CONTEXT Flashcards
Milton not using Satan’s role as tyrant as a critique of monarchy as a whole, as earthly kings have divine right, but rather a critique of absolute power against the will of God
Milton “Defensio Secunda” (1654) “If I inveigh against tyrants, what is that to Kings?”
Contemporary readers, considering Pl within a deeply Christian paradigm would not have viewed Satan as the least bit attractive- solely a modern eisegesis
Joseph Addison “The Spectator” (1712) “Milton never intended [Satan to be the hero] … [PL is] incapable of shocking the most religious reader”
contemporary readers finding PL irreligious
John Dryden “The Dedication of the Aeneis” (1697) “[I would have preferred if] the Devil had not been his [Milton’s] hero, instead of Adam”
no mention of any perceived “magnificence” of Satan as a cause for objection by licenser
when Milton submitted the poem to the episcopal licenser, Thomas Tomkins, in 1667, the only charge by which the chaplain denied licence was that a small passage in Book I showed overly Republican sympathies
Satan is further made to seem equivalent to the archetype of a Roman hero, Aeneas, through similarity of the opening scenes of Book I and those of Book I of the Aeneid. Milton depicts Satan as magnificent not simply by association to Aeneas, but by depicting him as equally committed to his cause.
Both openings (PL and the Aeneid) contain the leader and his soldiers lying prostrate, on a lake of fire and shore respectively, having been felled by God or a god, and where Satan makes a speech to his soldiers to hold firm and expect future glory, for the narrator to then reveal that Satan to be “Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair”, Aeneas makes a speech equivalent in content and the narrator similarly notes, “Such words he spoke, while sick with deep distress he feigns hope on his face”
reference to Italian and Spanish poets in the Verse
Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered (1581) and Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1516 first published) two Christian epics
draws comparison between Satan and Hector
Book XI of the Iliad comparing Hector at the front line of battle to a comet
draws comparison between Satan and Achilles
description of Achilles’ shield as “luminous as the moon” (Iliad, XIX)
inversion of Satan’s previous sentiment about creating heaven in hell, revealing private despair and lowliness
“Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;” Book IV
Fallen Angels end up as gross
Book X “for now were all transformed / Alike, to serpents all” – the Fallen Angels lose each of their unique appeals and are now revolting “the hall, thick swarming now / With complicated monsters head and tail” – complete loss of character – now an indistinguishable mass in the same space where they were portrayed as magisterial orators
God on humanity’s free will
God tells the Son in Book III that he made man “Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.”- underscores the importance of free will in explaining the Fall, and highlights that the Fall is a result of mankind’s sinfulness rather than any fault of God
