Paradise Lost Critics (AO5)

Question 1

Lisa Coar critic

Answer 1

All women are judged for displaying an appetite as they long been “haunted by the hunger of Eden’s infamous apple eater”

Question 2

Barbara Lewalski critic about Satan

Answer 2

Describes Satan as being surrounded by “epic matter and motivations” and is the true hero of the text

Question 3

William Empson critic (about Milton’s god)

Answer 3

Said that there is something “badly wrong” about Milton’s God. Rather than “justify(ing) the ways of God to man” he only makes God seem “less wicked” than traditional Christian presentations

Question 4

Chloe Blatt critic about Christian influence

Answer 4

Milton “Seeks to redefine classical heroism in Christian terms”

Question 5

Voltaire critic (love)

Answer 5

“In all other poems love is represented as a vice; in Milton only it is a virtue”

Question 6

CS Lewis critic about the fruit

Answer 6

Through giving Adam the fruit Eve commits “murder”

Question 7

CS Lewis critic about Adam

Answer 7

“Adam fell by uxuriousness” (excessive attachment to, or dependence on, a wife)

Question 8

David Reid critic on the fall

Answer 8

“Error is a lapse of the mind and, like nonsense, cannot be understood”

Question 9

Tillyard critic about Adam and Eve’s happiness

Answer 9

Milton “fails to convince us that Adam and Eve are happy” they “are in the hopeless position of old age pensioners enjoying perpetual you5”