THE COLONIZATION OF PARADISE : MILTON'S PANDEMONIUM AND MONTEZUMA'S TENOCHTITLAN

Abstract

If John Milton's Paradise Lost (PL) bridges, as J. Martin Evans contends in his recent study, Milton's Imperial Epic, temporal gap . . . between Genesis and seventeenth-century by expressing the cosmic struggle between God and Satan over the fate of the human race in terms of the ongoing contest between Spain and England for control of the New World,2 then there is indeed rich new arena for study of that epic. Evans shows how Milton weaves both pro-colonial and anticolonial narratives in Paradise Lost together so that, on the right hand, one can find Spanish conquest as an example of a corrupt and powerhungry [Satan, who] discovers the New World, enslaves its inhabitants, and takes possession of their land, or on the left, if the reader wishes to justify English conquest, Satan is ... sly and treacherous Indian [who] deceives pair of honest and industrious planters and is subsequently punished by their vengeful sponsor(141). Even more ingeniously, Evans finds enough literature of the time that questions both concepts and he finds enough truth to the viewpoint that England was also power hungry adventurer to cloak both Spain and England as Satanic deceiver as well as the deceived, so that Paradise Lost contains . . . almost every conceivable permutation of the colonial experience available in the seventeenth century(142). But Evans* permutations address the New World as one populated by naked savages, either noble or beastly,

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