Paradise Lost Context Flashcards
What was Milton?
A Parliamentarian and Puritan
What wsa going on when Paradist Lost was being written?
Civil War- 1640’s
What is a Machiavellian schemer/villain?
A Machiavellian is a term used to describe someone whose sole purpose is to manipulate and corrupt others for their own gain
What did Milton support?
The regicide- in favour of killing the king
What did Milton think about rhyme?
The ‘invention of a barbarous age’ symptomatic of ‘modern bondage.’
He attacks Restoration establishment by criticising it’s literary taste.
What form does Paradise Lost adopt?
Epic poem in blank verse- unrhymed iambic pentameter
Uses a form that, to him, symbolises liberty from the king
What did Milton say his aim in PL was?
To ‘justify the ways of God to man’
What did Milton write in the Aeropagitica IN 1644?
Freedom of the press.
No need for censorship, the public should make up their own minds.
Capacity for choice.
Without freedom to choose our decisions are meaningless.
What was Milton radically commited to?
The idea of intellectual liberty.
What did Milton argue in Divorce Tracts?
Reforms in laws around the dissolution of marriage.
‘Ubsurd and unnatural for an incompatible husband and wife to be bound together by law.’
His first marriage was an unhappy one.
What did Milton argue in Regicide tracts and Republican defences?
Argued that Charles I should be deposed and executed for his missuse of the kingdom.
What does Genesis say about Adam and Eve’s prelapsarian state?
They were equal
