| This essay studies some issues in literary criticism by examining how the two protagonists of Paradise Lost attempt to interpret their world. It assumes the poem's central concern is man's moral condition, not his theological or political universe. Adam and Eve before the fall are limited in what they can understand, including understanding what can and cannot be understood, requiring of each ongoing educations. Adam is very different from Eve, particularly the way they think and relate. The two form a community to mediate their differences and provide language, rules, habits, and hymns, which community exerts reciprocal formative influence over them. However, neither Adam nor Eve fully understands this community, their relationships, or each other. They do understand the one and only sin---do not eat the fruit of this tree. At the crucial moment, Eve proposal to separate (a metaphorical violation of the community), after which the two have a debate that descends into incoherence. Eve subsequently falls, Adam following, by the same route, the mind spiraling out of control. Adam and Eve change little after the fall, but sin has been transformed: it is now conceived by man, judged by man, varies with time, may be judged after the fact, and cannot be known in its relationship to God's idea of sin. Sin thus begins in confusion, but ironically undergoes coherence in execution.; Texts are like sin, interpretation of texts like the commission of sin. Each flows from a free mind, uncaused by external forces, but nevertheless under substantial constraint; each requires a community for context, rules, and judgment; each begins in confusion and hopes for less by reduction, simplification, selection, and addition of foreign material; high level criticism generally involves transgression, of other criticisms, of the text, perhaps of larger philosophical structures. Neither sin nor criticism is autotelic or self-justifiable. As sin, criticism must be considered as products of three interdependent but irreducible factors---the text, the critic, and his community, the latter present at many levels (including all of humanity). Any form of criticism restricting itself to one is either not literary or not criticism. |
