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“Go”: Milton's Antinomianism and the Separation Scene in Paradise Lost, Book 9

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Joan S. Bennett
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Abstract

The quarrel between Adam and Eve in book 9 concerns not only relations between the sexes but also the nature of human government. Prelapsarian Adam and Eve, who, like the antinomian Christian, possess total spiritual liberty, deal with an epistemological dilemma that confronted antinomians like Milton during the English revolution: In the absence of intrinsically authoritative external laws, how can one know when one's decision to act is based on the direction of God's spirit dwelling in one's heart and when it is based on personal desire? In the light of Milton's historical answer to this question, we can see that Milton dramatizes in Eve the voluntarist antinomian's tendency to overconfidence and in Adam the humanist antinomian's struggle with right reason. While neither person sins in this scene, both lose their balance in particularly antinomian ways that grant us insight into the necessarily precarious nature of human freedom.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 98 , Issue 3 , May 1983 , pp. 388 - 404
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1983

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