Paradise Lost critical quotes Flashcards
(28 cards)
“The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet, and of the Devil’s party without knowing it”
William Blake
“To admire Satan is to give one’s vote not only for a world of misery, but for a world of lies and Propaganda”
C.S. Lewis
“I am not sure that critics always notice the precise sin which Eve is now committing, yet there is no mystery about it. Its name in English is Murder.”
C.S. Lewis
“Adam fell by uxoriousness”
C.S Lewis
“[H]owever wicked Satan’s plan may be, it is God’s plan too”
William Empson
“Significantly, Eve is the only character in Paradise Lost for whom a rebellion against the hierarchical status quo is as necessary as it is for Satan”
Gilbert and Gubar
“Much of what goes on in Paradise Lost we see through Satan’s eyes”
Dr Jane Gibney
“Satan is driven by rage and by a sense of injured merit”
Dr Jane Gibney
“The king here is God himself”
Dr Jane Gibney
“God is accepted as king in Heaven only because he always has been”
Dr Jane Gibney
“The real hero is not the man of war or the man of anger - he is the single obedient faithful, just man, who is ready for even inaction”
Dr Jane Gibney
“A fallen, free-thinking world is better than one in which mankind is ‘stupidly good’”
Dr Sean McEvoy
“Modern heroism is not to fight and kill, but to take responsibility for one’s actions in an imperfect but shared world”
Dr Sean McEvoy
“I would argue that Milton is neither a misogynist nor a modern feminist. Rather, the very source for his poem, The Bible, gives a mixed message about the status of women, and Milton’s poem reflects these mixed messages”
Karen Edwards
“Eve is both an individual in her own right … But she is also a wife who looks up to Adam and who seems to acknowledge him as her head”
Karen Edwards
“It is their love and forgiveness of each other and their repentance that saves Adam and Eve and love is what Satan doesn’t experience”
Karen Edwards
Eve’s “otherness … leads … [to] her fall”
Sandra Gilbert
“Milton’s Devil as a moral being [is] far superior to the God”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
“No superiority of moral virtue to his God over his Devil”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Satan “perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
“In his religious writings, too, the concept of free will is always at the forefront”
Roberta Klimt
“A leader, whether religious or secular, should foster intellectual freedom rather than blind obedience in their followers”
Roberta Klimt
“Without freedom to choose, the decisions we make are meaningless”
Roberta Klimt
“For Milton, if God had not granted mankind ‘reason’ … then these human creatures would have been little more than puppets”
Roberta Klimt
