28. The Nose Knows: A Sensual Analysis of Paradise Lost and His Dark Materials

Abstract

Both John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Philip Pullman’s retelling of the story, His Dark Materials, use scent imagery in descriptions of morally significant characters. But what is the significance of the consistent scent imagery? Hans J. Rindisbacher’s theory in The Smell of Books: A Cultural-Historical Study of Olfactory Perception in Literature (1992) states that scent imagery, in literature pertaining to Christian symbolism, indicates a dichotomy of morality. This theory is modified to illustrate that scent is used to signify a character’s condition of knowledge. The presence of good scent in Paradise Lost indicates that a character possesses pure knowledge of good and evil, the presence of bad scent indicates a character’s corrupt condition of knowledge of good and evil. Alternatively, the presence of good scent in His Dark Materials signifies that a character possesses pure self-knowledge, whereas the presence of bad scent indicates the corruption of a character’s self-knowledge. Furthermore, the attribution of neutral scent or lack of scent imagery to morally significant characters, such as Satan and Mrs. Coulter, signifies the morally ambiguous actions which make these characters difficult to define as virtuous or evil. The analysis of the scent imagery in Paradise Lost and His Dark Materials demonstrates the significance of scent theory in the research and analysis of literature, as a possible method of evaluating a character’s moral status.