
Contents
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“This Universal Concord” “This Universal Concord”
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Love And Sympathy Love And Sympathy
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The Birth Of The Sympathetic Universe The Birth Of The Sympathetic Universe
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Sympathy and Love Sympathy and Love
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Sin, Satan, and Interaction at a Distance Sin, Satan, and Interaction at a Distance
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The Occult Fall The Occult Fall
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Cite
Abstract
This chapter analyzes the varied representations of sympathy in John Milton’s early poetry and prose. Milton expresses a deep ambivalence about the idea of cosmic sympathy; locating that idea in the distant past, he articulates both a desire to make it a present reality and a doubt that it is recoverable. In The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, the chapter goes on to argue, Milton conceives of sympathy in a new way, identifying it as the bonding force of marriage. Yet, in grounding this moral concept in a mystical view of nature, Milton exposes his doctrine to rhetorical uncertainty. The chapter then shifts focus to Paradise Lost. Associating sympathy with Ovidian error on one hand and occultist error on the other, Milton appears to abandon the marital ideal of the divorce tracts. In the middle of the poem, he depicts a thoroughgoing cosmic sympathy before the Fall and then uses his narrative of the Fall to suggest the breakdown of the sympathetic universe. Adam falls through sympathy with Eve, and the sympathy of the world collapses. At the Fall, Adam and Eve conceive of their relationship not in terms of spiritual connection but in terms of a deterministic magical attraction.
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