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Paradise Lost > Context > Flashcards

Context Flashcards

1
Q

Belial - link to the Iliad

A

Could be interpreted as a Thersites figure who in Book II of The Iliad is beaten and punished for arguing against war

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2
Q

‘Sing Heavenly Muse’

A

Direct allusion to both…
‘Of arms and the man I sing’ (Aeneid)
‘Sing, goddess’ (Iliad)
Immediately establishes connotations of grandeur and importance as well as war and suffering

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3
Q

English Civil War

A

1642-1651
To begin with an internecine war in heaven grounds the horror of the Genesis story in the contemporary moment
Civil war was incredibly divisive, as is Satan’s revolt - 2/3 remain loyal while 1/3 rebel with Satan

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4
Q

Weaponry in Book VI

A

Satan and the Fallen Angels even invent canon and muskets to fight God, having failed with classical weapons, enhancing the contemporary resonance

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5
Q

What was Milton’s position under Cromwell?

A

Secretary for Foreign Tongues - in charge of correspondence with foreign countries

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6
Q

National Epic

A

National Epics are believed to capture and express the origin of the nation - the founding of Rome in the Aeneid or the most important war in Ancient Athens in the Iliad

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7
Q

Milton’s literary aim in writing Paradise Lost

A

To write the National Epic/foundational story of humanity – the war in Heaven

To write an English National Epic which rivalled Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and represented post-Reformation and post-Civil War England

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8
Q

What is psychomachia?

A

The war of the soul - Satan’s self-conflict

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9
Q

Pandemonium - links to Charles and Cromwell

A

Pandemonium resembles both…

  1. Charles I - luxury and Charles’ manipulation of the parliaments
  2. Cromwell - emphasis on debate as well as Cromwell’s increasingly king-like control over the new English Parliament
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10
Q

Putney Debates

A

Putney Debates (1647) – sought to come up with a plan to prevent the King from causing trouble in the future, therefore thematically similar to the debate in Hell (planning against God)
At the heart/forefront of the contemporary political conscience
The grand debate in Hell echoes these debates which were of course ultimately unsuccessful

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11
Q

Links between Satan and Aeneas

A

Both fleeing failure in battle yet they decide to continue and fight to regain their glory

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12
Q

Proof of the importance of rhetoric in contemporary England

A

Thomas Nashe said in 1595 ‘of all the arts, rhetoric is to be held in the highest esteem’

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13
Q

The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates on the nature of freedom

A

1649 - ‘all men naturally were born free’ and were ‘born to command and not to obey’

‘None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license’ - argued that in order to be free you have to obey higher powers otherwise you are not a good person

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14
Q

The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates on kingship

A

Argued that a tyrannical king contradicts divine order (justifying the execution of Charles I)

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15
Q

Of Education on rhetoric

A

1644 - Milton’s suspicion of rhetoric and the difference between ‘the words and the lexicons’ (rhetoric) and the ‘solid things in them’ (meaning)

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16
Q

Rhetoric and the Church

A

Suspicious of rhetoric – he believed its deliberate purpose was to confuse people and obfuscate the truth – associated it with Roman Catholicism

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17
Q

Trivium education

A

Logic, rhetoric and grammar – he had a clear grounding in the principles of classical rhetoric

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18
Q

Where was Milton educated?

A

St Paul’s

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19
Q

Adam Unparadised

A

1642 - Original conception of Paradise Lost as a drama arguably means that Satan and the other characters’ speeches feel more like soliloquies than poetic monologues

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20
Q

Of Education on the purpose of learning

A

‘the end, then, of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents’

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21
Q

Book IX - rhetoric quotation

A

Compares Satan to ‘some orator / In Athens or free Rome’ - it is the rhetorical beauty of his speeches which makes them so effective

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22
Q

Final lines of Paradise Lost

A

‘They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow, / Through Eden took their solitary way’

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23
Q

Areopagitica

A

1644 - Importance of the individual

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24
Q

Biblical roots of the names of the chief fallen angels

A

Satan – the adversary

Beelzebub – Lord of the Flies, Prince of the Devils

Mammon – personification of the desire for material wealth

Belial – word used in the Bible to mean depravity and licence

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25
Augustine quotations (2)
Early Church father 'In your service is perfect freedom' 'Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you'
26
Augustine's theory regarding the creation of humanity
Augustine’s idea that God creates Mankind to fill the gaps that the fallen angels left – Milton uses this theory
27
What is theodicy?
Milton’s declared aim is theodicy – a defence of God’s goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil
28
Classical context for the setting of PL
Virgil and Homer both describe their mythological settings with cartographic references
29
Marlowe’s Dr Faustus
One of many contemporary works which explored the idea that Hell has a psychological quality as well as being a physical setting
30
Contemporary connotations of the word 'paradise'
The word ‘paradise’ was no longer just a religious construct, but now referred to real geographical locations that explorers had found and been struck by
31
German mystic Jacob Boehme
Shaped the ideas of radical Christians who believed that Hell was actually a state of mind rather than a physical location
32
De Doctrina Christiana
'the infernal place seems to be outside this heavenly universe' - PL can be seen as an assertion of the physicality of Hell and its existence as an actual location Also expresses the ancient belief that God exists outside of time and sees past, present and future simultaneously
33
Ice landscape
Milton may have been drawing on a descriptions written by a polar explorer called Sir Hugh Willoughby (16th Century) Also an ice landscape in Dante’s Inferno
34
Hell as a psychological realm (Book IV)
‘Which way I fly is Hell, myself am Hell’ ‘Hell within him, for within him Hell’
35
Mammon - bible quotation
Matthew 6:24 ‘You cannot serve both God and mammon’
36
Zeus creating Athena
In the Renaissance, this myth was commonly interpreted as an allegory for God creating Christ - thus Sin 'a goddess armed / Out of thy head I sprung' is the beginning of the creation of a unholy trinity
37
Error
Error from Spenser’s Faerie Queene was ‘half like a serpent’
38
Scylla
From the Aeneid - half human, half sea-dragon
39
Spenser's The Faerie Queene
1590 Uses allegorical figures and delays the reveal of their names in order to create a natural reaction to the trait they embody
40
Idea of the Fortune Fall
'felix culpa' - all of the sins of PL were necessary for humanity to be redeemed by Christ
41
Comus
Milton’s court masque (1634) | ‘Evil on itself shall recoil…Self-fed and self-consumed’
42
Tetrachordon
1644 - ‘Men...have sometimes by transgressing most truly kept the law’ - perhaps benefit can be gained from sin (as with the idea of the Fortunate Fall)
43
PL published
1667
44
Milton was blind by...
1652 - his blindness pressed him deeper into his own mind, also links to the tangible and oppressive nature of the darkness of Hell
45
Eve eats the fruit...
Because God ‘forbids us to be wise’ (Book 9)
46
The Fall of the Rebel Angels
Bruegel’s The Fall of the Rebel Angels (1562) Contemporary depictions of the fight before Satan’s fall suggest the battle was extremely chaotic - this description of the fight preceding Satan’s fall is somewhat revolutionary as Milton makes Satan seem insignificant in the face of God’s power
47
Of Reformation
In Of Reformation (1641 treatise) Milton expressed his dislike for Roman Catholicism and presented Rome as a modern-day Babylon
48
Eikonoklastes
1649 - defended regicide
49
'Th'ascending pile' - link to a court masque
In 1637, there was a scene in a court masque held for Charles I in which the earth opened up and a palace rose up
50
'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven' - echoes...
The Odyssey Book II Achilles says ‘I’d rather slave on earth for another man…than rule down here over all the breathless dead’ - Satan expresses the opposite to this view, Milton is subverting the heroic, classical version to show how Satan’s view is wrong
51
Debate in Hell - link to the Iliad
Iliad, Book II - the Greeks debate whether they should continue to wage war against the Trojans, it looks like the promoters of peace will win until Odysseus calls them all cowards (parallel between Paradise Lost and the Iliad)
52
Death in The Faerie Queene
‘like a shade’ - link to Death in PL 'that shadow seemed'
53
Leaves epic simile
During Milton’s time Autumn was in fact known as Fall This moment foreshadows the moment in Book IX when Eve tells Adam what she has done and the garland he was making for her ‘faded roses shed’ (Book IX, 893) This was a common simile for the dead - used by Virgil and Dante
54
What has happened to Satan by the end of PL?
Hell still hurts the fallen angels - Satan is not dead, just slowly degenerating
55
Satan's confusion of a true value system
‘Evil be thou my good’ (Book IV, 110)
56
Satan as the seducer in book 9
Epic simile - Satan is compared to an experienced city dweller, whilst Eve is a ‘fair virgin’
57
Satan as the snake
'mazy folds' (Book 9)
58
‘Hell trembled at the hideous name’ links to...
Book IX ‘Earth trembled from her entrails’ at the completion of the Fall
59
Ease of the Fall (book 9)
‘too easy entrance won’ - temptation to sin is so strong
60
'O how fallen! How changed / From him' links to...
Isaiah 14.12 ‘How art thou fallen from Heaven’
61
Leviathan in the Bible
Job 41:34, the Leviathan is ‘king over all the children of pride’ Psalm 74 ‘Thou didst crush the heads of the Leviathan’ i.e. God will destroy Satan
62
Satan 'Stood like a tower' links to...
Proverbs 18:10 ‘The name of the Lord is a strong tower’
63
Connection between light, heaven and God
Book of Revelation asserts that heaven is lit by the glory of God alone
64
What is Manna?
Heavenly food which God provided to the Israelites in the wilderness
65
Pain of childbirth - Bible
Sin as a forerunner to Eve whose punishment for causing the Fall was Genesis 3:16 ‘in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children’
66
‘With opal towers and battlements adorned/Of living sapphire’ links to...
Revelation 21 in which Jerusalem is paved with gold, and the twelves gates which surround the city made of precious materials
67
Women as sinful
Milton's first wife deserted him - he wrote in favour of divorce in Tetrachordon Culture in which men were frequently perceiving women to be sinful
68
What is the metre of PL?
Iambic blank verse - rhyme as the 'invention of a barbarous age'
69
PL published
1667

Paradise Lost (2 decks)

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