The Dualistic Genesis of Paradise Lost

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Mary Kline

Doctor Martin

English 3210, Section 301

23 Nov 04

The Dualistic Genesis of Paradise Lost

In The Role of the Reader, Umberto Eco points out that ideological bias can lead a reader to interpretations employing codes not envisaged by the sender. The task, then, is to affirm one's bias clearly at the beginning, and then infer away. In this paper the Fall of Man in Paradise Lost is filtered and interpreted through two matrices not intended by John Milton; that of Semiotics, and that of Buddhist psychology. This paper, therefore, is a humble attempt to see if this interpretation will yield new insight into the human condition in its pre- and post-lapsarian state. Eco (1984), citing the classical definition of a sign, aliquid stat pro aliquo, points out that the correlation by which the sign stands for the signified can be of diverse forms. This paper will primarily have as focus the; "sign [that] is a manifest indication from which inferences can be made about something latent" (Eco, 1984:15); an example of which being footprints as sign of a person's passage. Linguistic "signs" may also take part in this relationship. In Paradise Lost,