Naslov
The ‘Swellings’ of the Virtual in, and outside of, Milton’s Paradise Lost

Autori
Berić, Borislav

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Poglavlja u knjigama, znanstveni

Knjiga
In the Mind of the Beholder: Conceptualisation of Eroticism

Urednik/ci
Blessin, Joseph ; Clarke, Sally

Izdavač
Inter-Disciplinary Press

Grad
Oxford

Godina
2014

Raspon stranica
139-157

ISBN
978-1-84888-252-2

Ključne riječi
Milton, Paradise Lost, Augustine, virtual environments, point of view, Galen, erections

Sažetak
Just like postmodernist computer-simulated worlds and reality shows, the narrative of the Garden of Eden has been the testing ground for different models of the world and human sexuality within the Judeo-Christian tradition for a long period of time. To many theologians, poets, and academics the blank on prelapsarian sexuality in the biblical story became a challenge for their own renderings, many of which drew heated responses. Augustine’s hypothetical musings on prelapsarian sexuality reflect the Galenic and Medieval ‘one-body/one- flesh’ model of the human body, and the saint attempts to virtualize the actual fallen sexuality within the limits of political correctness of his own doctrine. This attempt at virtualization of pure Edenic sexuality collapses, literally and metaphorically, into a list of mechanical possibilities because it depends almost entirely on the retrospective point of view. Once a prospective point of view is introduced, it turns to be pure sex, mechanized and pornographically boring, sex devoid of lust, love, spontaneity and emotions in general. Without its doctrinal driving force, no one would wish to do it for the second time. Milton’s rendering of Paradisal eroticism includes erections and Eve’s swelling breast. Milton virtualizes this Paradisal scene by introducing a multiple, or roving, point of view and makes Adam and Eve, as well as his readers, walk back to the originary point of their self-discovery. Their walk down the garden is a departure from the Augustinian dynamics of will and a journey toward a new ontological centre lodged in the capacity of their un-fallen virtual being.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

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