Milton and the "Savage Deserts of America"

Abstract

Tzvetan Todorov applied the descriptors “astonishing,” “intense,” “extreme,” and “exemplary” to characterize early modern Europeans’ first reported encounters with the alterity of the Americas and the indigenous peoples. Over the centuries Europeans demonstrated an awareness of Africa, India, and China; “some memory of these places was always there already — from the beginning,” Todorov confirms.1 As for the Americas, given the belated public record of a European contact, this alien, captivating place still required comprehension and possession. Literary works enabled and instantiated some of these efforts — intellectual and territorial. “Of late / Columbus found the American,” Milton declares in recounting the immediate aftermath of human disobedience in Paradise Lost.2 Two books later, in a long, globeconsuming epic catalog (PL 11.383–411), Milton’s prophetic narrator, Michael, directs Adam’s gaze slowly westward, while