected by salvation especially, for it is
UNESCO for publication abroad. quite an internal and subjective thing.
261

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262 COLLEGE ENGLISH

Adam wrestles with himself, stripping

contribution to the history of ideas than
himself in his solitude to many a spiritual nu-
an allegorical study before it.
dity, whereas he had been physically What is essential and significant then is
nude before. His regeneration is achievedthat the myth is maintained in all of
by an acute introspection into his soul. Milton's work and that he amplifies the
At the end of Book X Adam is a grown myth with certain intellectual annota-
man. He has survived childhood, ado- tions which clarify the issues.
lescence, and initial adulthood. Both he Milton's myth is this: the struggle be-
and Eve are older in Books XI and XII tween good and evil as real forces for the
than before-one can almost see dishev- soul of man. His myth is tragic in that
eled Eve and wounded Adam trying toevil wins a qualified victory. His myth is
reconcile themselves to destiny. dignified in that man, though defeated,
Adam and Eve's return to religion in does not succumb but at last returns to
their prayers to Christ is exemplary of God. In the poem "On the Morning of
the adult's frequent return to religious Christ's Nativity" we first see the con-
experience-witness the present-day in- flict between good and evil. Here good-
tellectual move toward religious aesthet-ness is born, and evil retreats. Evil is not
ics-and the instruction of Michael is destroyed or dismissed; it merely re-
treats. This is a first step then in the
not the parental sociability of Raphael
but the authoritative, dogmatic, even genesis of the myth in Milton's mind.
if not severe, discipline of experience. The birth of Christ is a poetic transla-
The qualified optimism of the myth's tion of one idea-the light and the dark
conclusion is archetypal also. Man's very world against each other. In the masque
desire "to be" engenders in him the hope Comus we see the idea somewhat ad-
for tomorrow. Adam and Eve have vanced. The soul of man has entered the
learned that the world is not what they picture. The Lady-how like Eve-is de-
thought it was; the visions of childhood ceived and conquered but saved by a
have faded into the realities of the barren ritual of salvation. The myth is yet far
plain; the leisure of youth has been bar- from complete in Comus, of course, for
gained away for the toil, sweat, and here there is no tragedy, no final suf-
tears of a tragic reality. The paradise tofering, no maturing. In Comus is the bar-
come is for every man, however, the est outline of the archetypal conflict.
quiddity of man's endeavor. The history In Lycidas, however, a new note is
of Western man has indeed been based added. This pastoral poem is an essay on
on the idea of all the world before him. salvation or regeneration itself as the
This equation of Milton's myth with water imagery testifies and as the thesis
the steps in individual maturity is ob- of death and rebirth indicates. Little is
vious--perhaps too obvious-but it does said in this poem about the conflict be-
strengthen the suggestion that a part of tween good and evil, but if we see the
Milton's greatness lies in his dealing not death of Edward King as the fall of
with just a historical truth (a truth in Edward King, we can see what Milton
fact which we deny) but with a contin- does to absolve man from his defeat.
ually contemporary truth of human ex- Lycidas is not conquered by death-
perience. If Milton had left the myth in only temporarily so-for the apotheosis
such outline, however, we would not occurs, the regeneration of man, to lift
have had a myth by Milton at all, for ithim back to heaven again.
would have been no more an originxl All through his minor poems Milton

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 "PARADISE LOST" AS ARCHETYPAL MYTH 263

is developing his religious

there ismyth. Para- in the myth
a tragic discrepancy
that we
dise Lost is the fusing of the doubt Milton
various even fully ex-
ideas
into a whole. Not exactly plained
so,forbut himself. His very theory of
in cer-
tain ways the "Nativity permissive Ode" is evil is a struggling with this
prepar-
atory to the theological dialectic aspects problem which is apparently
of Para-
dise Lost; the Comus is anticipatory unsolvable. Milton knewof that there were
the temptation scene and good and evilin
thesis in the universe; he knew
Para-
dise Lost; Lycidas is anticipatory the result of good ofand theevil in man. Be-
tenth and eleventh books cause
andof man's
of the limited cognition, how-
sug-
gested future of man. ever, the necessity for the good and evil
Ancillary to the myth-the oflogic even of good
Milton areand evil-could
certain intellectual ideas which are im- not be satisfactorily explained.
portant for the understanding of the Many people have read Milton's
myth. First, we should like to comment works as autobiography, and we won-
on Milton's perception of limited cogni- der if they are not correct to a certain
tion throughout his work. Aware asdegree. Milton's ability, as illustrated
Milton was of man's intellectual ca- in the prose tracts especially and in the
pacity, he nevertheless regarded man sonnets,
as of converting the particular
intellectually limited. This is evident features
in of his own life into universal
Raphael's advice to Adam to inquire and public considerations is at work it
and be curious so far but no further. seems in his development of the myth.
The very fallacy in Milton's myth of an Milton knew himself well and out of his
omnipotent God who would let evil own be childhood, puberty, adolescence,
at all illustrates that Milton had run intoand adulthood formulated a myth which
stone walls himself. Surely he had taken he soon equated, because of his intel-
his own mind to those extremes of lectual training, with the archetypal
thought from which he could see the myth of Adam and Eve, of good and
impossibility of distant horizons. Mil-
evil, of death and rebirth. Milton is in-
ton's comments on limited cognition aredeed, quite consciously perhaps, the God,
included in Paradise Lost, if for no other
the Satan, and the Adam of Paradise
reason, to put meaning into the myth Lost
of because he recognized himself as
the poem rather than into any didactic good, as bad, as mortal. Whenever one
thought. Also Milton's perception ofwrites autobiography on so grand a scale
limited knowledge is related to his as Milton did, one naturally achieves a
awareness of the tragic universe and significant literature. The critical argu-
the quintessence of dust which man mayment concerning Milton should not be
actually be. between biography and history, between
Second, the logical fallacy of the religion and aesthetics-they are all in-
myth's metaphysics contributes to the cluded in the levels of the myth, and in a
tragedy of man again. If God created sense they are all on the same level.
all things and is omniscient, there is no There is no ending of the myth in
logical escape from the fact that God Milton, though its climax is found in
created Satan with the seed of pride, Paradise Lost. The same features of the
knowing full well that Satan in his verymyth are in Paradise Regained and in
free will would rebel and contaminate Samson Agonistes. The quasi-conflict
the universe. Regardless of the ration- between Christ and Satan is good and
alization given by God in Paradise Lost, evil; the fall and the regeneration of

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264 COLLEGE ENGLISH

Samson are but Adam and Eve again. philosophy of love.

love. Once
Once we
we are
are aware
aware
of the "myth" of
Milton is not, obviously, the only of man-his
man-his tragedy,
tragedy, his
his
fall, his hopes-then we can consider
articulator of the moral myth of human
maturation. Wordsworth's "Ode on Im- Michael's admonition to add to our
mortality" is a phase of the archetype; awareness the good deeds of charity. Un-
Goethe's Faust is yet another. Melville's sociable as Milton may have been, as
Moby-Dick is the greatest American skeptical
con- as he was of the mass of man-
sideration of the theme. What is the gen- kind, he saw in his loneliness and in his
ius then of Milton? It is in the fact that solitary way as a human individual that
he maintains an almost austere consist- the solace of our endeavors is in each
ency throughout his writings; he ex- other. The passion of Adam to die or
presses himself in the majesty of a great live with Eve is not alone uxoriousness-
art; he is realistic and idealistic simul- it is a most noble sociability and alliance.
taneously; he attempted and perhaps Just as Whitman in Leaves of Grass, in
achieved an ultimate aesthetic allegory creating the myth of a paradise regained,
on the life of you and me, for we are calls for his "love of comrades," Milton
each an Adam and Eve (just as Milton says it nicely and softly-"they took
was both "The Lady" and a father), and their way hand in hand"-and the myth
in us each there dwells the capacity for ends.
Christ and the capacity for Satan. In us Beyond Milton's aristocracy, his fre-
is the tragedy of our fumbling brains quent narrowness, his social incapaci-
ever on the abyss of knowledge-an ties at times, he will be read as a poet-
abyss that Milton tried to fathom for us and indeed as a man-as long as man
but found endless and in the last sense functions in the way he does. Milton has
unchartable. articulated in the organ tone of his epic
If Milton had any didactic intent in style the vast sweep of artistry; in the
all his canon and myth, it must have elements of drama, lyric, and narrative,
been, not strangely either, a theory and a simple but enduring thesis.

The Role of the Narrator in the

"Parlement of Foulles"
CHARLES A. OWEN, JR.1

RECENT criticism of the Parlement of is notnot aa question

question of
ofhistorical
historicalidentity;
identity;itit
is the relationship between the narra-
Foules has followed the excellent lead of
Bertrand Bronson in fixing its attentiontor's reading in the Somnium Scipiornis
on the poem and not confining itself toand his subsequent dream of the garden
the lively closing scene, where the contest 2 The reference is to Bertrand Bronson's first
of three noble birds for the love of a for- article, "In Appreciation of Chaucer's Parlement of
mel eagle has so tempted historical con-Foules," University of California Publications in
English, III, No. 5 (1935), 193 ff. Two recent
jecture.2 The central problem in the poem articles are R. M. Lumiansky, "Chaucer's Parle-
1 University of Connecticut. ment of Foules: A Philosophical Interpretation,"

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