“'Grateful digressions'” and Conflictual Conceptualisations in Milton’s Eden"

Radically revising the customary dismissal of figurative language, already ingrained in Puritan times, Milton has the readers of his epic poem confront the aporias and potentialities generated by the inherent copresence of literal and figural in Eden. Milton’s language is polysemous and sensuously rich, made by a complex imbrication of designation, signification, and desire, confirming Lyotard’s intuition that discourse encompasses expression and affection as well as signification and rationality. Edenic conversation is strictly tied to eros, a refreshment both to the spirit and to the senses. While the literal remains fundamental in Edenic language, the inescapable force of the figural is also highlighted, in particular in the form of living metaphors and conflictual conceptualisations, which valorise contingent interpretative processes and activate inferential contents by a network of open-ended projections. Conceptual conflicts highlight the implicatures of indirect, insinuating communication and discuss the scope and function of figurative language in a historical period rife with linguistic and hermeneutic issues. In this way, Paradise Lost allows the figural element to signify in a lateral fashion, thereby laying the foundations of a renewed form of discourse in which literal and figurative necessarily coexist.