Adam and Eve in Seventeenth-Century Thought

Description

This book offers a fascinating account of the central myth of Western culture - the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Philip Almond examines the way in which the gaps, hints and illusions within this biblical story were filled out in seventeenth-century English thought. At this time, the Bible formed a fundamental basis for studies in all subjects, and influenced greatly the way that people understood the world. Drawing extensively on primary sources he covers subjects as diverse as theology, history, philosophy, botany, language, anthropology, geology, vegetarianism, and women. He demonstrates the way in which the story of Adam and Eve was the fulcrum around which moved lively discussions on topics such as the place and nature of Paradise, the date of creation, the nature of Adamic language, the origins of the American Indians, agrarian communism, and the necessity and meaning of love, labour and marriage.

From the hardback review: 'This lucid book covers a wide range of subjects with brevity and wit, quotes generously from the sources and includes a number of suggestive comments ... the most vivid introduction now available to the multiple and sometimes baffling ways in which one of the West's central myths was read and re-read during a century of revolutionary change.' Times Literary Supplement