paradise lost critic quotes

Question 1

Blake- ‘Milton is of the…

Answer 1

…devil’s party without knowing it’

Question 2

‘Satan is the most heroic subject that was ever chosen for a poem’

Answer 2

Flazlitt

Question 3

Tillyard on happiness?

Answer 3

Milton fails to convince us that Adam and Eve are happy.

Question 4

Christopher Hill on women?

Answer 4

Milton’s attitude towards Eve is full of paradoxes as is his attitude towards women in general.

Question 5

Martin- on Adam and Eve

Answer 5

‘Adam is going to behave more like…God, and Eve is going to behave more like humanity’

Question 6

Frye on Adam’s character

Answer 6

Adam is the opposite of heroic for abandoning his responsibilities’

Question 7

Kean on the poem’s style ‘ an epic of..’

Answer 7

An epic of defeat’

Question 8

Empson on the portrayal of God

Answer 8

‘it makes God bad’

Question 9

Burden and Fish on the style of the poem

Answer 9

satanic epic’

Question 10

Keane on Satan

Answer 10

‘anti-hero’

Question 11

Shelley on God and Satan

Answer 11

‘Devil was far superior to his God’

Question 12

Bush on people’s interpretation of Satan

Answer 12

’ it has been conventional to regard Satan as the real hero of Paradise Lost’

Question 13

C.S. Lewis on Eve

Answer 13

‘Eve is a murderer’

Question 14

Baldwin on Eve

Answer 14

‘passion of pride’

Question 15

Tillyard on Adam and Eve’s fate

Answer 15

‘Both Adam and Eve are already fallen’

Question 16

Tillyard on Eve and women in power

Answer 16

‘Eve sins in assuming leadership’

Question 17

C.S. Lewis on why Adam ate the fruit

Answer 17

‘Adam fell by uxoriousness [excessive attatchment to, or dependence on, a wife]’