CRITICS Flashcards
William Blake
“[Milton] was a true Poet of the Devil’s party without knowing it”
Diane McColley
Milton “broke the stereotypical scapegoating of Eve as essentially a temptress and uniquely gave her responsible motives for her independent movements on the morning of the Fall”
Stanley Fish
“The true hero of the poem is in fact the reader: seeing God as malevolent or Satan as attractive is simply an indication of a fallen state, and part of the poem’s purpose”
Anna Beer
Milton “demonstrates [Eve’s] quiet heroism”
Sir William Empson
“The reason why the poem is so good is that it makes God so bad”
PULLMAN
“This is a story about devils. It’s not a story about God.”
Satan is “the hero”
SHELLEY
Satan is “superior to God”
Kwan
Satan sees himself as a “champion”
Readers may see him as “a colonial exploiter”
Evans
Satan descends “from superhuman angel to subhuman animal”
Evans
Eve’s motive is “love of her own power”
Evans
Eve’s motive is “love of her own power”
Sandra Gilbert
The story that Milton tells to woman is of course the story of women’s second news … and how her otherness leads INEXORABLY to her demonic anger, her sin, her fall.
Jessica Martin
“Whether [Milton] intends to or not, his argument indicts God as careless and cruel”
C.S. Lewis
Through giving Adam the fruit, Eve commits “murder”
William Blake
Milton was of the Devil’s party without knowing it
Frye
Adam is the opposite of heroic as he abandons his responsibilities
Evans
The story can be read as an image of the transition from childhood to maturity
Reisner
Without love “paradise too can become […] hell
Reisner sin
The Tree of Knowledge is symbolic of their “TRIAL OF OBEDIENCE”
Adam and Eve’s love was “never meant to”withstand “the test of Paradise”
Savoie
Prelapsarian “conventional sexual intercourse”
Postlapsarian “oral sex”
John Carey
Milton’s Satan excited compassionate and admiration which God does not”
- argues that Satan is the more compelling and humanised character, making god appear rigid and unfeeling.
Mary Wollstonecraft
Milton describes our first frail mother with a sensibility truly feminine
- comments on his portrayal of Eve as reinforcing patriarchal ideals of female inferiority
Northrop Frye
Paradise lost is not a religious poem but a poem about the failure of religion
