Heaven's Laughter and the Genesis of Tyranny: Milton's Reading of the Story of Babel

Abstract:During the English Revolution, the story of Babel was a key scriptural reference point, marking the moment when sovereignty emerged out of paternal rule before being shattered and divided among distinct nations. Milton's work builds on an anti-monarchical tradition that reads the myth as a story about the origin of tyranny, transforming the confusion of tongues and the dispersal of the people into an allegory of self-liberation. This essay examines the interpolation of heaven's laughter into the story of Babel in Paradise Lost, reading it as a dialectical image through which the conflicting narratives of divine punishment and divinely-sanctioned liberation are interwoven without being resolved. In Paradise Lost, heaven's laughter is the presentation and negation of Adamic dominion as a narrative framework for understanding popular sovereignty and the genesis of tyranny.