‘Tis all in pieces, all coherence goneJohn Donne,

An Anatomy of the World

THE PETITION OF RIGHTS (1628) which greatly limited the power of the king

Charles married Henriette Marie, the Catholic daughter of the King of France, appointed the Cardinal William Laud as Archbishop of Canterbury

THE CIVIL WAR (1642

Abolishment of the House of LordsRestoration of the international prestigeReorganization of the NavyMore successful in foreign than in internal policyAt his death, his son proved unable to rule

1659 THE GENERAL GEORGE MONK SUMMONED A NEW PARLIAMENT WHERE BOTH HOUSES WERE RESTORED AND IN 1660 THE PARLIAMENT INVITED CHARLES II TO RETURN THE REPUBLIC WAS OVER

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JOHN MILTON

PARADISE LOST

Genre • Desire to write a poem to glorify England

• Use of English language

• Possible genres: epic; tragic; lyric

The choice of the genre is not simply a matter of seeking the perfect medium for his story but the anxiety of a writer seeking to place himself within a centuries-old poetic tradition.

Writing an epic, Milton places himself in the tradition of prior epic writers such as Homer, Virgil, Dante, Tasso and Ariosto.

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Common features with classical and Renaissance epic;

1. It begins in medias res

2. It deals with heavenly and earthly beings and the interactions between them

3. It uses conventions such as epic similes, catalogues of people and places and invocations to a muse

4. It contains themes common to epics such as war, nationalism, empire and stories of origin

Different features:

• Unlike the Iliad and the Aeneid, Paradise Lost has no identified hero.

Possible heroes:

1. Satan (the most Achilles-like character, sorrounded with many epic features)

2. The Son of God, but although he is an important force in the poem, the story is not ultimately about him

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3. Adam. He resembles Aeneas in many respects: he is the father of a new race, responsible for founding civilization on earth but, unlike Aeneas, his primary heroic act is not heroic at all: it is the first act of disobedience.

In Paradise Lost, Milton is reconfiguring the old model of the hero redefining notions of herosm for his 17° century English Protestant audience

Although mostly an epic, Paradise Lost contains elements of Lyric poetry and of tragedy (the use of soliloquy, among the others).Milton’s first attempt to write the story of man’s fall took the form of a tragedy that he later rejected in favor of epic

MILTON’S GODClassical gods and goddesses desires and disagreements often mirror humans’ ones

Milton’s God is invisible and omnipresent

How could Milton describe God to the reader? The infinite to humans?

He describes God and his infinity in tangible terms by portraying God as if he were an individual, when he is something much greater. Everything relating to God in Paradise Lost should be understood as a kind of metaphor , a device used to play the divine in human terms.

Milton’s God is a harsh and uncompromising judge over his subjects and this is in contrast with the aim of Milton which was that of ‘justifie the wayes of God to men’(P.L.1.26)

Milton wants his God to appear less wicked than the traditional Christian one and He often appears on the defensive, explaining again and again that his foreknowledge of the fall has nothing to do with fate: Adam and Eve fall on their own free will, not because God in any way decreed it.This defensive tone little has to do with an omnipotent deity, but Milton needs it in order to justify God: hence the endless potential for contradiction in Milton’s presentation of God.

God does not simply want absolute obedience in his subjects, he wants the obedience of free beings: ‘Not free, what proof could they have givn sincereOf true allegiance, constant Faith and Love’

God’s complexities do make him difficult to find trustworthy, while Satan’s seemingly logical challenges to his authority are quite appealing.

William Blake found Milton’s depiction of God so far inferior to his depiction of Satan that he considered Milton to be an unwitting Satanist.According to him, God’s language is ‘flat, uncolored, unmetaphorical’ compared with Satan’s vivid and inspiring rhetoric.

There’s another theory, by Stanley Fish, according to which Milton deliberately lets Satan seduce not only Adam and Eve but the reader as well: the reader is first seduced by Satan’s powerful and impressive logic, then slowly realizes that the logic is in fact twisted and nonsensical. The reading experience becomes the transposition of man’s loss and, through the sin experienced while reading and being fascinated by an appealing Satan, the reader emerges renewed with a greater sense od faith, which is the ultimate goal of the poem.

MILTON’S REDEFINITION OF MARRIAGE

Milton’s epic of theology and politics, heaven, hell, creation, free will and redemption, features a human relationship at its centre.Paradise is lost after Adam chooses to disobey God, choosing, according to Milton, Eve instead.Milton’s Adam exclaims to Eve :

How can I live without thee, how forgoeThy sweet Converse and Love so dearly joyn’d?

In response to this choice, the Son demands:

Was she thy God?

In Milton’s Paradise Lost, human love challenges God’s claim to unquestioning human obedience.

In Genesis, the story of Adam and Eve’s fall is told in a single line:

She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat (Genesis 3.6)

In Paradise Lost, Adam eats the fruit of knowledge two hundred fourteen lines after Eve. Milton imagines an intervening mental strife unequalled in the history of the world as Adam comes to chose love and death over rational knowledge of God.The story is no longer one of disobedience, but man’s disobedience in favour of a human relationship.

The Adam of Genesis sins against God after Eve gives him the apple; the Adam of Paradise Lost sins against God not because of what Eve gives him but because of what he needs of her.

The critic Gregory Chaplin argues that Paradise Lost is remarkable as a ‘stage where Milton has the opportunity to depict his idea union’ which is ‘a merger of neoplatonic friendship and Christian marriage’

Marriage is the original human relation.According to some critics, Milton redefines marriage as principally a conversation, in order to diminish the division between marriage and friendship.There’s a shift from marriage for procreation and physical aspect to a relationship that satisfies the desire for classical friendship and intellectual fulfillment.

This Adam desires any fit companion and laments

In solitudeWhat happiness, who can enjoy alone? (P.L.8.364-5)

Adam, unlike God, is incomplete without companionship and this single imperfection will occasion mankind’s downfall, as the need for companionship will obstruct the rational choice to prefer obedience to God above other necessities.

According to the critic J.G. Turner ‘Milton’s ideal of married love is a private bonding of male and female suffused with erotic energy’.

In Milton, the ideal relationship requires a special bond offered by marriage: a person existing only for another.

But after the fall, lust quickly perverts the pure assertion of devotion

That false fruit Carnal desire enflaming (P.L.9.1011-13)

opening for the human carnal desires that would distort human relationship.

THE SONHe is a more classical hero than the other figures in Paradise lost. Like many classical heroes he is a king, a great statesman and a military champion. He is both glorious and vulnerable. Glorious in his godliness, goodness and military prowess and vulnerable in the promise of his future humanity and suffering as the incarnate Christ.

Milton’s goal is not simply to create a classical epic with a traditional hero but the exploration and redefinition of heroes and heroism. Milton says that Paradise Lost is about something different than ‘fabl’d knights in battels feign’d’ but rather ‘patience and heroic martyrdom’ . This is a Christian definition of heroism.

The Son in Paradise Lost is called the Son because he is not the historical figure Jesus, nor the risen Christ: he is the Son of God, a God-figure who sits at the right hand of the Father. Milton distinguishes between God the Father and God the Son by implying that the Father is invisible and ineffable, while the Son is the Father substantially expressed. While the Father exists in the ‘pure Empyrean’, the Son as his substantial expression descends to Earth to judge Adam and Eve after the Fall, and it the Son who will take human form to in order to redeem mankind.

Chronologically, the very first scene that Milton describes in Paradise Lost occurs when God announces to the Angles that he has begotten the Son. God says

This day have I begot whom I declareMy onely Son your Head I him appoint

This declaration is the occasion of Satan’s rebellion and the start of the war in Heaven, the result of which is the explulsion of one third of the angels from Heaven an God’s creation of Eden.

The Son is of fundamental importance in the act of creation, the revelation of Godhead within history and the salvation of man. In this sense, the Son is a hero.

KNOWLEDGE IN PARADISE LOST

The end then of Learning is to repair the ruines of our first Parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him

(Of Education, Milton)

Knowledge and education play important roles in Paradise Lost since Milton is writing about the first humans on earth, humans who have no history and no way of knowing the world except through God’d inspiration.

Human knowledge is attained through discourse while angelic knowledge is attained through intuition.Raphael explains Adam the story of the war in Heaven and the creation of the Earth but stops when Adam asks him about the nature of the universe, because the goal of knowledge is not to know everything in the universe but to increase our ‘appreciation of God’s goodness’ and increase our faith.

Creation has to be both enjoyed and understood as a sign of God; to examine it critically is to forget man’s place in it.Raphael says:

Knowledge is as food, needs no lessHer temperance over Appetite (P.L.7.127-27)

Just as we should be temperate with food, we must discriminate between different kinds of knowledge, avoiding that which will move us away from God.This brings to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil whose importance is less in the knowledge it brings than in its function of ‘sign of our obedience’.Different types of knowledge before and after the fall: when Adam and Eve eat the fruit they lose the capacity to attain intuitive knowledge and gain knowledge of the darkness into which creation falls when it is deprived of God’d goodness. The fallen Adam has less access to an understanding of God and Heaven than the unfallen one, and Michael speaks to Adam in a more understandable way than Raphael

Milton’s Paradise is a place where Adam and Eve have instant knowledge of everything they can name and are simultaneously too pure to know unhappiness or recognize evil when they see it.