Workings of Foreign Body in John Milton’s Paradise lost: A Spectral Reading

Spectral theory denotes not a program or task to be fulfilled but rather a substrate of all dealings with text,an undecidable ground on which our reading occurs. By reading John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), the readerencounters a kind of paradox respecting some notions. It seems that the text is not based on what suits the reader andalso it is not based on author’s control.In Paradise Lost, the opening sentence is all about beginnings. In fact, its theme is about the first disobedienceof Adam and Eve which brought death into the world but the origin of the poem is asking Heav’nly Muse forinspiration which comes after the beginning of the Poem. Indeed, this beginning is not a beginning. It is a paradoxand Milton’s opening unsettles any simple notion of opening or beginning. Moreover, Satan in Paradise Lost is themost interesting non-human character, a genius character in search of freedom that is indebted to a kind of aestheticof evil. In this poem there are numerous choices between opposite possibilities which destabilize reader’s sense ofcertainty. One way of exploring this matter would be through the notion foreign body . According to Nicholas Royle,there is a certain foreign body which works over our language, over what we say, read and write. In this regard, thisstudy is intended to clarify, within the spectral theory, the function of foreign body in John Milton’s Paradise Lost andattempts to shed more light on the fact that there is a certain foreign body which makes every identity, all languagesand perception different from itself.

کلیدواژه ها:

John Milton ، Paradise Lost ، Spectral Theory ، Foreign Body