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Scalar Milton

Evan Thomas, Milton Group8, Milton Group7, Milton Group6, Milton Group5, Milton Group4, Milton Group3, Milton Group2, Milton Group1, Milton Group9, Authors

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Go; for thy stay,... (line 372-4)

Adam is right not to prohibit Eve from gardening alone and thereby control her free choice, but wrong to give over his proper leadership role by providing a better rationale for separation than any she had thought of, and by unwittingly intensifying the psychological pressure she feels with repeated imperatives –‘Go ...Go ...relie ...do’ (9.372–4). Neither has sinned in this dispute: Adam and Eve remain innocent until they deliberately decide to eat the fruit. But their imperfectly controlled emotions sabotage dialogue for the first time in Eden, creating the mounting sense of inevitability proper to tragedy.

Barbara K. Lewalski. (2010). Milton: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes. In: Michael O'Neill (ed.) The Cambridge History of English Poetry. pp. 255-280. [Online]. The Cambridge History of English Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Available from: Cambridge Histories Online < http://dx.doi.org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1017/CHOL9780521883061.016> [Accessed 23 October 2014].
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IX.279 - IX.566

Related:  guile,  Faith,  single or combin'd.,  Adam, misthought of her to thee so dear?,  But God left free the Will, for what obeyes,  Daughter of God and Man, immortal Eve,,  Alone,  Heav'n,  domestick Adam,  labour to avert,  Some Spacious object,  misthought,  asperses,  the Patriarch of Mankinde,  specious,  In narrow circuit strait'nd by a Foe,,  not free, absents thee more,  approve,  Enemie, though bold, will hardly dare,  wouldst resent,  fervently,  Eden,  without exterior help sustaind?,  and still erect,,  Nothing imperfet or deficient left [ 345 ],  For such thou art, from sin and blame entire:,  But that thou shouldst my firmness therfore doubt,  Access in every Vertue, in thy sight [ 310 ],  Vertue,  And what is Faith, Love, Vertue unassaid [ 335 ],  done his part,,  God or thee,,  Firm we subsist,,  Reason he made right,  Sticks no dishonor on our Front, but turns [ 330 ],  Thou sever not:,  though last,  surmise prov'd false,  submiss,  Persisted, yet submiss,  Reason he made right