Optique et anamorphose dans le Paradis Perdu de John Milton

Abstract

The optical trickery of anamorphic art provided John Milton with a highly useful metaphor with which to describe the oblique and ambiguous entrance of envy and sin into the world. In describing Satan in Paradise Lost as "a spot" on the sun viewed through an "optic tube," the poet clearly alludes to the discovery of maculae or spots on the sun early in the seventeenth century. At the same time, a blot or stain, which, when viewed from an oblique angle reveals itself to be a skull or death's head is one of the moralizing elements of the witty arts of perspective in the tradition of the vanitas. The path of Satan moving through chaos toward Eden mimics the angle by which the spectator of an anamorphic painting must look to see the hidden image of death and corruption. Likewise, Adam's fear that there may be a "spot" in Eve's mind opens up the possibility of evil emerging as a result of the viewer's overly curious eye. The link between Adamic (and the reader's) curiosity and Satanic envy is established through the metaphor of anamorphosis, the "curious perspective" of the sixteenth century.