Milton, Thomas Hobbes, and the Political Problem of Chaos

Abstract:This article explores the political ramifications of chaos in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Through a close reading of Milton’s creation account, it argues that the narrative constraints of epic force the poet into assigning more persistence and antagonism to the prima materia than his theology or politics would like. It further argues that Milton’s poetic Chaos makes him an uneasy ally of Thomas Hobbes and Hobbes’s de facto political philosophy. The article demonstrates how, in order to resolve this political problem, Milton folds the anarchic material of Chaos into Adam and Eve, transforming its anarchic will into their free will.