The document discusses several key topics in John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost: 1. Milton chose to write Paradise Lost as an epic poem, placing himself in the tradition of Homer, Virgil, and other epic poets, though he reconfigured some elements of the epic genre. 2. Paradise Lost explores ideas of knowledge, marriage, and heroism through the stories of Adam and Eve, their relationship, and the Son of God. 3. The poem examines theological concepts like the nature of God and good versus evil through its portrayal of characters like God, the Son, Satan and its interpretation of events in Genesis.

1. ‘Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone
John Donne,
An Anatomy of the World

2. THE PETITION OF RIGHTS (1628) which greatly
limited the power of the king
Charles married Henriette Marie, the Catholic
daughter of the King of France, appointed the
Cardinal William Laud as Archbishop of
Canterbury
THE CIVIL WAR (1642

3. Abolishment of the House of Lords
Restoration of the international prestige
Reorganization of the Navy
More successful in foreign than in internal policy
At his death, his son proved unable to rule
1659 THE GENERAL GEORGE MONK SUMMONED A NEW
PARLIAMENT WHERE BOTH HOUSES WERE RESTORED
AND IN 1660 THE PARLIAMENT INVITED CHARLES II TO
RETURN THE REPUBLIC WAS OVER

4. ‘
JOHN MILTON
PARADISE LOST
Genre
• Desire to write a poem to glorify England
• Use of English language
• Possible genres: epic; tragic; lyric
The choice of the genre is not simply a matter of
seeking the perfect medium for his story but
the anxiety of a writer seeking to place himself
within a centuries-old poetic tradition.
Writing an epic, Milton places himself in the
tradition of prior epic writers such as Homer,
Virgil, Dante, Tasso and Ariosto.

5. ‘
Common features with classical and Renaissance
epic;
1. It begins in medias res
2. It deals with heavenly and earthly beings and the
interactions between them
3. It uses conventions such as epic similes,
catalogues of people and places and invocations
to a muse
4. It contains themes common to epics such as war,
nationalism, empire and stories of origin
Different features:
• Unlike the Iliad and the Aeneid, Paradise Lost has
no identified hero.
Possible heroes:
1. Satan (the most Achilles-like character,
sorrounded with many epic features)
2. The Son of God, but although he is an important
force in the poem, the story is not ultimately about
him

6. ‘
3. Adam. He resembles Aeneas in many respects: he is
the father of a new race, responsible for founding
civilization on earth but, unlike Aeneas, his primary
heroic act is not heroic at all: it is the first act of
disobedience.
In Paradise Lost, Milton is reconfiguring the old model of
the hero redefining notions of herosm for his 17° century
English Protestant audience
Although mostly an epic, Paradise Lost contains
elements of Lyric poetry and of tragedy (the use of
soliloquy, among the others).
Milton’s first attempt to write the story of man’s fall took
the form of a tragedy that he later rejected in favor of
epic

7. MILTON’S GOD
Classical gods and goddesses desires and
disagreements often mirror humans’ ones
Milton’s God is invisible and omnipresent
How could Milton describe God to the reader? The
infinite to humans?
He describes God and his infinity in tangible terms
by portraying God as if he were an individual, when
he is something much greater. Everything relating to
God in Paradise Lost should be understood as a kind
of metaphor , a device used to play the divine in
human terms.
Milton’s God is a harsh and uncompromising judge
over his subjects and this is in contrast with the aim
of Milton which was that of ‘justifie the wayes of God
to men’(P.L.1.26)

8. Milton wants his God to appear less wicked than the
traditional Christian one and He often appears on the
defensive, explaining again and again that his
foreknowledge of the fall has nothing to do with fate:
Adam and Eve fall on their own free will, not because
God in any way decreed it.
This defensive tone little has to do with an omnipotent
deity, but Milton needs it in order to justify God: hence
the endless potential for contradiction in Milton’s
presentation of God.
God does not simply want absolute obedience in his
subjects, he wants the obedience of free beings:
‘Not free, what proof could they have givn sincere
Of true allegiance, constant Faith and Love’
God’s complexities do make him difficult to find
trustworthy, while Satan’s seemingly logical challenges
to his authority are quite appealing.

9. William Blake found Milton’s depiction of God so far
inferior to his depiction of Satan that he considered
Milton to be an unwitting Satanist.
According to him, God’s language is ‘flat, uncolored,
unmetaphorical’ compared with Satan’s vivid and
inspiring rhetoric.
There’s another theory, by Stanley Fish, according
to which Milton deliberately lets Satan seduce not
only Adam and Eve but the reader as well: the
reader is first seduced by Satan’s powerful and
impressive logic, then slowly realizes that the logic is
in fact twisted and nonsensical. The reading
experience becomes the transposition of man’s loss
and, through the sin experienced while reading and
being fascinated by an appealing Satan, the reader
emerges renewed with a greater sense od faith,
which is the ultimate goal of the poem.

10. MILTON’S REDEFINITION OF
MARRIAGE
Milton’s epic of theology and politics, heaven, hell,
creation, free will and redemption, features a human
relationship at its centre.
Paradise is lost after Adam chooses to disobey God,
choosing, according to Milton, Eve instead.
Milton’s Adam exclaims to Eve :
How can I live without thee, how forgoe
Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly joyn’d?
In response to this choice, the Son demands:
Was she thy God?
In Milton’s Paradise Lost, human love challenges God’s
claim to unquestioning human obedience.

11. In Genesis, the story of Adam and Eve’s fall is told in a
single line:
She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also
unto her husband with her; and he did eat (Genesis 3.6)
In Paradise Lost, Adam eats the fruit of knowledge two
hundred fourteen lines after Eve.
Milton imagines an intervening mental strife unequalled
in the history of the world as Adam comes to chose love
and death over rational knowledge of God.
The story is no longer one of disobedience, but man’s
disobedience in favour of a human relationship.
The Adam of Genesis sins against God after Eve gives
him the apple; the Adam of Paradise Lost sins against
God not because of what Eve gives him but because of
what he needs of her.
The critic Gregory Chaplin argues that Paradise Lost is
remarkable as a ‘stage where Milton has the opportunity
to depict his idea union’ which is ‘a merger of
neoplatonic friendship and Christian marriage’

12. Marriage is the original human relation.
According to some critics, Milton redefines marriage as
principally a conversation, in order to diminish the
division between marriage and friendship.
There’s a shift from marriage for procreation and
physical aspect to a relationship that satisfies the desire
for classical friendship and intellectual fulfillment.
This Adam desires any fit companion and laments
In solitude
What happiness, who can enjoy alone? (P.L.8.364-5)
Adam, unlike God, is incomplete without companionship
and this single imperfection will occasion mankind’s
downfall, as the need for companionship will obstruct the
rational choice to prefer obedience to God above other
necessities.
According to the critic J.G. Turner ‘Milton’s ideal of
married love is a private bonding of male and female
suffused with erotic energy’.

13. In Milton, the ideal relationship requires a special bond
offered by marriage: a person existing only for another.
But after the fall, lust quickly perverts the pure assertion
of devotion
That false fruit
Carnal desire enflaming (P.L.9.1011-13)
opening for the human carnal desires that would distort
human relationship.
THE SON
He is a more classical hero than the other figures in
Paradise lost. Like many classical heroes he is a king, a
great statesman and a military champion. He is both
glorious and vulnerable. Glorious in his godliness,
goodness and military prowess and vulnerable in the
promise of his future humanity and suffering as the
incarnate Christ.

14. Milton’s goal is not simply to create a classical epic with
a traditional hero but the exploration and redefinition of
heroes and heroism.
Milton says that Paradise Lost is about something
different than ‘fabl’d knights in battels feign’d’ but rather
‘patience and heroic martyrdom’ . This is a Christian
definition of heroism.
The Son in Paradise Lost is called the Son because he
is not the historical figure Jesus, nor the risen Christ: he
is the Son of God, a God-figure who sits at the right
hand of the Father. Milton distinguishes between God
the Father and God the Son by implying that the Father
is invisible and ineffable, while the Son is the Father
substantially expressed. While the Father exists in the
‘pure Empyrean’, the Son as his substantial expression
descends to Earth to judge Adam and Eve after the Fall,
and it the Son who will take human form to in order to
redeem mankind.

15. Chronologically, the very first scene that Milton describes
in Paradise Lost occurs when God announces to the
Angles that he has begotten the Son. God says
This day have I begot whom I declare
My onely Son your Head I him appoint
This declaration is the occasion of Satan’s rebellion and
the start of the war in Heaven, the result of which is the
explulsion of one third of the angels from Heaven an
God’s creation of Eden.
The Son is of fundamental importance in the act of
creation, the revelation of Godhead within history and
the salvation of man.
In this sense, the Son is a hero.

16. KNOWLEDGE IN PARADISE LOST
The end then of Learning is to repair the ruines of our
first Parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of
that knowledge to love him
(Of Education, Milton)
Knowledge and education play important roles in
Paradise Lost since Milton is writing about the first
humans on earth, humans who have no history and no
way of knowing the world except through God’d
inspiration.
Human knowledge is attained through discourse while
angelic knowledge is attained through intuition.
Raphael explains Adam the story of the war in Heaven
and the creation of the Earth but stops when Adam asks
him about the nature of the universe, because the goal of
knowledge is not to know everything in the universe but
to increase our ‘appreciation of God’s goodness’ and
increase our faith.

17. Creation has to be both enjoyed and understood as a
sign of God; to examine it critically is to forget man’s
place in it.
Raphael says:
Knowledge is as food, needs no less
Her temperance over Appetite (P.L.7.127-27)
Just as we should be temperate with food, we must
discriminate between different kinds of knowledge,
avoiding that which will move us away from God.
This brings to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and
Evil whose importance is less in the knowledge it
brings than in its function of ‘sign of our obedience’.
Different types of knowledge before and after the fall:
when Adam and Eve eat the fruit they lose the
capacity to attain intuitive knowledge and gain
knowledge of the darkness into which creation falls
when it is deprived of God’d goodness. The fallen
Adam has less access to an understanding of God
and Heaven than the unfallen one, and Michael
speaks to Adam in a more understandable way than
Raphael

18. Milton’s Paradise is a place where Adam and Eve have
instant knowledge of everything they can name and are
simultaneously too pure to know unhappiness or
recognize evil when they see it.