Paradise Lost critical quotes

Question 1

“The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet, and of the Devil’s party without knowing it”

Answer 1

William Blake

Question 2

“To admire Satan is to give one’s vote not only for a world of misery, but for a world of lies and Propaganda”

Answer 2

C.S. Lewis

Question 3

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

Answer 3

C.S. Lewis

Question 4

“Adam fell by uxoriousness”

Answer 4

C.S Lewis

Question 5

“[H]owever wicked Satan’s plan may be, it is God’s plan too”

Answer 5

William Empson

Question 6

“Significantly, Eve is the only character in Paradise Lost for whom a rebellion against the hierarchical status quo is as necessary as it is for Satan”

Answer 6

Gilbert and Gubar

Question 7

“There are only three female ‘roles’ in the poem, and they form a revealing kind of Trinity; the most exalted female figure is Milton’s Muse, who inspired the entire work … The most debased female image, as we have seen, is that of Sin, a monstrous creation straight out of the medieval imagination. And then there is Eve, neither angel nor devil, but the most profoundly human character”

Answer 7

Nigel Wheale

Question 8

“A vital aspect of the epic that is easily overlooked today is its fundamentally political nature.”

Answer 8

Nigel Wheale

Question 9

Milton was a “believer in individual liberty”

Answer 9

Dr Jane Gibney

Question 10

“Much of what goes on in Paradise Lost we see through Satan’s eyes”

Answer 10

Dr Jane Gibney

Question 11

“Paradise Lost reappraises the mage of the hero”

Answer 11

Dr Jane Gibney

Question 12

“Satan is driven by rage and by a sense of injured merit”

Answer 12

Dr Jane Gibney

Question 13

“The king here is God himself”

Answer 13

Dr Jane Gibney

Question 14

“God is accepted as king in Heaven only because he always has been”

Answer 14

Dr Jane Gibney

Question 15

“The real hero is not the man of war or the man of anger - he is the single obedient faithful, just man, who is ready for even inaction”

Answer 15

Dr Jane Gibney

Question 16

“A fallen, free-thinking world is better than one in which mankind is ‘stupidly good’”

Answer 16

Dr Sean McEvoy

Question 17

“Modern heroism is not to fight and kill, but to take responsibility for one’s actions in an imperfect but shared world, to continue to love, and to maintain hope in the prospect of a better world to come”

Answer 17

Dr Sean McEvoy

Question 18

“Satan is controlled by his tormented thoughts, which means that he isn’t free”

Answer 18

Karen Edwards

Question 19

“The coiling circling body of the serpent, it turns out, perfectly expresses the mind of Satan”

Answer 19

Karen Edwards

Question 20

“Milton was not a dualist; he didn’t believe in a complete separation of body and spirit. This is a very different philosophy to Satan’s dualistic philosophy”

Answer 20

Karen Edwards

Question 21

“This description of the fallen angels as serpents deflates any sense that we might have had of Satan being heroic”

Answer 21

Karen Edwards

Question 22

“Perfection is a dynamic thing in Paradise Lost”

Answer 22

Karen Edwards

Question 23

“Learning happens most dramatically in Paradise Lost when characters in fact make mistakes, because it causes them to reexamine their own thinking processes”

Answer 23

Karen Edwards

Question 24

“Working in the garden is a symbolic expression of their need to keep their minds alert”

Answer 24

Karen Edwards

Question 25

“I would argue that Milton is neither a misogynist nor a modern feminist. Rather, the very source for his poem, The Bible, gives a mixed message about the status of women, and Milton’s poem reflects these mixed messages”

Answer 25

Karen Edwards

Question 26

“Eve is both an individual in her own right, in every way equal in her humanity with Adam. She’s capable of and has the right to make her own decisions. But she is also a wife who looks up to Adam and who seems to acknowledge him as her head”

Answer 26

Karen Edwards

Question 27

“It is their love and forgiveness of each other and their repentance that saves Adam and Eve and love is what Satan doesn’t experience”

Answer 27

Karen Edwards

Question 28

“The ninth book of Paradise Lost presents the pivotal moment when Milton’s narrative metamorphoses from its initial plan to discuss ‘Man’s First Disobedience’, to an analysis of woman’s first disobedience. [...] [Eve] is more susceptible to such wiles than Adam. Or, alternatively, is Eve more ambitious, rebellious and disobedient than Adam? Milton leaves this question open.”

Answer 28

Sandra Gilbert

Question 29

Eve’s “otherness … leads … [to] her fall”

Answer 29

Sandra Gilbert

Question 30

“Milton’s Devil as a moral being [is] far superior to the God … this bold neglect of a direct moral purpose is the most decisive proof of the supremacy of Milton's genius”

Answer 30

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Question 31

“No superiority of moral virtue to his God over his Devil”

Answer 31

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Question 32

Satan “perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture”

Answer 32

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Question 33

God “in the cold scrutiny of undoubted triumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his enemy - not from any mistaken notion of inducing him to repent … but with the alleged design of exasperating him to deserve new torments”

Answer 33

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Question 34

“In his religious writings, too, the concept of free will is always at the forefront”

Answer 34

Roberta Klimt

Question 35

“Milton warns too against religious officials intruding on worldly affairs, arguing, in effect, for the separation of church and state”

Answer 35

Roberta Klimt

Question 36

“A leader, whether religious or secular, should foster intellectual freedom rather than blind obedience in their followers”

Answer 36

Roberta Klimt

Question 37

“Without freedom to choose, the decisions we make are meaningless”

Answer 37

Roberta Klimt

Question 38

“For Milton, if God had not granted mankind ‘reason’ – which means the ability to make their own decisions, even bad ones - then these human creatures would have been little more than puppets, going through the ‘motions’ of autonomy but in reality not free”

Answer 38

Roberta Klimt

Question 39

“Milton presents us with a complex moral universe in Paradise Lost. Satan, the villain of the poem, can also be read as a republican hero; God, infallible and omnibenevolent, can also be seen as a tyrannical monarch of the sort we know Milton to have despised”

Answer 39

Roberta Klimt

Question 40

“Poem about freedom, men and women being free to choose, free to transgress, free to revolt M free to fall”

Answer 40

Alice Hunt

Question 41

“Rails against tyrants and the seductive appeal of kings and all their glittering ceremonies”

Answer 41

Alice Hunt

Question 42

Adam “sees in Eve a sensual beauty”

Answer 42

Jessica Martin

Question 43

“Eve yearns to possess the knowledge her husband has”

Answer 43

Jessica Martin