Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: experience other than our own
- 1 The shape of the seventeenth century
- Part I England's troubles 1618–89: Political instability
- Part II The English Revolution 1640–89: Radical Imagination
- 10 The shape of the English revolution
- 11 Radical reformation (1): the power of love
- 12 Radical reformation (2): outward bondage
- 13 Radical renaissance (1): after monarchy
- 14 Radical renaissance (2): republican moral philosophy and the politics of settlement
- 15 Radical restoration (1): ‘the subjected Plaine’
- 16 Radical restoration (2): the old cause
- Part III Restoration 1660–1702: Reconstruction and Statebuilding
- Sources cited
- Index
15 - Radical restoration (1): ‘the subjected Plaine’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: experience other than our own
- 1 The shape of the seventeenth century
- Part I England's troubles 1618–89: Political instability
- Part II The English Revolution 1640–89: Radical Imagination
- 10 The shape of the English revolution
- 11 Radical reformation (1): the power of love
- 12 Radical reformation (2): outward bondage
- 13 Radical renaissance (1): after monarchy
- 14 Radical renaissance (2): republican moral philosophy and the politics of settlement
- 15 Radical restoration (1): ‘the subjected Plaine’
- 16 Radical restoration (2): the old cause
- Part III Restoration 1660–1702: Reconstruction and Statebuilding
- Sources cited
- Index
Summary
In either hand the hastning Angel caught
Our lingring Parents, and to th' Eastern Gate
Led them direct, and down the Cliff as fast
To the subjected Plaine; then disappeer'd.
They looking back, all th' Eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat,
Wav'd over by that flaming Brand, the Gate
With dreadful Faces throng'd and fierie Armes:
Som natural tears they drop'd, but wip'd them soon;
The World was all before them, where to chose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide;
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitarie way.
John Milton, Paradise LostINTRODUCTION
Milton's image in Paradise Lost of ‘the subjected Plaine’ reflects the influence of Jean Bodin. In Six Books of the Commonwealth (1576) Bodin had analysed the variety of European government in relation to three climatic zones (torrid, temperate and frigid). In addition, governments reflected topography, itself a determinant of climate. Thus mountainous, topographically turbulent Switzerland would never be amenable territory for monarchy. Similarly within Italy republicanism had flourished in the Tuscan hills; monarchy on the Lombard plain.
Like other contemporary republican writing, Milton's reflected these theories, and Aristotle's anticipation of them. Thus it was natural that leaving the self-government of Paradise Adam and Eve should descend to the subjected Plaine. We may contrast this republican topography with that of Winstanley, the purpose of whose God was to make ‘crooked ways straight; and level mountains and valleys, and all unevenness, both in man's heart and in his actions’. This was the difference between the christian morality of equality and the classical commitment to virtue.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- England's TroublesSeventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context, pp. 342 - 364Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000