Paradise Lost Context Flashcards
1
Q
Milton’s Life
A
- Married 3 times (left, died, survived)
- Very radical ideas
- 1652: Went totally blind
- Sister, dad, brother + son died when young
- Free thinker
- Outsider
- Arrested due to republican views
- Puritan views
- Briefly imprisoned + forced into hiding after Charles II’s return from exile
2
Q
Milton’s Politics
A
- 1648: Wrote ‘The Tenure of Kings + Magistrates’ to show support of republican govn
- Believed govn shouldn’t censor works
- Wrote anti royalist pamphlets
- Appointed ‘Secretary of Foreign Tongues’ in Cromwell’s govn after Charles I’d execution
- Supported regicide
- Wanted a free commonwealth
- Constantly criticises Church of England
3
Q
Milton’s Religion
A
- Protestant (disinherited by father)
- Soul sleeping mortalism
- Puritan (believed in authority of Bible, not CofE)
- Despised corruption in Catholic Church
- Questioned many orthodoxies of Church
- Evangelical
- Wanted separation of Church + state
- Wanted reform of Church
4
Q
Doctrine + Discipline of Divorce
A
- ‘No one can always know the disposition of their spouse before they enter into marriage’
- Argues ability to have second chance at marriage
- Radical opinions about divorce because 1st wife (Mary) left him
- Controversial
- Marriage depends on compatibility of partners
5
Q
‘De Doctrina Christina’
A
- Marriage should contain a ‘reservation of superior rights to the husband’
- Divorce should be private
6
Q
Areopagitica
A
- Milton encouraged ‘extirpation’ (destruction) of Roman Catholic Church + their writings
- No need for censorship (no corrupted speeches from Church)
- People can decide what they want to read independently
7
Q
‘The Tenure of Kings + Magistrates’
A
- ‘indeed none can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license; which never hath more scope or more indulgence than under Tyrants’
- Showed Milton’s support of a republican form of govn (English Republicanism grew during English Civil War)
- Defends right of people to execute a guilty sovereign, whether tyrannical or not
- Milton conjectures about formation of commonwealths
8
Q
Paradise Regained
A
- Philosophical dialogue between Satan + son of God
9
Q
1600s History
A
- 1642 to 1651: English Civil War / English Revolution between Royalists + Parliamentarians
- 1603: Elizabeth I succeeded by James I (Elizabethan to Jacobean period)
- Population increase in England + Wales
- City life emerging in London
- Increase in small market towns
- 1608: Milton born when London still developing
