Milton's "Eco-Eden": Place and notions of the "Green" in Pradise Lost

First and most easily recognizable of the green qualities of Paradise Lost are its pastoral poetics. A form with deep literary historical roots, pastoral poetry, as the ancient Greeks conceived of it, would typically be concerned with celebrating the bucolic life of shepherds in an Arcadian world of nymphs, mountains, pastures, and striking natural beauty; the pastoral form was later adopted by Renaissance writers and soon thereafter became a favorite conceit of the Romantic poets (Scheese 1996, 4).The theater of pastoral is a nature that, in John Knott's words, "delights" and "charms" the senses (1971, 7), a nature that soothes the mind, body, and soul of its human populace. Leo Marx more recently defined the pastoral as "the desire, in the face of growing complexity and power of organized society, to disengage from the dominant culture and to seek the basis for a simpler, more harmonious way of life 'closer' (as we say) to `nature... (1988, xii-xiii). A literary form with a distinctly green complexion, pastoral works do intensify our perceptions of nature and place; it is, indeed "a tradition," as Don Scheese sees it, "integral to the development of nature writing" (1996, 4).

The sections of Paradise Lost which delineate Eden and locate Adam and Eve within their environment offer a grand illustration of one author's particular pastoral vision and of the pastoral tradition in general.Vivid descriptions of prelapsarian landscapes, despite their depicting a utopian, fantasy-- world nature, dramatize the sensuous ecstasies and emotional possibilities that nature can inspire in human consciousness. Passages suffused with rich, intoxicating imagery, resplendent detail, and lyrical language are used to paint pictures of an iridescent Eden replete with beauty and enticing natural treasures. Especially ripe with such passages are Books IV-VI, which foreground the natural world and make it in any number of instances the focal point of the poem's story.

As a pastoral poet must be, Milton is adept, masterly even, at creating startling sense images in his poetry. Multiple senses are activated, often simultaneously, in Paradise Lost, making for a dynamic and sensuously enveloping read.3 For instance, Milton begins his descriptions of Eden (here seen from Satan's vantage point) by engaging the taste senses, labeling the utopian world Adam and Eve come to know and appreciate so well as "delicious Paradise" (4.132). In this case, a striking, evocative appellation erupts from Milton's application of the synaesthesia trope. The reader, from this point on, gets lured further and further into the author's imaginative world, as lines drip with scintillating, almost exothermic imagery and provocative turns of phrase.

A catalogue of flowers and shrubs orders Milton's description of Adam and Eve's bower, the Garden erupting in a dazzling array of color and redolent perfumes:

... the [bower] roofe Of thickest covert was inwoven shade Laurel and Mirtle, and what higher grew Of firm and fragrant leaf on either side Acanthus, and each odorous bushie shrub Fenc'd up the verdant wall; each beauteous flour, Iris all hues, Roses and Gessamin Rear'd high thir flourisht heads between, wrought Mosaic; underfoot the Violet, Crocus, and Hyacinth with rich inlay Broidered the ground.... (Milton 1998c, 4.694-703)