Ève et la nuit des sens : une explication poétique et rationnelle de la Chute dans Paradise Lost de John Milton

Abstract

This paper explores the confusion of the senses brought about by Satan’s dream in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, books IV and V and the ambivalent status of this dream episode in the explanatory process of the epic. Following Dennis Danielson’s interpretation of the poem as a theodicy, I show that Eve’s « night of the senses » is one of the illustrations of the necessary fallibility of Eve’s faculties. The interest of the episode of the satanic dream devised by Milton lies in the fact that it is a purely fictional invention derived from many epic models such as Spenser’s Faerie Queen but that it also provides a logical cause for the Fall. Paradoxically, the description of the dream mixes precise physiological terms describing the interaction of the devil with Eve’s imagination with a more theological calvinian lexicon, which enables Milton to analyse Eve’s internal confusion as an incapacity to use her benumbed reason and to interpret her nocturnal illusions as a form of idolatry. The source of Eve’s weakness is thus identified as her difficulty to discriminate between the impressions and the real origin of the images produced by Satan’s enargeia.

Keywords

• John Milton
• Paradise Lost
• original sin
• dream
• idolatry
• illusion