Binary Opposition In Paradise Lost:

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雄中學報第九期 95 年 7 月 1 日 Binary Oppositions in Paradise Lost: A Structuralist Reading Strategy 郭春安* Contemporary critics known as structuralists have been arguing that binarism is fundamental and indispensable to human language, cognition and communication. Through binary ideas, man categorizes the seemingly chaotic world and imposes the notion of system on it. Therefore, binary oppositions help us to shape the entire world-views and to mark differences in an otherwise unorganized universe (Selden Practising Theory, 56). Indeed, binarism underlies human acts and practices. Cultures and languages often work through binary oppositions. Be it in philosophy or in religion, paired opposites (body and soul, cause and effect, good and evil, matter and form, subject and object, dark and light, male and female, and so on) serve as the very foundations of human thought. Even the whole Western philosophical system can be said to be constructed upon binarism. When it comes to literary studies, the discovery of thematic binary oppositions within literary texts is one of the central reading and interpretive strategies. As Jonathan Culler suggests, certain oppositions are "pertinent to larger thematic structures which encompass other antitheses presented in the text" (Structuralist Poetics 226) and therefore are capable of generating thematic significance of the whole text. In the reading process, it is common for the reader to think in binary terms, spot fundamental binary oppositions in a particular text, integrate them to form a framework, and decipher the meaning of the text suggested by such a structural system. As far as the interpretation of Paradise Lost is concerned, the quest for crucial binary pairs and their mutual references will therefore be essential and rewarding. The first binary polarities that need to be addressed are God and Satan. Milton's God is an almighty
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