'Without Contraries Is No Progression': Dust as an All-Inclusive, Multifunctional Metaphor in Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials.'

Draws on Milton's "Paradise Lost" and on motifs found within Gnostic mythology and the poetry of William Blake to explore how Philip Pullman reworks the Judeo-Christian myth of the Fall in his trilogy, "His Dark Materials." Finds at its center "Dust": a conventional metaphor for human physicality in which good and evil, and spirit and matter coexist. (SR)