Milton (1608-1674), Paradise Lost

1. Milton life and times, from Norton

2. Paradise Lost, overview

3. Three critical, historicist perspectives

4. Style

5. The Story

6. Book I. Focus on Satan

7. Resources


YouTube: Paradise Lost, images -- not all are relevant, but a selection of sublime illustrations of scenes and settings from the poem (see also separate webpage of John Martin prints):

Introduction to Milton, Six Centuries of Verse. Narrated by John Gielgud; reader: Ian Richardson

[Sonnet on his wife, "Methought I saw": see Norton 723]

-- 2nd part, on Paradise Lost

[Invocation to Light: See opening of Book 3, Norton 765]

 

Students. Re-read 1, 27-81 -- write (inkshedding) on the images and expressions that you find most striking while you read, or afterwards

 

Groups:

  • what is epic about this section?
  • with what techniques does Milton describe the indescribable scene of Hell?
  • describe one passage where the syntax seems unusual
  • what is the main purpose of this passage, in your view?

 

1. Milton life and times

Review Norton introduction:

693:

694:

695:

696:

Areopagitica

Groups: Milton's perception, after his own party was thrown out of power by the Restoration of Charles II to the throne, [was] that it was time to "translate" Genesis and clarify the reasons for God's relationship to humanity, and our relationship to Sin and Death. What evidence can you find in previous poets' work that Milton might be echoing or answering their concerns about faith? [e.g., Donne] Why would an epic poem seem an appropriate response to those poets' concerns? [Review the comments from Norton noted above]
-- adapted from http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng211/john_miltonparadise_lost12.htm

 

2. Paradise Lost overview

[Groups: to focus on one or more of these points for further discussion later]

Publication history: 1667: ten book version, without the "argument," i.e., miniature plot summaries for each book 1674: twelve book version

-- note comes after plague of 1665, fire of London, 1666 -- events seen by many as God's punishment for a dissolute nation (Restoration); each religious group had its own explanation as to God's anger. Milton's God lifts him above such partisanship: he is to "justify the ways of God to men" (1, 26).

Milton a central part of the canon of English, or world literature; its powerful influence on later poets.

We don't have to accept its theology to find it's narrative powerful, true in some sense; as with other powerful myths from Greek or Roman literature (or cf. Beowulf, Twelfth Night).

Relevance now? "We may no longer share Milton's religious beliefs," states Kean, "but we can nevertheless see the continuing relevance of the arguments presented in Paradise Lost regarding authority, gender issues, environmental concerns, the justification of war, guilt and the responsibility that each individual has to witness to the truth" (1). Embedded in this disclaimer is an implicit belief in the definiteness of truth ("the truth") that one might well argue even Milton did not share. -- Thomas H. Luxon, review article, of Margaret Kean, ed. John Milton's Paradise Lost: A Sourcebook. New York: Routledge, 2005.

Cf. Areopagitica: "For books are not absolutely dead things…" (712). The power of the mind -- here, Milton's.

As epic:

Milton has consummate control of the epic's formal properties. Look for some of these traditional epic features: gorgeous extended similes; a hero (Adam? Or the Son) who is complex and great-spirited but human, even when talking to immortals; an antagonist who rouses our sympathies despite our knowledge he's doomed and whose opposition to the hero makes the hero's triumph greater; a plot which involves the destiny of whole tribes, nations, or peoples; and invocations of the Muse to plead for her aid in singing because the task at hand is so huge.
http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng211/john_miltonparadise_lost12.htm

Previous myths: most obviously Genesis in the Bible; but many other sources, such as Ovid, Homer,Vergil, Tasso.

-- Milton draws on both pagan and Christian sources, and integrates them in Paradise Lost; but differently: Pagan occur in relation to things fallen or damned; Christian in relation to the truth.
(Jennifer Smith, http://www.csulb.edu/%7Ejsmith10/miltbeow.htm)
-- the list, typical epic strategy (1, 381 ff): Moloch, Chemos, Astereth, etc.

Illustrations (note poem's imaginative appeal to visual artists, here Romantic period)

Poem shows two ways beyond primary sin: to further evil (Satan) or redemption (Adam and Eve).

Note Milton's endorsement of marriage and the sexual bond, often called "converse" at this period. The relation of Adam and Eve, their "converse," is an image of human relation to God, a parellel to Christ's taking of the church as his "bride." However, Milton is criticized for placing woman second to man.

That good will come from the Fall, by showing God's mercy, the role of the Son of God.

-- But often disputed. Empson on Milton's God as 'Uncle Joe Stalin' (1961). Note: God placed at the head of an authoritarian structure of abolutist government; whereas Satan builds a debating chamber and invites discussion -- looks more parliamentary. Odd!

Of man's first disobedience:

Milton's vision of Genesis centers upon the twin responses to authority, obedience and rebellion, blaming the Fall on a fundamental strain of disobedience that he discovers first in Satan, then in Eve, and then in Adam's acquiescence to Eve (his famous "uxoriousness" from L. uxor, "wife"). This disaster in human history is repaired by the Son's obedience to God's will and by the working out of Satan's doom. Thus, this poem contains arguments about two important social issues in Milton's era, human relationships to governing authority and relations between men and women conceived as a microcosm of the rules governing the greater relationship between individuals and governments, or dieties.
http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng211/john_miltonparadise_lost12.htm


Groups: Discuss Book I in the light of one or more of the comments made above

 

3. Three critical, historicist perspectives

To kill a king? Milton's place in Protestant views of government:

since the king or magistrate holds his authority of the people, both originally and naturally for their good in the first place, and not his own, then may the people, as oft as they shall judge it for the best, either choose him or reject him, retain him or depose him, though no tyrant, merely by the liberty and right of freeborn men to be governed as seems to them best. (Milton, Tenure of Kings and Magistrates)

Cited by Michael Bryson <http://www.brysons.net/miltonweb/>. Bryson continues:

"The crux of the argument is this: Who may resist a king, and under what circumstances? -- magistrates and/or princes may resist, and may even depose, a king -- Milton puts many of these very same arguments in the mouth of his Satan. Satan uses the Protestant rhetoric (Calvin, Luther) of legitimate rebellion by "princes" or "inferior magistrates" against a king and transforms it into a rallying cry for the overthrow of God himself." Put into the mouth of Satan, however, is to discredit it -- it comes to seem self-serving. Milton is more radical: it lies in the power of the people to overthrow a king. "Milton wants to ground his theory of political power in the very private persons whom Calvin and Luther so despise, the ruled"

Satan worries about being deposed himself: he tells his fellow fallen angels that the "just right and the fixt Laws of Heav'n / Did first create [me] your Leader" (2, 18-19). "Satan's Protestantism and its concomitant political rhetoric is an attempt to preserve a system of power that, in truth, no longer exists, and merely serves as a justification for tyranny."

Green vision, Eden in Book IV? Nick Pici:

while it might at first seem imprudent or presumptuous to label Milton in modern terms as an "unwitting environmentalist" or to call Paradise Lost a prototypical green work, there are certain attributes of Milton's epic (not to mention attributes of some of his minor poems) that would make a compelling case for these appellations.

Its pastoral poetics: nature delights the senses; yearning for a simpler, harmonious kind of life. Sensuous focus on taste, smell, and touch in the garden. A perfect climate, where all (animals, humans) can co-exist in harmony. -- Nick Pici, College English, Fall 2001.

Colonialism? Martin Evans, in a study based on extensive correspondences between the literature on colonialism of the period and Milton's language:

an original storyline that interpreted the fallen angels as malcontents purged from heaven-England and placed within the penal colony of hell-America, and Satan as a conquistador expanding his empire into Eden-America to ultimately colonize the naked Indians, Adam and Eve.

the colonization of the New World, like that of Hell and Eden, is justified paradoxically by purgation, ridding England (Heaven) of its malcontents (devils) by depositing them in the New World (Hell).

Blake Roger, review of Martin Evans, Milton's Imperial Epic (1996); http://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~creamer/mr13.html

4. Style:

Milton on his verse style: no rhymes, Norton 725

Scansion?

One may cheerfully admit that traditional metrics, taken over wholesale from classical prosody as once understood, did not work. The weakness of foot theory was that it classified feet as distinct rhythms and presumed meters were mere accumulations thereof, so that change of foot meant change of meter . . . Meters are whole line-forms, not foot-types strung together. -- Brogan, "Meter," Princeton Encyclopedia

Hence, turn to Derek Attridge, an alternative principle: the rhythm of ordinary speech, alternating stresses, regular beat. Milton's verse as "Accentual-syllabic."

Analogous to a bar or measure in music. Keep accented, or stressed syllables roughly in time:

1 Of Man's first diso bedience, and the fruit  
2 Of that for bidden tree whose mortal taste
3 Brought death into the World, and all our woe,  
4 With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
5 Re store us, and re gain the blissful seat,  
6   Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top

Latinate: frequent inversions, such as object-verb-subject. E.g., opening lines, should be "Sing Heav'nly Muse of man's first disobedience…" (verb-subject-object). Or, line 70: "Such place Eternal Justice had prepared" (object-subject-verb).

Can you find any logic to such a linguistic "shell game" in any passages by closely reading the way they forestall the reader's access to subjects and/or verbs until the end of the sentence? E.g., 1, 217-20.
http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng211/john_miltonparadise_lost12.htm

Other strategies, i.e., misdirections across line endings (enjambment): see lines 1, 35-6 (who is deceived?); 43-4 (proud for whom?); casts light on Satan's self-deceptions.

Epic simile. Especially in describing Satan or Hell: note vehicles drawn upon. Parallels in pagan myth figure Satan as one of the old warrior god heroes (cf. Beowulf). Satan described, see: 1, 196-209.

Groups: choose one or more of the stylistic features noted above; find a short passage in Book 1 to exemplify them.

 

5. The story:

So what happens? -- Quick summary: http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng211/john_miltonparadise_lost12.htm:

Book I

That Milton's Muse is the Holy Spirit. Invocation typical of epics, but Milton showing that while he includes himself in this tradition he will surpass it.

-- and compare earlier epics, journeys of one or a few men, but with Milton's epic all mankind are implicated.

Primary focus in first three books on Satan, as if he is the protagonist -- he isn't: Adam is. But use of epic similes to suggest his power and significance. His great size -- but only at first (later takes the form of a toad, a serpent).

Satan's defiance, speeches to the assembly: celebrate martial values -- but a contrast to the Christian virtues of mercy, humility, obedience. Note solipsism of:

Examine:

Lines 1-26, Invocation. Boldness of intention!

Note the next few lines anticipate the story of the whole poem (which we all know: so the question is, not what happens but why)

Now look over following section, Satan's first speech and Beelzebub's reply, 84-156.

--- pause, while you reread ---

Beyond the rhetoric. What are they actually saying?

 

Lines 128-155, Beelzebub's speech: summarized in modern English:

Beelzebub. O Prince, who challenged Heaven’s King! although we suffer this terrible defeat, yet in spirit we are invincible. But what if our strength is left us only to bear further suffering or to do his bidding?

Groups: examine the first speech of Satan, lines 84-124: to summarize similarly, in four or five sentences.

my version:

(Satan finds Beelzebub by his side) Satan. How you have changed in this fall, who once was joined with me! But despite this dire outcome of the enemy’s greater power (who would have guessed it?), I repent nothing, and not the pride that led us and our companions to oppose him in Heaven. We haven’t lost our determination, and to seek reconcilation would be the worst shame. Through our strength we can wage war overtly or subtly, even though he lords it still in Heaven.

The rhetoric of Satan, etc. See David Daiches, Milton (1957):

The attractiveness of evil, as in the magnificent speeches of Satan and his colleagues; “they represent the attractiveness of plausible evil” (153-4). Their high rhetoric: we easily thrill “to grandiose rantings about honour and revenge uttered with all the mock passion and the theatricality of a Nuremberg rally” (154).

Satan’s first speech, “a magnificent set-piece, beginning with the broken cadences of elegy” (157). But the irony of Satan’s determination not to change: he has changed already, as the opening of his speech shows; and he is to change further (toad, serpent, etc.). His commitment to “study of revenge, immortal hate”: this “suggests no action at all but simply brooding on revenge and hate” (158).

Groups: What is the key idea of Satan's second speech, 157-191?

 

7. Resources:

Milton resources: http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/milton/index.html

The Milton-L Home Page: http://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~creamer/milton/

The Milton Reading Room: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/

Michael Bryson: http://www.brysons.net/miltonweb/

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Document prepared February 12th 2007 / updated February 8th 2009