‘Religion restricts and represses.’ In the light of this statement compare
and contrast the presentation of religion in the two texts you have
studied.
Religion
- THESIS: Paradise Lost more than Marlowe. Although there is a more
subtle yet complex element to Edward II that insinuates that
Religion underscores the entire play
ED II: NNY
PL: YYN
Paradise Lost
GOD: as a symbol of religion, restricts Satan from his rebellion
- ‘best are all things as the will of God ordained them’
SATAN/GOD: arguably religion functions as a repression through God
when viewed as a tyrannical figure
- QUOTE: God created the world to ‘spite us more’ and to ‘repair his
numbers thus impaired’
SATAN: ‘not to know me argues yourselves unknown; lowest of your
throng’
- Manipulating Eve by questioning her understanding of the world
around her. If she doesn’t know Satan then she doesn’t know her
own place within creation: this echoic of the temptation of the
biblical narrative in Genesis
MILTON: ‘justify the ways of God to man’ the sole reason for Milton
writing
- He troubles with this notion throughout Lycidas, justifies his ways in
Paradise Lost, and finally Samson Agonistes he stresses the ways of
God have been justified
Gillian Woods: ‘underpinned everything’
Edward II
EDWARD: refuses to let religion diminish his powers he achieves this by
removing their authority
CONTEXT: Elizabethan era one which was ‘fractured and troubling’ shifting
from Catholicism to Protestantism
- His Cambridge education would have exposed him to the works of
Martin Luther and John Calvin
DR FAUSTUS: ‘lest it tempt thy soul’ biblical themes of free will,
temptation and reaching knowledge higher than ones station
Richard Baines note: ‘persuades men to atheism’
BUT Woods unsure about such a claim: ‘deeply subversive nature of his
writing’
On the surface the play is littered with Anti-Catholic sentiment through
Edward II:
EDWARD: ‘with slaughtered priests make Tiber’s channel swell’
BUT ED: ‘now sweet God of heaven’ slight appeal to God
APPEAL to Divine Right of Kings: defeat of ‘proud’ Mortimer and Isabella,
and reinstating order and monarchy through ‘the son’ (link PL)
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