ABSTRACT
From the opening lines of Paradise Regain’d, Milton insists again upon the centrality of place and its relationship to hope. The poet designates six specifi c geographic and topographic locales within the fi rst nine lines:
I Who e’re while the happy Garden sung, By one mans disobedience lost, now sing Recover’d Paradise to all mankind, By one mans fi rm obedience fully tri’d Through all temptation, and the Tempter foil’d In all his wiles, defeated and repuls’t, And Eden rais’d in the wast Wilderness. Thou Spirit who ledst this glorious Eremite Into the Desert, his Victorious Field …. (1-9)
This land catalogue-“the happy Garden,” “Paradise,” “Eden,” “wast Wilderness,” “the Desert,” “Field”—inaugurates the overarching theme of how constructs of place intersect with human redemption. The Garden, Paradise, and Eden designate what Jesus must raise in the wilderness. The “raise” in line seven, which the OED defi nes as meaning, “to construct, build, create, or produce” (OED def. 2.8), signifi es how Jesus’ will fi guratively replaces the uncultivated site of the desert with Eden. Yet further, Milton’s emphasis on construction of place parallels the construction of self as place. That is, by resisting Satan’s temptations, Jesus begins the process of constructing himself as an internalized, spiritual means and venue of redemption which will eventually enable humanity to enter into God’s eternal kingdom.1 Standing fi rm against Satan’s temptations, Jesus stands as victor in this battle “Field” of power, and thus as humanity’s hope for salvation. In this earthly venue of the desert, Satan competes with Jesus for possession and “ownership” of actual place, political place, and spiritual place. Satan’s goal is to dislodge Jesus from his place in God’s providential design, relocate power to himself, and lay “waste” to the earth
1 Luke 23:43: “And Jesus said unto him: Verily I say unto thee: To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.”
