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126 MILTON QU RTERLY

Milton, John. Complett Poems nd Ma~m rose. Ed. Mer-

ritt

Y.

Hughes. New York: Odyssey, 1957.

Rudat, Wolfgang E. H. “Back to the Thicket Slunk’:

Another Look

at

Milton’s Serpent.*AmericanNotes

nd

mks

22 1983): 7-9.

“Milton, Freud, St. Augustine: P m d e Lost and

the History of Human Sexuality.”Msaic 15 1982):

109-21.

“Milton’s Dido and Aeneas: The Fall in

Para-

dise Lost and the Vergilian Tradition.”Clasual

nd

M o h

Lhature

2 1981): 33-4 6.

“Milton’s

Paradisc Last:

Augustinian Theology

and Fantasy.* American Imago 42 1985): 292-313.

“Virgil, St. Augustine, and Man’s Psycho-

machia in

Paradise Lost.”

The utual

Commerce:

ature. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitatsver-

lag, 1985. 59-87.

Virgil. E r pU i

Maronis

Opera Ed.

F. A

Hirtzel.

Ox

ford: Clarendon, 1963.

Wasserman,

Earl R .

“The Limits of Allusion in

The

Rape

o

the Lock ” o u d

o English

nd Germanic

Philology

o

C h i d

Allucrbn n E?@ift and

L h

65 1966): 425-44 .

Zimmerman, Shari A. “Milton’s

Paradire

Lost:Eve’s Strug-

gle for Identity? American Z k g o 38 1981): 247-67.

ve’s

Pla

in

Paradis

ost

Kay Gilliland Stevenson

William Shullenbergeis vigorous opening ar-

ticle in

Q 0

October, 1986) evokes not only the

pleasurable “yes, yes” with which a convincing

argument is acknowledged, but also the even more

affirmative response, “and furthermore.” To Shul-

lenberger’s analysis of ways in which Milton “ dig

nifies Eve”

71)

and complicates “his placement of

Eve in the hierarchies of earth and heaven” 72),

one might add immediately:

1) Eve’s special place

in

Paradise

2) the inversion of male-female stereotypes

3) the order of the final speeches in Book 12

in Book 9

1

Eve’s special place in Paradise.

It

is an

eighteenth-century critical point, succinctly made

in Thomas Newton’s edition London, 1749). Eve

is associated with Paradise in a particularly close

way; she is its only aborigine. In his notes to Book

11, Newton comments on Eve’s lament after the

loss of Eden has been formally announced by

Michael:

270.-natiuesoil,] Natale solum, as the Lat-

ins say,

Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine

tangit Humanos animos.[Ovid, Ex POT ,

I.iii.35-361

[Paradise was the native place of Eve, but

Adam was formed out of the dust of the

ground, and was afterwards brought into

Paradise.]

Earlier, less explicitly, some families of medieval

hexameral miniatures illustrate indeed, illumi-

nate) the association of Eve and Eden. Stylized

backgrounds for the earlier works of creation give

way to lovingly detailed views of Paradise in the

miniature depicting Eve being taken from Adam’s

side. Spanning several centuries, countries, and

iconographies are such manuscripts as Bodleian

MS Junius XI English, eleventh century), Bib-

liothcque Nationale MS Lat. 8823 French, end

of the twelfth century), and Turin Biblioteca Reale

Cod. varii 175 Italian, second half of the four-

teenth century).

2 Masculine and feminine: reason and relation-

ship.

If

Milton and his readers have clear views

on “gender differences masculine rationality and

attention to principle, feminine attention to natur-

al process and the sustenance of relationship”

Shullenberger 75), contrasting motives for the de-

cisions Adam and Eve take in Book ll become all

the more striking. Early in the book he argument

before they separate turns on a variant of the stan-

dard gender-linked values. Eve argues, reasona-

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MILTON

QUARTERLY 127

bly enough, that they will accomplish more by

working apart, undistracted

by

sociability. Adam’s

position is that accomplishment, although a good

thing, is not the highest aim, and “Love not the

lowest end of human life” 9.241). That is, one

might think, a feminine view; Milton makes clear

that it is a valid one.

Conversely, when the two again act contrary to

assumptions about male and female motivation,

Eve takes the more approved path. The basis on

which she decides to taste the fruit is, on the Pla-

tonic scale of understanding, will, and appetite,

higher than that of Adam, and more typically or

stereotypically masculine. She responds to temp-

tation more rationally than Adam, Adam more

emotionally than Eve. In Book 3, the justification

given by God the Father for the different treatment

of Satan and of mankind is that “Man falls de-

ceiv’d” 3.130). Properly speaking, however, only

Eve is deceived. Granted that she is criticized as

“unwary” 9.614) and “credul~us’~9.644), granted

that at the end of Satan5 speech of persuasion the

narrator comments that “his words replete with

guile Into her heart too easy entrance won”

9.733-34), granted that noon awakes hunger,

nonetheless she is primarily concerned with the

tempter‘s “persuasivewords, impregn’d With Rea-

son, to her seeming, and with Truth” 9.737-38).

In contrast, Adam is explicitly, emphatically

But fondly overcome with Female charm.

not deceiv’d,

9.998-99)

The sting of those last two words does not obscure

the fact that Eve engages in a debate with Satan,

whereas Adam leaps impulsively from recogniz-

ing the fact that “some cursed fraud Of Enemy

hath beguil’d” her 9.904-05) to his own decision

to eat, undeceived but self-indulgent in his unwill-

ingness to part from her.

Paradise Lost is a poem in which few things hap-

pen only once, and almost never without signi-

ficant variation. When Milton twice, in Book 9,

inverts rationality and concern with relationships

as

the feminine and masculine basis for decision,

he implies

a

freedom from fixed gender roles the

more free, the more positive, in that when act-

ing contrary to expectations, Eve and Adam both

choose once a worse and once a better course.

3) The order of the h l speeches in Book 12.

Before the narratois epilogue, Adam, Michael,

and Eve speak in turn. Taking the long view, some-

times felt to be a masculine talent of mind, Eve

defines her place in the story without vaunting or

shrinking:

though all by mee is lost

Such favor I unworthy am voutsaft,

By mee the Promis’d Seed shall all restore.

12.621-23)

How rigidly patriarchal is the poet who gives Eve

the last word, and that the crucial thematic word

“restore”?

University of Essex

tymology of dward

King’s

Name

J.

Karl Franson

In

LyiCkLF

Milton assigns Edward King‘s depart-

ed spirit the post of “Genius of the

[North

Wales]

shore” where he drowned

in

1637, to warn voyagers

of hazards in “that perilous flood” 183, 185). Mil-

ton editors correctly define “genius” o mean “pro-

tecting deity” Hughes, Cbmplete P o r n and Major

Prose

[1957], 125n) or ”local protective deity”

Carey, Shorter m 1971], 253n), but no

one has commented on the etymological relation-

ship between this fanciful function and King‘s

Christian name. Milton was ‘an inveterate etymol-

ogist” Edward S. LeComte, N w n s

1

[1954]: 246;

Carey 415), and his designation of Edward King

as guardian of the coast constitutes a noteworthy

example of his fascination with name histories.