Abstract
Within the cosmos of Paradise Lost, space and time are not absolute but relative, constructed through the perspectives of individual characters. In the vast region between Heaven and Hell, where Chaos and Night reign, space is an objective reality. The immensity of that region is repeatedly projected through phrases such as “wild abyss” (2.910, 917), “vast vacuity” (2.932), and “wild expanse” (2.1014). The realm of chaos combines the terrifying void of atomism with the endless darkness of Fludd’s Night to project a palpable sense of space as immense, unquantifiable, but real. The cosmic spaces of Milton’s epic, on the other hand, are dynamic and animated, equally immeasurable and undetermined, but constantly configured and reconfigured. Drawing attention to the intertexture of notions of “space” and “place” in Paradise Lost, Maura Brady suggests that Milton’s contribution to the understanding of modern space “lies in imagining what it would be like to inhabit a world whose governing physical concept is space.”1 Imagining space in their own individual way, Adam and Eve, Satan, and the angels who make their way through the cosmos contribute to the configuring of space, creating multiple perspectives, projecting space as exhilarating, infinite, and essentially uncertain.
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Notes
Maura Brady, “Space and the Persistance of Place in Paradise Lost,” Milton Quarterly vol. 41, no. 3 (October 2007), 167–82.
Brian P. Copenhaver, “Jewish Theologies of Space in the Scientific Revolution: Henry More, Joseph Raphson, Isaac Newton and their Predecessors,” Annals of Science 37 (1980), 489–548.
See Joscelyn Godwin, Robert Fludd, Hermetic Philosopher and Surveyor of Two Worlds (London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1979), pp. 21–23.
See Deborah E. Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 73–77.
Stephen Hawking, On the Shoulders of Giants: The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy (Cambridge: Running Press, Perseus Books L.L.C., 2003), p. 632.
See Rolf Willach, “The Development of Telescope Optics in the Middle of the Seventeenth Century,” Annals of Science, vol. 58, no. 4 (October 2001), 381–98.
Angelica Durran, The Age of Milton and the Scientific Revolution (Pittsburgh, Penn: Duquesne University Press, 2007), p. 281.
Johnson F. R. Johnson, Astronomical Thought in Renaissance England (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1937; rpt New York: Octagon Books, 1968), p. 27.
Harinder Singh Marjara, Contemplation of Created Things: Science in Paradise Lost (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), p. 78.
Hilary Gatti, Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999), p. 128.
Thomas Digges, A Perfit Description of the Caelestiall Orbes, in A Prognostication Everlasting, pub. by Leonard Digges, corrected and augmented by Thomas Digges, 1576 (Amsterdam and Norwood, N.J.: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Ltd. & Walter J. Johnson, Inc., 1975).
See Bernard Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press: English Almanacs 1500–1800 (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1979).
Hilary Gatti, The Renaissance Drama of Knowledge: Giordano Bruno in England (London and New York: Routledge, 1989);
Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1964).
On the multiple meanings of “worlds” in Paradise Lost, see Lara Dodds, “Milton’s Other Worlds,” in Uncircumscribed Milton, Reading Milton Deeply, ed. Charles W. Durham and Kristin A. Pruitt (Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 2008), pp. 164–82.
William Empson, “Donne the Space Man,” The Kenyon Review 19 (1957), 338.
A. J. Smith, ed., John Donne: The Complete English Poems (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 1971), p. 60.
Helen Gardner, A Reading of “Paradise Lost” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 41.
Joad Raymond, Milton’s Angels: The Early Modern Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 297.
See Dominic J. O’Meara, Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). See also Marjara, Contemplation of Created Things, pp. 52–54.
R. D. Bedford, “Time, Freedom, and Foreknowledge in Paradise Lost,” in Milton Studies, XVI, ed. James D. Simmonds (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982), pp. 61–76.
Michael S. Mahoney, “Infinitesimals and Transcendent Relations: The Mathematics of Motion in the Seventeenth Century,” in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 461.
William Empson, Some Versions of Pastoral: A Study of Pastoral Forms in Literature (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966), p. 158; emphasis in the original.
Alastair Fowler, Milton, Paradise Lost (Harlow: Longman, Ltd. 2nd ed., 1998), p. 267.
Amy Boesky, “Paradise Lost and the Multiplicity of Time,” in A Companion to Milton, ed. Thomas N. Corns (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2001), pp. 380–92.
Elizabeth Story Donno, Andrew Marvell, the Complete Poems (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), p. 102.
“Stephen Powle to Mr. West. The copy of my letter to Mr. West wherein is the tower and fabricke of the horologe in Strasbourg described,” in J. O. Halliwell (ed.), A Collection Of Letters Illustrative Of The Progress Of Science (London, 1841), pp. 21–29. See also Virginia P. Stern, Sir Stephen Powle of Court and Country: Memorabilia of a Government Agent for Queen Elizabeth I, Chancery Official, and English Country Gentleman (Cranbury, N.J. and London: Associated University Presses Inc., 1982).
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© 2012 Malabika Sarkar
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Sarkar, M. (2012). “The Visible Diurnal Sphere”: Space and Time. In: Cosmos and Character in Paradise Lost. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137007001_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137007001_5
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