Paradise Lost mock critics

Question 1

critic on how Satan’s acts against God are futile/ a bit impressive

Answer 1

Walter Raleigh
‘his very situation as the fearless antagonist of omnipotence makes him either a fool or a hero, and Milton is far indeed from permitting us to think him a fool’

Question 2

comparison to an epic hero

Answer 2

Jane Gibney

Satan is ‘like Achilles’ because he’s ‘driven by rage and by a sense of injured merit’

Question 3

idea that we are sinful if we fail the test of PL

Answer 3

Stanley Fish

‘the reader who falls before the lures of Satan’s rhetoric displays again the weakness of Adam’

Question 4

everything is really quite fab

Answer 4

Alastair Fowling

setting and action = ‘gloriously heroic’

Question 5

pandemonium quote

Answer 5

Steven Blackmore

‘perverse parody’ (of Heaven)

Question 6

idea that narrator counteracts Satan’s speeches

Answer 6

Waldcock

‘there is hardly a great speech of Satan’s that Milton is not at pains to correct, dampen down and neutralise’

Question 7

idea that Satan gets less great as he goes further from the angels

Answer 7

Stein

Satan is far less magnificent away from his followers

Question 8

Milton idea of testing faith

Answer 8

‘I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue… that never sallies out and sees her adversary’
- the Areopagitica

Question 9

Milton comparing different kinds of rulers

Answer 9

‘If I inveigh against tyrants, what is that to kings?’

- Defensio Secunda

Question 10

Milton on freedom

Answer 10

‘non can love freedom heartily but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license’
- Tenure of Kings and Magistrates