Paradise Lost Flashcards
(16 cards)
Christopher Ricks (critic):
“There is something sinister & mysterious, something of black magic, about Satan & the leviathan”.
Milton (biographical context)
- Milton wants to “justify ways of god to man”
- He’s making the bible in his own image-more ambitious & dangerous you could say
- In early poems Milton wanted to determine his own relationship with God - without interference.
- He spent 20 years at the forefront of politics, as civil war broke out he began to write political phamplets- Milton wrote because he had a point to make he fought his civil war with words against politics.
- King Charles 1 killed in 1849 because of freedom of speech.
- Milton lost the ‘world’ in becoming blind - his dream life became extremely vivid.
- Milton disagreed in Charles 1 behalf, as he didn’t like the control - too tyrannous Charles as asserting.
- Milton took up the role in the commonwealth of ‘secretary of foreign tongues’.
- Milton called his muse his ‘celestial patroness’.
7 Conventions of epics
Similes, catalogues (long detailed list of objects, places or people), assemblies (often have various speakers who discuss & debate different topics), repetition, formulae (used to describe everyday activities, such as going to bed & getting up), epithets (repetition of stock terms or phrases used to characterise the nature of a character object, or event), direct speech.
A05 feminist lens
Hard for modern readers to justify or accept Milton’s words of (changing contextual views over time).
Renaissance period
Took place from 14th-17th century with a more individualistic view in man
Context
- Eve’s inability to escape “household good” reflecting the patriarchal system of the 1600s.
- Milton draws on how the fall lead to this need for Jesus’ sacrifice, a symbol of hope for redemption (felix culpa- lucky fall).
- The son (Jesus) offers to give ‘death for death’ and sacrifice his life for man’s. “Behold me then, him for me, life for life. Offer on me let thine anger fall. Account me man”
- Eve’s narcissism of looking at her reflection echoes Ovid’s tale of narcissust. Attributed to Eve a native rarity that issues the fall.
- Milton’s view on mankind was created in the view of god, created with the power of reason & freedom of choice.
- Milton fought his civil war with words against politics. King Charles 1 killed in 1849 because of freedom of speech- link to Arminian (free will) v. Calvinist (fate) theory: can’t avoid the ending (punishment & the fall).
- Charles mad war against his own people & was feared as he went through a period of personal rule. Aristocratic over his reign.
Augustian theodicy
God is perfect & god created a world without moral evil or natural. God gave humans free will but when they chose to disobey God when they created an ‘absence of God’ within.
Critic Joseph Wittreich
“Adam has given himself exactly what he asked for his equal”.
William Empson
“God is presented as a ‘heroic parent’ at best and a ‘Stalinist tyrant’ at worst.
C.s. Lewis
“Milton is of the devils party without knowing it”.
William Blake
“Milton was a true poet and of the devil’s party without knowing it”.
Samuel Johnson
“Milton thought women only made for obedience”.
C.s. Lewis
Eve ‘falls through pride’.
Percy Bysshe Shelly
“Nothing can exceed the energy and magnificence of Satan as expressed in PL”.
Idea of hierarchy
How Satan falls from heaven & is resorted to nothing. Eve’s hubris is trying to go higher up in hierarchy by eating the fruit challenging the separation from Adam to be more equal.- They who “felt divinity within them breeding with wings”. Eve decides her fate and Adam knowing no better, follows her into it.
“But what will ambition & revenge descend to”- Satan as a typical vindicie figure.
Fall of man & great chain of being
“Let us divide our labours, thou where choice leads thee”- Eve wants them to separate through free will.
“Sole Eve, associate sole, to me beyond all living creatures dear”- Eve flattery from Adam.
“False glitter” (Satan & hierarchy)- allusion to appear pleasing to Eve.
