ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author attempts to situate historically John Milton’s own appropriation of the Genesis creation accounts. In the process, she hopes to draw a preliminary sketch, in outline, of the genealogy of that seductive but odd couple, mutuality and equality. Phyllis Trible argues that the Genesis tells the story not of the creation of a patriarchal Adam, from whom a secondary Eve is derived, but the story of the creation of a generic and androgynous earth creature or “man” to whom the sexually distinct woman and man are related as full equals. Differences that in Paradise Lost are ordered hierarchically and ideologically tend to be neutralized by a critical discourse interested in formal balance and harmonious pairing. For in spite of the existence of scholarly studies of Genesis in its various exegetical traditions, the view that the relationship of Paradise Lost to Genesis is basically direct or at least unproblematically mediated continues to flourish.
