A vividly detailed account of how Western society interpreted and
was influenced by the biblical story of the expulsion from the
Garden of Eden, by a French cultural critic and historian (Sin and
Fear, not reviewed). Early Christianity tended to see Paradise in
largely allegorical terms and characterize it as a place of "rest"
where the just awaited the final judgment and their entrance into
Heaven itself. As this idea waned, the Garden of Eden became
conflated with Greco-Roman descriptions of a past Golden Age or a
mythical earthly paradise of perpetual bliss that many thought
still existed in some inaccessible region. (Adam's sin was deemed
especially heinous in comparison with the blessings with which he
had been surrounded.) The dream of discovering this place of
delights inspired such fantasies as Sir John Mandeville's Travels
and the legends of Prester John, which in turn led to the
explorations of Columbus in the New World and, in Europe, to a
renewed interest in gardens and the study of botany. With the
advent of the Age of Reason and the discovery of fossils proving
that the earth was much older than bibilical history stated, the
literal interpretation of the Paradise story gradually fell out of
favor, and a more symbolic view of the Garden of Eden again became
necessary. Delumeau's text is a work of enormous scholarship,
richly illustrated with 25 medieval maps and many quotations from
primary sources throughout the centuries, and it is published here
in a fine English translation. The author concludes by suggesting
that the only acceptable Christian theology of Paradise today is
that of second-century writers, who do not assign "an excessive
guilt to the stammering human race that first came on the scene."
Scholarship happily combines with intuition in this stimulating
analysis of a powerful idea. (Kirkus Reviews)
With erudition and wit, Jean Delumeau explores the medieval
conviction that paradise existed in a precise although unreachable
earthly location. Delving into the writings of dozens of medieval
and Renaissance thinkers, from Augustine to Dante, Delumeau
presents a luminous study of the meaning of Original Sin and the
human yearning for paradise. The finest minds of the Middle Ages
wrote about where paradise was to be found, what it was like, and
who dwelt in it. Explorers sailed into the unknown in search of
paradisal gardens of wealth and delight that were thought to be
near the original Garden. Cartographers drew Eden into their maps,
often indicating the wilderness into which Adam and Eve were cast,
along with the magical kingdom of Prester John, Jerusalem, Babel,
the Happy Isles, Ophir, and other places described in biblical
narrative or borrowed from other cultures. Later, Renaissance
thinkers and writers meticulously reconstructed the details of the
original Eden, even providing schedules of the Creation and
physical descriptions of Adam and Eve. Even when the Enlightenment,
with its discovery of fossils and pre-Darwinian theories of
evolution, gradually banished the dream of paradise on earth, a
nostalgia for Eden shaped elements of culture from literature to
gardening. In our own time, Eden's hold on the Western imagination
continues to fuel questions such as whether land should be
conserved or exploited and whether a return to innocence is
possible.
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