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Paradise Lost Notes (ENGL 210)
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Topic 8: Paradise LostOctober 31st, 2022
Politics in Paradise Lost
Satan is placed as a politician – the 17th century saw a lot of political and religious unrest (the
1640s saw a lot of political tensions with Charles I, with the civil war splitting the country into
two – by 1690, England was without a monarch)
● Milton was a very established poet around 1640 – in favour of divorce (which went
against the civil and religious laws at the time).
● The experiment in radical democracy did not last. The restoration begins.
One way of looking at the political background is thinking about Paradise Lost in the context of
the failure of the Commonwealth.
● It is sometimes read as a reflection of the political changes that Britain went through.
● Milton went blind! Thinking of Paradise Lost through the lens of disability is another
way of thinking about it (he dictated the entire poem to his daughter).
● As a political allegory, this is a changed Milton with a more cynical view as to how we
can view humankind.
○ The great sin of Adam and Eve – the acquisition of forbidden knowledge (they
make individual moral choices about what’s good and evil, rather than relying on
what God deems good and bad)
○ This poem exemplifies original sin and the idea that humankind will choose evil if
given a chance.
● From 1642 onwards, the puritanical view was that the theatre was an inducement to sin
(theatres were places where lots of bad things happened), so theatres were closed.
○ Hostility to the theatrical representation (one person pretending to be someone
that they’re not)
● Paradise Lost, in generic terms, is loaded with the machinery of tropes and stylistic
quirks of epic poems (relations to Beowulf, references to epic similes that extend for
paragraphs)
The poem doesn’t begin at an originating point – it occurs in media res.
● Many things have already transpired – there has been a war in heaven, people have been
exiled to hell, etc.
○ These elements are recounted in flashbacks as the poem progresses.
○ The chronology is inverted (we have to be flexible in thinking about time)
○ We are in a place that is bigger than in Genesis (we are placed before earth)
The poet's ambition is not only aesthetic but also religious – “I may assert Eternal Providence, /
And justify the ways of God to men” (ll. 25-26) – there’s a theological aspect here, but also a
living one.
● He’s not precisely modest here – he tells us he will pursue things that nobody has ever
attempted to do in prose and rhyme, “things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme” (l. 16)
, Book One
Paradise Lost might allude to Genesis and Jesus, but it isn’t a religious text.
● You might get fatigued in the first book by the descriptions of largeness and immensity
(he’s really trying to express the scale of the beasts)
“All in a moment through the gloom were seen / Ten thousand banners rise into the air / With
orient colors waving; with them rose / A forest huge of spears” (ll. 544-547)
● This is really big! Very big!
● This brings about the question of character in Paradise Lost – this is not “THE DEVIL,”
but an actual literary character here.
○ We want to be sure that as we read Paradise Lost, we are looking at God and
Satan as characters (although Satan is evil and defines evil, he is insanely
dramatic and charismatic)
● Satan has been read by the Romantic poets (particularly in the early 19th century) as a
divine rebel and a contender against authority.
○ The Romantic poets were big fans (around the French Revolution) of rebellion
and freedom and individualism (which Satan encapsulates!)
○ Marriage of Heaven and Hell – Blake tells us that Milton’s aesthetic capacities
were restrained when he wrote of God and heaven but freed when he wrote about
the Devil and hell.
● The fall is allegorical – it is a descent that is both literal (physical) and figurative.
Look at how logic, rhetoric, and philosophy are deeply woven into the poem:
● Trying to imagine the poem spacially is quite hard (particularly at the end of Book 2,
where Satan is leaving Hell and trying to get through chaos)
Misrepresentations of reality – we get at the beginning the editorializing voice, “Who first
seduced them to that foul revolt? / Th’infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile / Stirred up with
envy and revenge, deceived / The mother of mankind, what time his pride / Had cast him out
from Heav’n, with all his host / Of rebel angels” (ll. 33-38)
● There has been a rebellion that is logically impossible… do we engage with this as tragic
and doomed heroism (with persistence)?
● This is a poem about revenge as it is about anything else.
○ When we first encounter Satan, for him, the evocation of Hell is about its new
contrast with Heaven: “Both of lost happiness and lasting pain / Torments him”
(ll. 55-56)
○ Satan, himself, is a character that is deeply marked and deeply scarred by loss –
Hell is a place defined by negation, “O how unlike the place from whence they
fell!” (l. 75)
● Refuses to submit and admit defeat, instead choosing to reflect on what happened (he’s
looking for revenge)
○ Political metaphor! He talks as if he were Zelensky, but doesn’t accept reality like
Donald Trump (Satan in a 2022 form!)
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