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COPYRIGHT 2007 Modern Humanities Research Association
In the final books of Paradise Lost Milton exploits the rhetorical possibilities of typology to organize his survey of human history and propel his narrative forward through time to eternity. This typological framework may prove to extend further than previously recognized once the prefigurative value attached to Deucalion and Pyrrha, from the first book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, is fully acknowledged. Milton's pivotal positioning of this Ovidian myth, in the opening lines of Book xi, looks backwards as well as forwards: it gathers Adam and Eve into the same pattern of typological fulfilment--moving from death to new life, from destruction to recreation--in which the faithful few are set against the faithless herd.
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The opening lines of the Metamorphoses announce the ambitious nature of Ovid's poetic enterprise, his intention to evolve out of these tales of change a history of the world in one continuous narrative: 'primaque ab origine mundi ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen!' ('and bring down my song in unbroken strains from the world's very beginning even unto the present time', Met., 1. 3-4). (1) The chronological framework underpinning the epic is vast: it embraces an expanse of time from the world's origins up to Ovid's own lifetime, with the last book reaching the death of Julius Caesar and the rise of Augustus. Writing in a spirit of self-conscious rivalry with his classical predecessors in the epic genre, (2) Milton openly challenges comparison with even this comprehensive timescale: his epic starts before the creation of the world and, in the final books, looks steadily forward to the end of the world and beyond. While the contents of Milton's vision of human history since the Fall are drawn exclusively from the Bible, the recurrent movement of degeneration succeeded by regeneration that shapes these final books is established and defined by the opening sequence of the Metamorphoses, in which the divinely created world, ruined by the actions of mankind, is purged of corruption and renewed once more through the human agency of Deucalion and Pyrrha.
Over half a century ago C. S. Lewis identified what he felt to be 'a grave structural flaw' in Milton's epic. In an unforgettable indictment, Lewis dismissed the last two books, outlining 'sacred history from the Fall to the Last Day', as 'an untransmuted lump of futurity'. (3) Responding to the challenge, in what now seems to have been a concerted effort to rehabilitate the concluding books of the poem, (4) critics seized upon the approach best exemplified by William G. Madsen's seminal work (5) in order to further understanding of Milton's narrative strategy in Books XI and XII. Milton's exploitation of the rhetorical possibilities of typological patterning to organize his survey of human history and propel his narrative forward through time to eternity became a topic of close critical attention. (6) However, since this basic progression 'From shadowy types to truth, from flesh to spirit' (XII. 303), (7) from Old Testament figures to New Testament fulfilment, would seem to have reached its completion with the life and death of Christ, this left the intervening period of historical time, which would only reach a final end with the Second Coming, as an awkward remainder. Accordingly, a number of more recent studies have sought to revise the reader's understanding of the nature of the typological framework in place here, extending it from a series of Old Testament types and their fulfilment in Christ (8) to 'the triple typological structure which', as Joseph Galdon has pointed out, 'is seen in many of the early Fathers and especially in Augustine'. (9) In this revision of typological theory the polarity of figure and fulfilment is replaced by a tripartite pattern in which 'the Christ of the eschaton rather than the incarnate Christ of the Gospel is the ultimate antitype for all the types'. (10)
This typological framework may prove to extend further still, however, once the prefigurative value attached by Milton to the Ovidian figures of Deucalion and Pyrrha is fully recognized. (11) Ovid's account of how this couple came to be the only survivors of a terrible flood had long been identified as a pagan ectype (12) of the preservation of Noah and his family from the biblical deluge. However, Milton's pivotal positioning of the myth, in the opening lines of Book II, looks backwards as well as forwards: it gathers Adam and Eve into the same pattern of typological fulfilment--moving from death to new life, from destruction to recreation--in which the faithful few are set against the faithless herd. I hope to demonstrate how, through the controlled and imaginative use of typological patterning, the alignment of Adam and Eve with Deucalion and Pyrrha proves not to be an isolated, local effect, but the result of a more significant level of association in which these Ovidian figures are assigned a vital role in the progressive definition of salvation as the reader ascends 'by types | And shadows' (XII. 232-33) in three stages: from the first judgement and regeneration of mankind to the second judgement and renewal of the human race through Noah and his family, through to the Last judgement and the resurrection to eternal life.
While Milton's vision of human history since the Fall is clearly shaped by this teleological movement forward to a final end in 'this world's dissolution' and the regeneration of 'New heavens, new earth, ages of endless date' (XII. 550), this is no longer to be achieved by a gradual evolution of mankind, 'Till body up to spirit work' (v. 478). Since the human race has become 'depraved from good' (v. 471) by the Fall, this upward movement is offset by the recurring cycle of creation, destruction, and recreation. As mankind continually lapses, the work of creation must be repeated and God's covenant with his faithful remnant renewed. This pattern of degeneration and regeneration seems destined to repeat itself until the Second Coming, when the Saviour in one final act of purgation will 'dissolve | Satan with his perverted world' (XII. 546-47) once and for all. Ovid's account of the origins of mankind in the first book of the Metamorphoses can help clarify this combination of progression and recursion (especially the latter), as I hope to show.
The classical and Christian traditions agree that in the beginning the human race lived in harmony with nature, which supplied all of mankind's wants from her abundant store. Wrongdoing and the changes of the season were then unknown: 'ver [...] aeternum' (Met., 1. 107)/ 'eternal spring' (IV. 268) prevailed. The Roman poets referred to this period of humanity's history as the Golden Age. (13) Indeed, the similarities between Genesis and Ovid's highly influential account of the creation and ages of mankind in the opening book of the Metamorphoses were felt to be so remarkable that Arthur Golding, composer of the first popular English translation of the poem, could demand of his reader: 'What man is he but would suppose the author of this book | The first foundation of his work from Moses' writings took?' (14) George Sandys, in his commentary on Ovid's description of the Golden Age, confidently drew the parallel: 'this happy estate abounding with all felicities, assuredly represented that which man injoyed in his innocency' (p. 59). (15) Neither state of original human perfection endured.
The classical myth of the ages of mankind locates the Golden Age in the remote past and implies the progressive degeneration of the human race: 'man', as Sandys explains, 'grew not instantly superlatively wicked, but degenerated by degrees' (p. 59). Ovid chronicles a succession of races declining from the ideal or Golden Age through the ages of Silver and Bronze to the baneful Age of Iron:
de duro est ultima ferro. protinus inrupit venae peioris in aevum omne nefas fugitque pudor verumque fidesque. (Met., 1. 127-29)
The age of hard iron came last. Straightaway all evil burst forth into this age of baser vein: modesty and truth and faith fled the earth.
As a last resort Jupiter determines to destroy this impious race of iron by a universal flood (Met., 1. 187-91, 260-61), and announces his intention of replacing it with another human race of wondrous origin, quite unlike those they were to succeed (Met., 1. 251-52). Jupiter preserves two human beings, Deucalion and Pyrrha, exceptional in their reverence for the gods, who were to be the instruments of this new creation. Following the advice of an oracle, the hard stones that Deucalion casts over his shoulder soften to become men and those thrown by Pyrrha become women (Met., 1. 411-13). Hence, Ovid concludes, comes the hardiness of our race and our endurance of hard work; in this we give the proof of the origin of our species: 'inde genus durum sumus experiensque laborum | et documenta damus qua simus origine nati' (Met., 1. 414-15). (16)
At the start of Book XI Milton openly alludes to this Ovidian fable of Deucalion and Pyrrha. As this is the first and only time after the Fall that Milton uses a mythological simile to describe Adam and Eve, the comparison carries considerable imaginative weight. The singular appropriateness of the parallelism between the two scenes has often been noted. Wayne Shumaker has helpfully summarized how the comparison openly operates on a number of mutually reinforcing levels: 'As visual image the comparison is relevant because Deucalion and Pyrrha are [like Adam and Eve] the sole human figures in the landscape, because each pair...
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