Paradise Lost, critical opinion (AO3)

Question 1

“Milton has balanced the argument between Adam and Eve so evenly that it’s hard to know which side to be on”

Answer 1

J Martin Evans on the arguments of Adam and Eve in the separation debate

Question 2

She wakes in an independent mood…she feels her power, gets her way.’

Answer 2

A.J.A. Waldock’s anti- Eve reading of the separation debate

Question 3

“Milton’s efforts to encapsulate evil in Satan was not successful”

Answer 3

Carey on Satan

Question 4

Satanist critics generally emphasise Satan’s courage, anti-Satanists his selfishness or folly

Answer 4

Carey on Satanist vs Anti-Satanist

Question 5

From first to last Eve keeps and takes the initiative… Adam, who Eve expects to be firm, suddenly weakens.

Answer 5

Tillyard on Eve’s dominance

Question 6

By granting her permission Adam becomes involved in what happens to her

Answer 6

Burden on Adam’s implication in Eve’s fall

Question 7

There appears in his books something like a Turkish contempt of females, as subordinate and inferior beings

Answer 7

Dr Johnson on Milton’s anti-feminism

Question 8

secondness, her otherness, and how that otherness leads inexorably to her demonic anger, her sin, her fall, and her exclusion from the garden of the gods

Answer 8

Gilbert on anti-feminism

Question 9

He broke the stereotypical scapegoating of Eve as essentially a temptress and uniquely gave her responsible motives

Answer 9

McColley on Eve’s responsibility

Question 10

The epic as a whole gives at least as much praise to qualities traditionally considered ‘feminine’ as those considered ‘masculine’, and this redress is part of Milton’s radical reevaluation of prevailing concepts of power.

Answer 10

McColley on the epic style and gender equality

Question 11

Milton is unusually favourable to Eve…in making her ask the serpent (shrewdly enough) how it came by its voice. The Eve of Scriptual exegesis, on the contrary, is carried away by words…

Answer 11

Weston on favourable portrayal of Eve

Question 12

‘her passions, as a result of her flattery, are ruling her reason’

Answer 12

Weston on Pride

Question 13

Adam and Eve in book IX never cease to look like free and responsible agents of their own affairs

Answer 13

Burden on human responsibility

Question 14

I am not sure that critics always notice the precise sin Eve is now committing, yet there is no mystery about it. Its English name is murder

Answer 14

C.S. Lewis

Question 15

Adam’s long speech to himself is consequent upon a decision already made, not a prelude to a decision. (Rationalisation>reason)

Answer 15

Burden on Adam’s fall

Question 16

…like all postlapsarian actions, [our view] is infected by its sinful ground. The love it [Adam’s fall] affirms is not free, for Eve has demanded it by dilemma.

Answer 16

Broadbent on postlapsarian action

Question 17

In a sense Adam becomes corrupt because he refuses to divorce Eve: because he wants solace at any price

Answer 17

Fowler on Adam’s responsibility for his fall

Question 18

She does not have to utter a word to persuade him.

Answer 18

Davies on Adam’s resolve to fall

Question 19

Milton denounces his act. But it was, after all, Milton who imagined his passion so intensely as to make us almost wish that it could be approved

Answer 19

Williams on Milton’s characterisation of Adam

Question 20

Milton has succeeded in bring to life…two quite different models of the politics of love; one is drawn from the experience of being in love with an equal…the other from the hierarchical arrangement of the universe, and the craving for male supremacy

Answer 20

Turner on Milton’s portrayal of the politics of love

Question 21

Milton achieved these effects of parallelism by sustained, meticulous revision. ‘The more we read [the Epic] the more we see of its architectural design, not merely in the narrative as a whole but in innumerable links and contrasts in the smallest details.

Answer 21

Douglas Bush on the architecture of the poem

Question 22

‘if Milton had been in the garden of Eden he would have eaten the apple, and then written a pamphlet to show how just and necessary his action was.’

Answer 22

Rose Macaulay on Milton’s argumentative personality