Book 1 Flashcards
Milton’s literary aim
“while it pursues / Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme”
Milton’s religious aim
“I may assert Eternal Providence, / And justify the ways of God of men”
A04 - Milton’s blindness
“what in me is dark / Illumine”
Epic question
“Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?”
1st mention of Satan’s pride
“He trusted to have equaled the Most High”
Satan’s fall
“Hurled headlong flaming from th’ ethereal sky / With hideous ruin and combustion down / To bottomless perdition”
Paradoxes to describe
“confounded though immortal”, “darkness visible”, “fiery deluge”
Satan torutured by the thought of what he has lost
“for now the thought / both of lost happiness and lasting pain / torments him”
Hate and pride in Satan’s eyes
“baleful eyes / that witnessed huge affliction and dismay / mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate”
Satan comments on Beezlebub’s changed appearance
“If thou beest he; but O how fall’n! how changed”, “clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine / Myriads though bright”, “now misery hath joined / In equal ruin”
Satan’s view on servitude
“the unconquerable will, / and study of revenge, immortal hate:/ and courage never to submit or yield”, “to bow and sue for grace with suppliant knee, and deify his power /… / that were low indeed”
Satan’s declaration of war
“To wage by force or guile eternal war / Irreconcilable”
Beezlebub questioning God’s reign
“his high supremacy / whether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate”
Beezlebub asking if God had not killed them just to be tortured in Hell
“What if he our conqueror… / have left us this our spirit and strength entire… / that we may suffice hid vengeful ire / or do him mightier service as his thralls”
Satan announcing their purpose to do evil
“To do aught good will never be our task / but ever to do ill our sole delight”
Satan schemes on the lake
“So stretched out huge in length the Arch-Fiend lay / Chained on the burning lake / … / Left him at large to his own dark designs”
the demons think they’ve survived by their own strength not by God’s grace
“glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood / As gods, and by their own recovered strength / Not but the sufferance (permission) of supernal power”
Satan saying they have swapped the light of Heaven for the gloom of Hell
“this mournful gloom / For that celestial light”
S naming himself the possessor of Hell
“Hail horrors, hail / Infernal world and thou profoundest Hell / Receive thy new possessor”
Hell is a state of mind
“The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n”
S on reigning secure
“Here we may reign secure, and in my choice / to reign is worth ambition though in Hell”
Servitude vs. Ruling
“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav’n”
B on the power of S’ voice
“If once they hear that voice,…,they will soon resume / new courage and revive”
Shield Epic Simile
“the croad circumference / Hung on his shoulders like the moon / Through optic glass the Tuscan artists views / At evening from the tope of Fesole, / Or in Valdarno”
