Given that Milton’s Paradise Lost has been critically evaluated for centuries, the epic poem presents many themes and questions for the reader to untangle. This rich text has elicited critics to analyse Milton’s cosmology, theology, politics, and his views on authority, free will, and women. Work has been previously done to chart Milton’s universe, and Satan’s traversal through it. For my dissertation, I will be positing that we can reimagine this journey as one though spheres of wombs. I am interested in comparing and contrasting these spheres through their creative power or lack thereof, metaphorical insemination and asexual reproduction, the male womb, impotent versus fruitful fertility, and literal versus metaphorical creation (i.e. creation via word, authorial creation).
Of course, the primary source for my dissertation will be Paradise Lost. The version that I have been consulting is in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, volume B, ‘The Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century,’ 10th edition, edited by Stephen Greenblatt and published by W.W. Norton and Company in 2018. I did look into other versions of the text available at the UCC Library, and was impressed by The Riverside Milton, edited by Roy Flannagan (1998), however after comparing some of the glosses I was happy with the edition I already had at home.
When I started my research, I did not have a precise thesis in mind. For the mini-conference, I presented on Satan, Sin, and Death as a satire of the Holy Trinity. This was a ‘place-holder’ topic, as I knew I was interested in the character of Sin, but had not quite formulated a precise thesis. While making this presentation, I noticed the symmetrical narrative structure of Satan’s encounter with Sin and Death, and that is how I formed my present thesis.
Not all of the articles I used for that project are relevant here, but there are some that will be making their way into my dissertation, particularly the ones regarding Sin. Philip J. Gallagher’s 1976 ‘“Real or Allegoric”: The Ontology of Sin and Death in “Paradise Lost,”’ claims that Sin and Death have material substance. In 1987, Stephen M. Fallon attempted to refute this, rather unconvincingly, in ‘Milton’s Sin and Death: The Ontology of Allegory in “Paradise Lost.”’ This debate is linked to my argument, which contrasts other wombs with the womb of Chaos, which is materially foetal, though substantive. J. Antonio Templanza’s ‘“Fitliest Called Chaos”: The Questionable Metaphysics of Paradise Lost’ similarly analyses the ontological properties of Chaos, in addition to Milton’s description of Chaos as the ‘[w]omb of nature.’ I am still in the midst of sorting through previous works written on wombs and creation in Paradise Lost, but one in particular that I have found to be enlightening is Neil Forsyth’s “Milton“s [sic] Womb” (2009). This text emphasises Chaos, but also discusses God’s role and the Holy Spirit as inseminator, and the wombs of Adam, Eve, Sin, and of Hell’s terrain. On ‘male’ wombs, Paul M. Collins’ ‘Deconstructing Masculinity: De Utero Patris (from the Womb of the Father)’ (2010) explores the tradition of God as a blended mother/father figure, and touches on the womb of Christ, as well. The article was useful in highlighting theological, pshychological, and iconographical components to this relationship, and while the article takes this in a contemporary direction, Collins evidences these claims with Medieval sources such as the 675 Council of Toledo.
Several articles explored potential source materials for Sin. Timothy J. O’Keeffe’s ‘An Analogue to Milton’s “Sin” and More on the Tradition’ (1971) gives a succinct and thoughtful overview of the topic. Catherine Gimelli Martin’s ‘The Sources of Milton’s Sin Reconsidered’ (2001) attempts to update this practice, however I cannot agree with her assertion that Sin is ‘Satan’s willing lover’ (2) and complicit (3). By far the most compelling and original of these articles I read was Joanna Pypłacz’s ‘Fertilis in mortes: Lucan’s Medusa and Milton’s Sin’ (2016), which offered Medusa as a unique source I had not seen proposed before. This article led me to read ‘“Embraces Forcible and Foul”: Viewing Milton’s Sin as a Rape Victim,’ by Alexander A. Myers (1994), which departs from analysing sources and ventures more towards a psychological analysis of the rape of Sin by her son, Death, and pre-emptively argues against Martin’s stance of victim-blaming. These articles will be useful in proving that the womb of Sin is one that has been transgressed upon.
At the mini-conference, my peer Venus offered Bracha L. Ettinger’s ‘Matrixial Trans-subjectivity’ (2006) as a resource in my research on wombs. The article could be useful, but I will have to first invest some time in refreshing my knowledge of Freud and familiarising myself with Ettinger’s theory, as this article builds on prior theoretical work by the author. One text that might be useful for this is listed in the references of Ettinger’s article, Griselda Pollock’s Thinking the Feminine: Aesthetic Practice as Introduction to Bracha Ettinger and the Concepts of Matrix and Metramorphosis (2004). I may also look at some of Ettinger’s other works if the material seems useful. I am not certain if I will use these, as I was not planning on a psychoanalytic approach, but I am also not ruling it out.
A few days ago my dissertation supervisor, Dr. Booth, recommended to me The Act of Creation (1964) by Arthur Koestler, which also uses the term ‘matrix,’ but to describe anything in which things take shape, and discusses the act of creation as the combination of two pre-existing ideas previously deemed unrelated. Dr. Booth points out that Paradise Lost performs this in combining epic with Puritan theology. I have not gotten the chance to read this book yet, but I definitely will, as my dissertation is concerned in large about different modes of creation, occurring in different spheres of wombs.
One of these modes is authorial, whether by the Son as the Word or the Miltonic Bard in a larger sense. I have based this mode off of the author as creator and the author as authority. This idea was conveyed in a few of my undergraduate lectures, so I will have to chase up on this point so that I may properly reference this idea.
At this point, my research strength is Sin, and I am progressing with Chaos. So far, I have prioritised reading articles that analyse Paradise Lost directly, but my research will extend beyond this to sources such as The Act of Creation and broader arguments about the author as creator.
*Slides are from my own thesis presentation, with graphics made by myself, and no AI used.
*Images are in the Public Domain.