John Milton Flashcards
Milton - about
d. 1674. Poet, polemicist, civil servant under Cromwell (republican, Presbyterian)
Milton - key works
Paradise lost (1667) Paradise Regained (1671) Samson agonistes (1671)
Milton - general ideas
Religion/faith, good/evil, gender, fall/capacity to fall, freedom/republicanism/autonomy, nature, marriage/love, reason/chaos. Clothing
Paradise lost - General
- Blank verse, Epic poem. 12 books. Reconciling ability to fall with god’s omnipotence.
Paradise lost - key ideas
Why did god create evil as an omnipotent being?
Dream visions; natural imagery/ordering nature; nature reflecting adam and eve’s condition. Thought as a sin (Satan, eve alone/narcissus).
Paradise lost - quotes pre-Eden
First lines: “of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit/of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste/brought death into the world”.
God on creating man: “I made him just and right, sufficient to have stood, though free to fall” “I made them free, and free they must remain” “they themselves
“Satan exalted sat, by merit raised/to that bad eminence”, vulnerability of earth: “seduce them to our party”. Sin: “out of thy head I sprung” & was impregnated with death by Satan. Satan’s disguise: “he casts to change his proper shape”
Paradise lost - quotes describing Eden
Satan seeing Eden: “a Sylvan scene, and, as the ranks ascend,/ shade above shade, a woody theatre/ of stateliest view.” “Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall,/ godlike erect, with native honour clad/ in naked majesty seemed lords of all” “though both/not equal, as their sex not equal seemed;/ for contemplation he and valour formed;/ for softness she and SWEET attractive grace;/ he for God only, she for God in him.” Abundance: “the savoury pulp they chew…scoop the brimming stream” “linked in happy nuptial league”
Paradise lost - quotes pre-dream
“I started back,/ it started back; but pleased I soon returned,/ pleased it returned” “a voice thus warned me,/ ‘what thou seest, fair creature, is thy self” “what could I do,/ but follow straight, invisibly thus led?”
Adam: “part of my soul I seek in thee, and thee claim/my other half”
Satan: “these two, imparadised in one another’s arms,/ the happier Eden”
“In close recess,/ with flowers, garlands, and sweet-smelling herbs,/Espoused Eve decked first her nuptial bed”
Satan “squat like a toad” “forge illusions” in eves head.
Paradise lost - key episodes
Satan/fall in heaven. Counsel with devils on how to seek revenge. Jesus saying he will save adam/eve. Sight of Eden by Satan. Adam gaining eve; her explanation of seeing self and him. Eves dream; eve’s seduction by Satan. Adam’s seduction by Eve; joint sexual fall. Discussion with angels; eviction from Eden.
Paradise lost - quotes post-dream
“Awake, the morning shines, the fresh field/calls us”
On eves dream: “in the soul/are many lesser faculties that secure /reason as chief; among them fancy next/her office holds” “oft in her absence mimic fancy makes/to imitate her; but, misjoining shapes,/wild work produces oft”
Taming of nature in work: Eve: “pleasant task” to “lop overgrown, or prune, or prop, or bind” adam: “keep from wilderness”
Eve: “let us not then suspect our happy state/ left so imperfect by the Maker wise” adam: “his creating hand/nothing imperfect or deficient left” “god left free the will; for what obeys/ reason, is free; and reason he made right” “erect” (cohesive tie in imgs of body/mind) says “trial will come unsought” “go; for they stay, not free, absents thee more” (i.e. Go work separately)
Paradise lost - quotes surrounding fall
Satan wooing eve: “your eyes that seem so clear,/ yet are but dim, shall perfectly be then/opened and cleared”
“In her ears the sound/yet rung of his persuasive words” (sensuality)
“Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she eat!” “Earth felt the wound” monologue: knowledge from tree will “render me more equal”
Adam waiting: “all his joints relaxed;/ from his slack hand the garland wreathed for Eve/ down depot, and all the faded roses shed”
“Defaced, deflowered, and now to death devote!”
“We are one,/one flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself”
“Both have sinned: but thou/against god only; I against god and thee.”
“Wanton” looks between the two - “of their mutual guilt the seal, the solace of their sin” “understanding ruled or, and the will/heard not her love; both in subjection now to sensual appetite” “soon found their eyes now opened, and their minds/now darkened”
Paradise lost - post-fall quotes
“So Rose the Danita strong,/ Herculean Samson. From the harlot-lap/ of philistean Dalilah, and waked/ shorn of his strength”.
A calls E “A rib, crooked by nature” (abusive)
“Being as I am, why did’st not thou, the head,/ command me absolutely not to go?”
Fig-tree used to make clothes: “those leaves they gathered, broad as Amazonian targe”
Adam and Michael: “so both ascend/ in the visions of God; it was a hill/ of paradise the highest”
Michael (angel) to them: “where he abides, think there thy native soil” (eve not wanting to leave)
“They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,/ through Eden took their solitary way”
Paradise regained - about
Published in 1671 with Samson agonistes.
Key themes: redemption, temptation, purity, resistance/faith, humility. Hungers of body overcome with strong faith.
Paradise regained - key quotes
God: “he shall know I can produce a man,/ of female seed, far abler to resist/ all his solicitations”
Mary’s motherly qualities: “I to wait with patience am inured”
Satan, on advice of using woman to tempt Jesus: “with manliest objects we must/try his constancy”
Use of height for perspective and testing of faith (like Bunyan)
Christ, on satan’s tempting visions: “but these are false, or little else but dreams,/ conjectures, fancies, built on nothing firm”
Kinds of knowledge: “deep-versed in books and shallow in himself”
After resisting satan’s temptation - “he, unobserved,/ home to his mother’s house private returned.” (Domestic ease)
Prolegomena to Paradise Lost
Rhyme: “constraint to express many things otherwise” gives eg of Spanish and Italian writers rejecting rhyme for longer works
“Jingling sound of like endings”
In his work: “this neglect then of rhyme so little is to be taken for a defect… “ancient liberty recovered to a heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming”
Samson Agonistes - about
Prolegomena to Oaradise Regained (1671). Blank verse poem, consisting of a dialogue between speakers and a chorus.
Samson Agonistes - key themes
Trust/deception, love/marriage, father/child relationships, sin/repentance, strength of mind vs. Body, sight/light
Samson A - critics
Mohamed - Samson is “a hero of faith different in kind” with a “saintly militarism”
Samson A - quotes
Samson: “o impotence of mind, in body strong!/ but what is strength without a double share of wisdom”
“My self, my sepulchre, a moving Grave”
“I god’s counsel have not kept”
Chorus: “which shall I first bewail,/ thy bondage or lost sight,/ prison within prison/ inseparably dark”
To Dalilah: “hyena”, “sorceress” “we two are long since twain”
Dalilah: “to public good/ private respects must yield” upon rejection: “why do I humble thus myself”
Samson to Harpha: “whose God is strongest, thine or mine”
Chorus: “god not parted from him, as was fear’d,/ but favouring and assisting to the end”
Milton - critics
Rogers: Milton suggests that had the fruit been forbidden by natural, not divine, laws, a+e would never have been able to demonstrate obedience to God. Dual meanings of ‘taste’ and ‘touch’ for fruit/sex.
Knott: Milton unusually gives positive connotations to ‘wild’ and ‘wilderness’. Tension between this wilderness and the need for order? Nature=wilderness=innocence
