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Milton's God and the Matter of Chaos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

John Rumrich
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Abstract

Milton scholarship has long regarded chaos in Paradise Lost as hostile to God and creation. This judgment identifies Milton with traditional Western attitudes toward matter and material disorder—evident as early as the Babylonian creation epic, the Enuma elish. In contrast to such attitudes, modern science conceives of chaos as dynamically productive of order, and postmodern cultural studies sees chaos as a relevant principle of ironic indeterminacy. Milton anticipates the postmodern endorsement of chaos in his theology of matter and in the symbolic reflections and allegorical representations of chaos in Paradise Lost. Appreciation of chaotic disorder and of indeterminacy and disapproval of the tyrannical suppression of these qualities distinguish Milton's idiosyncratic theology, political theory, and aesthetics. Even Milton's God contains the potency of chaotic matter, a womblike virtue essential to God's creative power.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 110 , Issue 5 , October 1995 , pp. 1035 - 1046
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1995

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