---

In this study, the visual metaphors of John Milton´s Paradise Lost are analyzed and read through the poststructuralist perspective of Jacques Derrida on the issue of vision/blindness. To establish the contextualization for the dialogue on this issue, Martin Jay´s book Downcast Eyes serves as a far- reaching guide from the early allusions on sight up to a poststructuralist/postmodern view. A careful reading of the visual metaphors of Paradise Lost will prove that, in this epic poem of the seventeenth century, the dialectics of traditional philosophy on the issue of vision/blindness should be placed "under erasure" with the cancellation of the literal eye and the insertion of the figural "I". To attain such operation, I propose that the exercise of sight undergoes a process of interiorization that resembles the going inwardly through a "downward path to wisdom".I also propose that the abovementioned operation, the simultaneous cancellation of the eye and insertion of the "I", is accomplished in the epic through a "darkness visible" perspective in the establishment of an (in) stance in the matters of interpretation.

---

Miriam Mansur is a doctoral student of Comparative Literature at UFMG - Federal University of the State of Minas Gerais - Brazil. She majored in Letters in 2003 and has got her MA in English Literature. She has published many articles on Milton´s works, especially on Milton´s presence in Brazilian Literature.

---