The Image of Biblical Garden in Time and Transnational Projection (Wells – Oates – Byatt)

Abstract

The investigation focuses on a comparative analysis of three literary works of the writers of different time periods and different English speaking countries. The common thing in these works that defined this comparative approach is an obvious or indirect allusion to the Biblical myth about Eden – a paradise garden on the earth – and further development of its ambiguous interpretation started in the XVI the c. by an outstanding Netherland artist Hieronymus Bosch, the author of the famous picture The Garden of Earthly Delights. The aim is to reveal as the universal perception of the Biblical image as the embodiment of new accents of its meaning born in a certain time and due to certain problems. Such texts were chosen for the analysis: the short story by H. Wells “The Door in the Wall” (1906), the novel by an American writer J. C. Oates “The Garden of Earthly Delights” (1967) and the novel of a modern English author A. Byatt “The Children’s Book” (2009). Such a great century-sized range nevertheless shows with obviousness both the universal human value of the Book of Books and the lack of exhaustion of its meaning in any time. The ambiguity of the meaning “paradise garden on the earth” as well as the very possibility of its existence is stressed by each of the authors but in the context of one’s own time and one’s own views on a man and society. Thus, Wells in the history of his protagonist who once could manage to enter the “earthly Eden” conveys his own premonition of “being expelled from Paradise”, and his fantastic illusions about happy future of mankind and the possibility of building “the garden of earthly delights” being ruined. The theme of Paradise lost is a through one in the novel by J. C. Oates, but with its own “American” accent connected with the destruction of the very “American dream” – achieving material well-being and social status. The third work – the novel of the English writer A. Byatt “Children’s Book” as if incorporates the problems of Wells’ story ( he himself appears here both as a real person and as a fictional character Herbert Methley) and the social-feministic trend of Oates’ novel. Byatt gives her version of the Biblical myth with the symbolical ending of the way from Paradise to Hell her protagonists went on. The sad result of the reflection over the earthly Paradise destruction is defined by the historical event of the time – The First World War, that proved the illusory nature of “the garden of earthly delights”.