role of the reader

Question 1

what are the three things that Stanley fish suggest about paradise lost at the beginning of surprised by sin?

Answer 1

1) the poem’s centre of reference is its reader, who is also its subject
2) Milton’s purpose is to educate the reader on their fallen position and notice the distance between him and the innocent
3) In the poem Milton attempts to recreate the fall in the reader’s mind, to make him fall like Adam did

Question 2

what does milton want to do to his reader (fish)

Answer 2

‘milton wants to consciously worry his reader, to force him to doubt the correctness of his responses, and to bring him to the realisation that his inability to read the poem with any confidence in his own perception is its focus

Question 3

Textual example of how milton creates readerly pity for satan? which other narrative text can this be compared to?

Answer 3

• he juxtaposes the power of satan with a sense of fragility/ pain e.g. ‘so spoke the apostate angel, though in pain/ vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair’.
• this can be linked to the zeugma/ anaphora in the rape of the lock

Question 4

fish in the reader’s response and the epic voice +

what narrative text can this be compared to?

Answer 4

• ‘there is a disparity between our response to the speech and the epic voice’s evaluation of it… the comment of the epic voice comes as a shock to the reader who at once realizes that it does not tally with his experience.’
• this can be compared to the wasteland, where there is a disparity between the authorial intention/ the notes and the readerly response

Question 5

misleading the reader (fish) + connect this to a narrative text

Answer 5

When so he is led, the reader is made aware that Milton is correcting not a mistake of composition, but the weakness all men evince in the face of eloquence
- wasteland: weakened but their utter trust in the authority of the notes, some readers mistakenly believe them fully, this causes them to be misled

Question 6

how involved is the reader + connect to another narrative text

Answer 6

• the reader is drawn into the poem not as an observer who cooly notes the interaction of patterns,… but as a participant whose mind is the locus of that interaction
• the wasteland, the poem is created in the mind of the reader/ the are the ultimate Tiresias as they embody all the voices

Question 7

how is the reader tricked in the poem? (fish)

textual example

Answer 7

we are taught the hardest lesson of all lessons, [to] distrust of our own abilities and perceptions.
(satans spear, which appears enormous but then is shown to be ‘but a wand’ - milton distorts spacial linearity

Question 8

how does T.S. Eliot suggest that you read Paradise Lost?

Answer 8

To extract everything possible from paradise lost, it would seem necessary to read it in two different ways, first solely for sound, and second for sense… for the pleasure of the ear the meaning is hardly necessary

Question 9

T.S. Eliot on the importance of sound in paradise lost?

how can you link this to the wasteland?

Answer 9

VERY important- he suggests that:
‘I cannot feel that my appreciation of Milton leads anywhere outside of mazes of sound’
- this is linked to the WL because of the extracts that Eliot uses in different languages/ that belong to different cultural frameworks. The actual phrases themselves have no importance, but the sounds are essential