Descartes avec Milton: The Automata in the Garden

Among early modern fantasies of vivification-scenes of mere matter being stirred, sculpted, or spoken to and then suddenly springing to life-John Miltons retelling of Genesis 1:24-5 in Book VII of Paradise Lost soars above all others in terms of the sheer multiplicity, not to mention biodiversity, of its newly sentient creatures. Embellishing and elaborating on the relatively nondescript cattle, living creature, and creeping thing recounted in the King James Bible, Milton provides detailed close-ups of lions, lynxes, leopards, tigers, deer, elephants, and sheep all spontaneously emerging into existence, Limbd and full-grown, at Gods command. The copious specificity in these passages does more than fulfill, or even surpass, the aesthetic conventions of epic poetry.