Adam to Eve: "You are the sunshine of my life."
Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2009 9:36 pm
I think it was Robert Tulip who suggested songs for the rock opera of PL or for the movie soundtrack. Cream's "In the Sunshine of Your Love" was his suggestion. Remember (you have to be of a certain age) the Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders' song, "The Game of Love"?
Well, it started long ago in the Garden of Eden
When Adam said to Eve, "Baby, you're for me!"
And there are innumerable songs we could consider to show Adam's smittenness with Eve. There is a serious point to this! Everyone knows that over the ages poor Eve has borne the brunt of the blame for getting us tossed out of a really nice place to live. But what about Adam? He also ate the fruit (presumably if he had refused he might have stayed). The Genesis story says very little about Adam's culpability, but over the centuries a tradition emerged that tagged Adam with the sin of uxoriousness (from Latin, uxor, for wife, meaning an "effeminate" yielding to a wife's wishes). As Milton works his expansion of the Genesis story, he makes uxoriousness Adam's central flaw, so that by the end he can show Adam as being at least as culpable as Eve. This is essentially the point made in the article ""From man's effeminate slackness it begins": Uxoriousness and the Expansion of Genesis in John Milton's Paradise Lost."
http://www.literatureclassics.com/ancie ... inate.html. It's not long and I recommend it.
Eve can't catch a break. Adam's fault depends on her innate inferiority to the male. At this point in our reading, I don't think we've seen anything to hint that Milton will be taking this direction (i.e., blaming Adam for forgetting that Eve is not to be listened to). It seems to me, at least, that Adam's crooning over Eve occurs without comment from Milton, as though he is celebrating their devotion as the ideal relationship. But we might be realizing later on that this is his way of foreshadowing what becomes a crucial obstacle for Adam. Adam lets his heart rule his mind, a lapse that was much more serious, probably, to Milton than it is to us today. Reason was truly next to Godliness in Milton's thinking.
Well, it started long ago in the Garden of Eden
When Adam said to Eve, "Baby, you're for me!"
And there are innumerable songs we could consider to show Adam's smittenness with Eve. There is a serious point to this! Everyone knows that over the ages poor Eve has borne the brunt of the blame for getting us tossed out of a really nice place to live. But what about Adam? He also ate the fruit (presumably if he had refused he might have stayed). The Genesis story says very little about Adam's culpability, but over the centuries a tradition emerged that tagged Adam with the sin of uxoriousness (from Latin, uxor, for wife, meaning an "effeminate" yielding to a wife's wishes). As Milton works his expansion of the Genesis story, he makes uxoriousness Adam's central flaw, so that by the end he can show Adam as being at least as culpable as Eve. This is essentially the point made in the article ""From man's effeminate slackness it begins": Uxoriousness and the Expansion of Genesis in John Milton's Paradise Lost."
http://www.literatureclassics.com/ancie ... inate.html. It's not long and I recommend it.
Eve can't catch a break. Adam's fault depends on her innate inferiority to the male. At this point in our reading, I don't think we've seen anything to hint that Milton will be taking this direction (i.e., blaming Adam for forgetting that Eve is not to be listened to). It seems to me, at least, that Adam's crooning over Eve occurs without comment from Milton, as though he is celebrating their devotion as the ideal relationship. But we might be realizing later on that this is his way of foreshadowing what becomes a crucial obstacle for Adam. Adam lets his heart rule his mind, a lapse that was much more serious, probably, to Milton than it is to us today. Reason was truly next to Godliness in Milton's thinking.