"How cam'st thou speakable of mute. ..?": Learning Words in Milton's Paradise

In her landmark work, Milton and the Science of the Saints, Georgia Christopher explores the primary importance of the Word in the theology of reformation Christians. Through an exacting study of the new “Fathers” of the reformed church, primarily Luther and Calvin, Christopher reveals to us the amazing array of verbal interplay of “words about the word about the Word” (15). The Reformation fostered a new emphasis on language, which could constitute the very nature of spiritual reality and mediate the believer’s ability to perceive and experience it. In her examination of Paradise Lost in particular, Christopher makes clear that the poem is very much about words, how they delimit and reveal each speaker’s character as a reflection of God’s definitive words. Correspondingly, God’s character is revealed to the reader in the way his creatures interpret and thereby embody his word: “In Paradise Lost the meaning of God’s words is their ‘operation’ in the world of the poem. Milton does not treat God as an inaccessible unity imitated by the multiplicity of the world, but as a ‘character’ whose speech is a unity interpreted by a multiplicity of creaturely responses” (60). Only the narrator and reader of the poem, however, experience this presumed unity of God’s character. Only we see the complete panoply of creaturely responses and hear God’s reactions to these responses. The participants in Milton’s Edenic drama receive only partial revelations based on their own encounters with the Word. To determine what “God” is available to a creature, then, we must examine the words with which God reveals himself to that creature and the way that creature experiences the language of the revelation.

The success of Milton’s aim to “assert Eternal Providence, / And justify the ways of God to men” depends not only on his convincing the reader of the veracity of God’s words but also on his convincing the reader that the veracity of God’s words remains consistently apparent to Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve’s obedience depends upon their understanding of both the Word and his words—on their interpretation of the verbal command he issues and on their perception of God’s character as revealed by the command. Their experience of language is intimately connected with their experience of the Word, their creator. After all, the “ways of God to men” are primarily communicated through words. Surely it is no coincidence that the word by which the Son first signifies himself to Adam is “Author” (8.317). How does Milton’s God “write” upon Adam and Eve’s understanding? Since words drive the couple’s very thoughts, how does he fit them to comprehend him, his creation, and themselves through his words and to respond in a way consistent with his own character? To answer these questions, we must take a step backward from Christopher’s analysis to examine how Adam and Eve initially acquire language and how their subsequent linguistic experiences effect their understanding of the Word. We must consider language not from the standpoint of Milton as author or of the reader as receiver and interpreter of the narrative design but from the point of view of Adam and Eve as they experience each new addition to their vocabulary and as they subsequently use words to express their comprehension of temporal and eternal reality.

Edenic Language

The nature of Edenic language was of keen interest to early modern philologists, philosophers, scientists, and theologians alike. During the Civil War and Commonwealth, a time when British culture was virtually devoid of traditionally authoritative voices, many seventeenth-century thinkers sought refuge from the relentless surge of divergent voices ringing from the pulpit and the uncensored press by hearkening back to a golden age of perfect correlation between the sign and signified. ¹ Most language theorists believed that Edenic, pre-lapsarian language was perfectly denotative—free from the confusion of ambiguity which plagues post-lapsarian languages. ² This perfect denotation was possible because the Edenic language was a reflection of the very creative language of God and...