Paradise Lost Research Paper

How does the construction of nature change over the course of English literary history? In the late renaissance period the authors were more focused on the plant aspect on nature because it was simple, then, during the enlightenment, they become more focused on the animal aspect of nature. They became more focused on the animals because, animals were more complex than plants, also animals are similar to humans. During the enlightenment humans were focused on gaining the understanding science and knowledge. When the 18th century came authors became focused on human nature and experience. Plants were the foundation of humans gaining knowledge and understanding; once humans started to understand animals they moved onto human nature. Through the
texts we read, we can see that as we moved through the different periods nature becomes more complex as they begin to study and understand the concepts of nature. In Paradise Lost, this is a story that could mark the beginning of humans. The setting in book 4 is The Garden of Eden, the most important trees that make up the garden is the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Paradise is what we expect it to be; nice smelling plants, good fruit to eat and every single animal gets along. The reason why the Tree of Knowledge is so significant is because, in the Bible, God told Adam and Eve to never eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil because it will cause them to die. This tree never caused anyone to die but once they ate the fruit off of the Tree of Knowledge, they opened themselves to a world of knowledge and exposed things that God wanted to keep them away from, causing them to gain knowledge of nakedness. God did not want Adam and Eve to unlock the mysteriousness of the world or the nature hierarchy. In the nature hierarchy the closer you move up to animals, humans, and God the more mysterious the world seem to be; and God was not ready for them to see that.
In Paradise Lost the author uses very few animals, and the animals Milton does use in book 4 is Satan transforming into different animals get closer to Eve.
The reason the author only uses a few animals and mostly plants is because, in the late renaissance, they did not have the understanding or knowledge to be able to describe animals. Plants were a lot easier to understand before the enlightenment. It was not until the late renaissance period that people could pick out weather a plant or animal was in an individual class or they were a species (pg.269). In this period, they also came up with classification, to place the species in a place with a larger scheme of nature (pg. 269). This was important because, as they discover more complex plants or even animals they would need a foundation of similar characteristics to be able to base the new discovery
on.
In The Rover which was written in the enlightenment period, the author uses animals as references to human actions. In this play they use animals like a wolf, Essex calf or swine, this is different from Paradise Lost because they used more plants to describe what nature was. Since this is the enlightment period, people are getting into more complex organisms and understanding that animals are similar to humans. In the nature hierarchy people discovered that it was plants that made the foundation, then animals because, they were made similar to humans.
The Rover, Act 3 scene 4 Blunt refers himself to an Essex calf which gives you the picture that he is a wild and dirty animal.
He describes himself as this because he was cheated on, he came up from the shore crawling. He changes from a civil human to a raging animal, this is to mark that once a human feels violated they abandon all rules and turn to animal instincts. Act 4 scene 5, Florinda runs to Blunts room looking for safety. Blunt, Frederick, and Pedro all go into Blunts room and they attempt to rape her. In this scene all the men are referred to a pack of wolves and Florinda was the helpless prey. The reason that Blunt tries to rape Florinda is so he could get revenge on Lucetta. This would be another example of when humans feel violated they turn into animal instincts and do not think about their actions. Willmore was also called a swine by Belvile, due to the fact that he was drunk and he wanted to rape Florinda. When Willmore was able to see through the mask and find the truth about Hellena, shows that he was seeing her in a different way, and was able to see something that others could not, because they were focusing on the face and not the bigger picture. The enlightenment was seeing things in another point of view and to focus on the bigger picture in nature and what is around you. These examples not only show how humans turn to animal instincts, but it shows how we can use animals to describe the actions we
take.