Paradise Lost (1667) John Milton
Genesis 1-3. King James Version
Paradise Lost: Originally published in ten books in 1667; second edition of 1674 gives ParadiseLost the twelve books known today.
Allegory: verse or prose with a double meaning: a primary or surface meaning and a secondary, more concealed meaning. Allegory often uses personification. Death= Death; Everyman= Every person; Faith= Faith; Sin= Sin.
The work shows a continuous parallel between two or more levels of meaning so that persons and/or events correspond to their equal in a system of ideas.
(John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress: Christian journeys to the CelestialCity.)
--blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter (Shakespeare’s verse drama)
--epic
--In medias res
--Pandemonium: pan = all; daimonion= “evil spirits”
The Great Lie Satan is the Great Deceiver
The Felix Culpa: The Fortunate Fall The Happy Fall/ Happy Fault
“Man shall not quite be lost, but saved who will,
Yet not of will in him, but grace in me
Freely vouchsafed; once more I will renew
His lapsed powers, though forfeit and enthralled
By sin to foul exorbitant desires;
Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand
On even ground against his mortal foes,
By me upheld, that he may know how frail
His fall’n condition is, and to me owe
All his deliverance, and to none but me.” Book III
God’s comment on man (and woman); free will:
“I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall”
Virtue demanded and untested in not virtue. Cloistered virtue, “unexercised and unbreathed,” is no virtue.
God insists on free will. God does not want passive obedience from his creations; he does not want forced obedience and empty love. Instead, God wants willing and faithful creations who obey and love not through necessity but from devotion to God’s infinite love and sovereignty.
True freedom is the freedom to err; men and women are “authors to themselves.” As God says,
“I formed them free, and free they must remain,” even if they choose to fall. “Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.”
If Adam had never fallen, Christ would never have been humanity’s savior. God’s love is most evident by an act of grace and mercy. He redeems humanity through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. “Heavenly love shall outdo hellish hate.”
Notice God’s distinction between the fall of Lucifer and the fallen angels and the fall of Adam and Eve. The rebellious angels fell by their own suggestion; they were “self-tempted, self-depraved.” God in his mercy will make sure humanity is not lost because although humanity chooses to disobey God, humanity was deceived. Humanity’s redemption will be secured through the voluntary sacrifice of God’s Son. God demands Justice and Love. Satan seeks only Revenge, Power, and Spite.
Lucifer Satan (Adversary)
Uxorious- excessively devoted to one’s wife
Holy Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit)
Unholy Trinity (Satan, Sin, Death)
Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
Tree of Life
John Milton (1608-1671)
“God’s English Poet”
--Londoner most of his life; born into a Puritan family
--father a wealthy scrivener who encouraged his son’s education.
Miltonattended St. Paul’s School in London; graduated from Christ’s Church, Cambridge
University withbachelor and masters degrees. Read Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Italian.
--For six years after his graduation, Milton pursued a rigorous study of reading and writing in
order to prepare himself to be a great poet. Read every important work in print.
--Left home after six years to make the “grand tour” of France and Italy. Tour cut short by
Civil War. When Milton returned to London in 1638, he became a teacher to nephews.
--1642, married Mary Powell. She died in 1652 after giving birth to third daughter.
Married Katherine Woodcock in 1656, but she died in childbirth less than 15 months later;
final marriage in 1663 to Elizabeth Minshull is more marriage of convenience.
--1645, Milton becomes Latin Secretary to the Council of State of the Commonwealth.
--During service to Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth, Milton became totally blind.
1655, Milton writes sonnet “When I Consider” about his blindness.
“They also serve who only stand and wait.”
--1658, Cromwell dies; 1660, King Charles II restored to throne of England.
--Milton briefly imprisoned; released but alienated, bitter, and disillusioned.
-- Last years of life most creative: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes.
dictated Paradise Lost to scribes.
Some scholars believe these scribes included his daughters.
Works:
Poems written while at Cambridge:
“On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity.”
“L’Allegro” (the Cheerful Man) and “Il Penserodo” (the Pensive or Contemplative Man)
Written while working for Cromwell’s Commonwealth:
“Comus” and “Lycidas” (poems)
Prose:
Areopagitica (defense of freedom of the press which went against Cromwell’s government)
On the Christine Doctrine (a treatise of Milton’s theological beliefs)
To be considered:
“Milton was of the Devil’s party and did not know it.” William Blake
Romantics saw Satan as an attractive rebel.
Was Milton a misogynist? (Probably not. He was an English man of his time with the beliefs and prejudices of the seventeenth century. A review of his works, including Paradise Lost, and a scholarly appraisal of his life lead many scholars to believe Milton was not a woman hater.)
Milton’s purpose:
“Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat…
Instruct me, for thou know’st; thou from the first
Was present, and with might wings outspread
Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast abyss
And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.”
“I may assert Eternal Providence;
And justify the ways of God to men.” (Purpose of epic)
Description of Hell
“The dismal situation waste and wild:
A dungeon horrible on all sides round
As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all; but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulfur unconsumed”
Satan speaks to the fallen angels, now devils:
“We may with more successful hope resolve
To wage by force or guile eternal war”
“Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering: But of this be sure,
To do aught good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to his high will
Whom we resist. If then his providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labor must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil;
Which oftentimes may succeed, so as perhaps
Shall grieve him…”
“’Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,’
Said then the lost Archangel, ‘this the seat
That we must change for Heaven, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he
Who now is sovereign can dispose and bid
What shall be right: farthest from his is best,
Whom reason hath equaled, force hath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy forever dwell! Hail, horrors! Hail,
Infernal world! And thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor; one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
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,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence;
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.’”
*********************************************
Adam and Eve’s relationship:
“He for God only, she for God in him”
Eve to Adam:
“My author and disposer, what thou bid’st
Unargued I obey; so God ordains,
God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more
Is woman’s happiest knowledge and her praise.”
Book IV
They enjoyed a pure and sexual love:
“lulled by nightingales embracing slept,
And on their naked limbs the flowery roof
Showered roses…” Book IV
Before Adam and Eve sinned, God had accepted the Son’s sacrifice:
Second Adam, the Son, will take on the sins of Humanity:
“So man, as is most just,
Shall satisfy for man, be judged and die,
And dying rise, and rising with him raise
His brethren, ransomed with his own dear life.
So heav’nly love shall outdo hellish hate.”
The Fall of Adam and Eve:
Eve’s willful disobedience:
“She plucked; she ate
Earth felt the wound, and nature from her seat
Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost.”
(Eve’s first act after eating the apple is to worship the tree)
Adam: “Against his better knowledge, not deceived
But fully overcome with female charms…”
Satan returns to Pandemonium with expecting a hero’s welcome:
“…him by fraud I have seduced
From his creator, and the more to increase
Your wonder, with an apple; he thereat
Offended, worth your laughter, hath giv’n up
Both his beloved man and all his world…”
The Angel Michael to Adam and Eve as they leave Eden:
“Then wilt thou be not loath
To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess
A Paradise within thee, happier far.”
Eve to Adam as they leave Paradise:
“Who for my willful crime art banished hence.
This further consolation yet secure
I carry hence; though all by me is lost,
Such favor I unworthy am vouchsafed,
By me the Promised Seek shall all restore.”
The Ending:
“The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide;
They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.”