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The Theme of Digression in Milton's "Paradise Lost"
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Notes on the theme of digression in Milton's "Paradise Lost"
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- Paradise lost and digression : notes-
Erring - reflects transgressing from the right path.
Milton’s own narrative errs and strays. Unpredictable movement - Syntax constantly
erring. Milton’s epic similes - kind of digression
“Hovering and blazing with delusive light,
Misleads the amazed night-wanderer from his way
To bogs and mires, and oft through pond or pool,
There swallowed up and lost, from succour far.”
All one sentence - syntax is wondering (comas at end - entaglement)
Amazed = mazed = lost
“In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.”
Negative connotation to wandering and being lost - lack of freedom - “found no end”
contrasts against next quotation.
Fallen wandering - angels - directionless and pointless
Good wandering - descriptions of Eden - free, natural, non linear.
“wave rolling after wave, where way they found,
If steep, with torrent rapture, if through plain,
Soft ebbing; nor withstood them rock or hill,
But they, or underground, or circuit wide
With serpent error wandering, found their way”
In this quotation is clear that they find their way - free roaming - positive
connotation. Online the other concept of being lost.
In Adam’s point of view - Eve is in the wrong not when she eats the apple but when
she wanders and strays away from Adam’s words.
“Would thou hadst hearkened to my words, and stayed with me, as I besought thee,
when the strange Desire of wandering this unhappy morn
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