Any Man Who Wishes to Be Saved Must Work out His Beliefs for Himself

REFORMATION

„Any man who wishes to be saved must work out his beliefs for himself”

„God hath revealed the way of eternal salvation only to the individual faith of every man” (Milton); „God’s word alone is the rule of faith” (Milton)

JOHN MILTON (1608-1674)

Other major works: sonnets („On His Blindness”: „When I consider how my light is spent”);

„Lycidas”; Comus; „L’Allegro”, „Il penseroso”; Paradise Regained; Samson Agonistes

PARADISE LOST (in 12 books, 1667)

Epic tradition (magnitude, scope)

blank verse

reworking epic tradition and the epic properties (invoking the Holy Ghost)

Christian (rather than national) epic:

„to justify the ways of God to man”;

the causes of the Fall

1. Cosmic/religious causes (context)

Revolt and fall of angels; Pandemonium; plan to seduce and corrupt humans, Satan’s epic journey

Chaos: „The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave”, „His dark materials”

Sees Adam and Eve „imparadis’d in one another’s arms’ (IV)

God’s counterplan: arrival of Raphael: tells Adam about the cosmic context

2. the psychology of Adam and Eve, their motivations

Marital love

Slideshow of human history

Adam carrying „Paradise within” himself (XII.587)

Paradise Lost as political allegory

three political models:Chaos – Hell – God’s universe

God: „…they themselves decreed

Their own revolt, not I: if I foreknew,

Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault

…

They trespass, authors to themselves in all,

Both what they judge and what they choose; for so

I formed them free, and free thay must remain

Till they enthrall themselves” (III. 117-124)

Epic properties; mythological allusions: Eve as Diana etc.

Satan: heroic position: „Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven”; sublime figure

claims to be „self-begot, self-raised”; „Our puissance is our own” (V. 860-864)

mock-creator, grotesque travesty of creation (Hell is a world of „mis-creation”)

allegorical figures of Sin and Death

„The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven”

„What matter where, if I be still the same”

„Myself am hell” (IV. 75)

Inner psychological world

Adam and Eve are creatures „whom my thoughts pursue / With wonder, and could love” (IV. 363-4)

Romantic view of Milton’s Satan: Prometheus figure, the transgressor, Titanic rebel

Blake: „Milton is a true poet and of the Devil’s party without knowing it”

Illustrators: Blake (two series), Gustave Doré, John Martin