“Thou Resemblest Now thy Sin”: Milton’s Spiritual-Aesthetic Translation

Abstract

In his production of Paradise Lost, John Milton finds himself forced to express in words the physical qualities of objects that have no actual tangible form. Seemingly instinctively, the writer solves his necessity of aesthetic form by transforming the spiritual, moral and behavioral traits of his characters into physical features that he is able to describe, translating goodness into beauty and evil into ugliness.