Edenic Co-Motion: Communal Movements of Transportive Passion in <i>Paradise Lost</i>

ABSTRACT This article reevaluates Adam’s “commotion strange” in book 8 of Milton’s Paradise Lost as a co-motion or communal movement representing the highest fulfillment of innocent social relationships. Milton’s epic reimagines paradisal passion as a positive collective movement of a united body and soul, not as a turbulent and dangerous feeling. By bringing together Adam’s “commotion” in book 8, Satan’s “compulsion” in book 9, and the fallen couple’s “commiseration” in book 10, this article foregrounds Milton’s paradisal passion as a co-motion produced by relational encounters that has the potential to transport the fallen back to a state of goodness.