Paradise Lost Sin as a character Flashcards
The one seemed woman…
To the waist, and fair,/but ended foul in many a scaly fold,/voluminous and vast – a serpent armed/with mortal sting.
A cry of Hell-hounds never-ceasing barked / …
Would creep,/if aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,/and kennel there
“Hast thou…
Forgot me, then; and do I seem / now in thine eye so foul?
Till in the left side…
Opening wide,/likest to thee in shape and countenance bright,/ then shining heavenly fair, a goddess armed, / out of thy head I sprung.
Thyself in me…
Thy perfect image viewing,/becam’st enamoured; and such joy thou took’st /with me in secret that my womb conceived / a growing burden
This odious offspring […]
Breaking violent way,/tore through my entrails, that, with fear and pain/distorted, all my nether shape thus grew / transformed
Genesis 3:16: “in sorrow, thou shall bring forth children”
Of that rape begot / …
These yelling monsters, that with ceaseless cry/surround me, as thou saw’st – hourly conceived/and hourly born, with sorrow infinite / to me
But what owe I to…
his commands above,/ who hates me […] thou art my father […] whom should I obey / but thee?
Thus saying, …
From her side the fatal key,/ sad instrument of all our woe, she took […] ever bolt and bar / of massy iron or solid rock with ease / unfastens.
Book 9 line 734: “ into her heart too easy entrance won” linguistic echo of Eve
“I cannot praise a fugitive…
And cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and see her adversary” - Aeropogatica
[sin itself should be a deterrent, not the punishment that follows]
Adorned/
With gay religions full of pomp and gold
Such as raised /
To highth of noblest temper heroes old / arming to battle
In guise /
of warriors old, with ordered spear and shield,/ awaiting what command their mighty Chief / had impose
The angels move with:
“Troubled thoughts” and “in silence to soft pipes that charmed / their painful steps o’er the burnt soil”
The ranged powers /
Disband, and wandring, each his several way/ pursues, as inclination or sad choice / leads him perplext
Augustine doctrine and the idea that through sin, one adopts psychological punishment
Rose like an exhalation…
With the sound / of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet […] Doric pillars […] golden architrave […] golden fetters
Of that rape begot/
These yelling monsters, that with ceaseless cry […] hourly conceived/ and hourly born, with sorrow infinite / to me […] my bowels, their repast; then bursting forth/afresh, with conscious terrors vex me round,/ that rest or intermission none I find
Thus saying,
From her side the fatal key,/ Sad instrument of all our woe, she took […] towards the fate rolling her bestial train […] she opened; but to shut/excelled her power
“The reader who falls…
Before the lures of Satanic rhetoric displays […] the weakness of Adam and [fails] to avoid repeating [his] fall” - Stanley Fish
“Milton’s point is…
That evil can only imitate and parody goodness. Pandemonium itself is a perverse parody of heaven.” - Steven Blakemore
Sin and the angels are “suggested in poetic terms…
Indistinguishable from those which suggests splendour of heaven. By inserting signpost, by telling us to feel ‘this is vain’ and ‘this is glorious’, Milton seeks to keep the distinction clear… That he fails is evident.” - Malcolm M. Ross
Milton “had fallen…
Unawares into the deadly sins of pride and ambition” - Helen Vendler
