231 Irene Montori Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II” Cultivating the Wild Garden: Vitality and Environmental Ethics in Paradise Lost Abstract John Milton’s Paradise Lost witnesses an ecological awareness informing its representation of Eden, where the wild vitality of plants gives Adam and Eve the chance to tend the Garden and to cultivate their household skills and social virtues. The article focuses on their difer- ent relationship to the wildness of the earthly paradise as an interdisciplinary subject that brings into conversation Milton’s vitalist philosophy with environmental ethics. 1. Historicising Milton’s Environmental Ethics With the increasing popularity of ecological approaches to early modern lit- erature over the past decade, John Milton has been considered a precursor to modern environmentalism. 1 Milton’s emphasis on responsibility for the natu- ral world is seen in Paradise Lost as well as in his earlier works. In A Maske, the enchanter Comus claims that nature is so abundant that to refrain from con- suming such natural wealth would be an insult to its creative force: “Where- fore did Nature pour her bounties forth, / With such a full and unwithdraw- ing hand, […] But all to please, and sate the curious taste?” (A Maske, 709-13). To counteract Comus’s argument for human exploitation of nature, the Lady rebuts him by encouraging human responsibility and moderate consumption of natural resources: 1 Cf. McColley 2001 and 2007; Hiltner 2003 and 2008; Cummins 2007; Theis 1996; Pici 2001; Picciotto 2005.