Respect, Symbiosis, and Pluralism: Ideas of Ethics in Paradise Lost and Klara and The Sun

Abstract

Literary ethics criticism regards literature as the specific ethical expression of human society at a particular stage of history, regarding literature as “the art of Ethics”. Ethical Literary Criticism takes it as its duty to explain the ethical function of literature, aiming at explaining the ethical phenomena in literature and making value judgments on them. In his Paradise Lost, which is regarded as “a monument in the history of European literature”, Milton explores ethical issues and considers the boundaries between good and evil in the classic Genesis stories of Satan's failure to rebel and Adam and Eve's expulsion from Paradise after stealing the forbidden fruit. As the edifying significance of literature gradually diminishes, the ethical thoughts embodied in literary works change with the times and break through the limitations of the times at intervals; in contemporary times, Kazuo Ishiguro, a Japanese writer with a “dual identity”, observes and participates in the life of Josie's family from the perspective of the AI in his novel Klara and The Sun, recounting insights into love and humanity and reflecting abundant ethical reflections on identity and moral goodness and evil, which shares some similarities with Paradise Lost written in the 17th century. Therefore, the thesis focuses on the three dimensions of self-internal, self and other, and self and morality attempting to show the ethical reflections on self-identity cognition, the relationship between man and other, the boundary between good and evil, and rationality and irrationality in Paradise Lost and Klara and The Sun, in order to reveal ethical changes of the times and explore the ethical ideals shared by Milton and Kazuo Ishiguro.