Paradise Lost Critics Quotes

Question 1

Waldock

Answer 1

Adam falls through love…and yet this noble (or at the least half-noble) act constitutes the Fall of Man.

Question 2

Christopher

Answer 2

‘Milton takes pains to show that Adam and Eve make glorious love before the Fall’

Question 3

Cerritelli

Answer 3

Eve is ‘A heroic individual who defines Christian doctrines of grace and redemption’
‘Paradise Lost contains a surprisingly modern and feminist view of the Fall’

Question 4

Tillyard

Answer 4

Adam and Eve are both imperfect and pre-fallen creatures

Question 5

All Evans

Answer 5

The falling pair may think they are becoming gods, but the language of the poem insists that they are turning into animals.

Eve is in fact the injured party, a shepherdess who is finally corrupted

Question 6

All Leonard

Answer 6

The corruption of innocence begins with a corruption of language.

The serpent’s most persuasive argument is his ability to argue

Question 7

All McColley

Answer 7

Milton was radical in making Eve an ardent caretaker of the natural world, a passionate, sensuous and pure exotic partner’

‘Their work is mutual’

Question 8

All Lewalski

Answer 8

Satan has now moved outside both the classical and Elizabethan paradigms of tragedy, since for him there can be no catharsis (relief from repressed emotions) of any kind…but only a continual declining and falling.

Paradise Lost is pre-eminantely a poem about knowing and choosing

Milton attempts to redefine classical heroism in Christian terms

Question 9

All Carey

Answer 9

‘Satan displays imagination in a way that is unavailable to God or the other good characters’

‘Beauty and delight are his natural element. Hatred is an effort of his will’.