CRITICAL QUOTES Flashcards
Satan’s misunderstanding of the nature of God’s supremacy and mistaken hope to defeat God- though can be understood by the reader as caused by the sin of pride
David Reid Error is a lapse of mind and, like nonsense, cannot be understood
Milton portrays Satan as a sympathetic character and the real hero of the work
William Blake [Milton was] of the Devil’s party without knowing it
Milton portraying Satan as a seductive rhetorician, and purposefully undercutting him to remind the reader of the actual falsehood of his logic
A J Waldcock There is hardly a great speech of Satan’s that Milton is not at pains to correct, dampen down and neutralise
Satan willing to drag others down and disrupt natural order for his gain or revenge
S T Coleridge Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense selfishness, the alcohol of egoism
Satan’s simultaneous portrayal as a republican and tyrant- however does he really advocate freedom or simply speak of freedom in order to gain control
Armando Iannucci Satan speaks for freedom but from an autocratic viewpoint
Milton purposefully seduces the reader with Satan’s rhetoric, so that they can have a ‘safe’ literary experience of corruption, rather than seduction by sin in real life
Stanley Fish Not so much a reading, as an entangling (Surprised by Sin- The Reader in Paradise Lost, 1967)
Milton as portraying Satan as having magnificent qualities, for whatever use, can disagree about Satan as a leader
A J A Waldcock [Satan exhibits] enormous endurance, a certain splendid recklessness … extraordinary qualities of leadership
Satan’s rhetoric, but point out that Milton explicitly undermines Stan
John Steadman Milton portrays in Satan the character of the arch-sophist.
on Milton’s Xtianity- seen in his undercutting of Satan’s rhetoric, but also a more general aversion to artifice, seen in his disapproval of the ornate design of Pandemonium
John Major [Milton shows] a Puritan aversion to artifice in expression
Satan as a tyrant
Stevie Davies [power sharing dynamic in Hell is] the tight hand of autocratic dominion
Satan as tyrant despite façade of a council
Joan Bennett [“The great Seraphic Lords” are] no less slaves than the masses
demonic order in Hell resembling the English Republic
Robert Fallon “the great consult” exercises the authority of an executive body, in which regard it more closely resembles the Protectorate Council of State
Satan’s role in PL and free will
Alistair Fowler [Satan] may be thought of as choosing to be a Jacobean villain-hero
about Milton’s portrayal of God and loyalties
Alistair Fowler ludicrous [that God, an immaterial and infinite being, would possess earthly charm and charisma]
Milton was bound to overreach himself, from the time he decided to introduce a divine character.
PL has an unequivocally Christian moral
C S Lewis Many of those who say that dislike Milton’s God only mean that they dislike God.
[the moral of the poem is] dazzlingly simple
