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Milton's six-year-long private study and the epic poem 'Paradise Lost.' Milton's extraordinary confidence in his service to God and country led him to write on various topics, including church government, divorce, education, freedom of the press, and republicanism. During this period, he also worked on his Latin treatise, 'Christian Doctrine,' which challenged orthodox beliefs. Milton believed that inner transformation was necessary for men and women to value intellectual, religious, and political freedom. 'Paradise Lost' is an epic poem that challenges readers to rethink the topics of tyranny, servitude, and liberty.
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.English epic. He promised a poem devoted to the glory of the nation, centering around
his epic thirty years later. readers found instead a poem set in Heaven, Hell, and the
mentioned. What lay between the youthful promise and the eventual fulfillment was a career marked by private tragedy and public controversy. Milton tells us much about
concern with authorship with urgent intervention in the great questions of his time. It is scarcely possible to treat Milton's career separately from the history of England in his lifetime, not only because he was an active participant in public affairs but also
and state. When he signed himself, as he often did, ....J01i'ilNhlton, En~," he
Milton saw himself as spokesman for the nation as a whole, even when he found
but whose understanding of those causes often arose out of the most personal con- cerns. The young Milton self-consciously set out to follow the steps of the ideal poetic
Roman poet VirgiL In this ~proacfitOliiS'~o~;:~;hestood at the 0EP.~ite el!~ __~J
turned to verse with an.~ of studied c-arelessness-.t\Iilton began by writlflg occaslonaf poems in Latin and several English poems in the pastoral mode: lyrics, the masque
better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas ....Milton resembles Spenser in certain ways,
reading m a~SIent_~~~dern iheo~~~~~~_p,~,l~!?'cy:-sci'"e~~:.p~Jitics,~and
heritage fmPInged on hIS ,,:ritfng'& immediatel..- and directly as the circumstances of his own life. but he continually reconceived the ideas. lite~n' forms. and values of
1772 I _YOHi': ;\IILTO~
required exrraordinery confidence in the service he hoped to perform for God and country. It also. of course, required money. which was provided bv his father, who was a' successful scrh~._9nn.tJin~t1<!'l!_qL~olici.~o! .. in"tment adviser, ana- !!lQney lender. Although Milton enjoyed the company of some aris~ocrats and ~as profoundly grateful that his father spared him from the grubby business of making money. he belonged to the London bourgeoisie. His father's business dealings and loans 'at interest paid for private tutors in his youth, for his education at St. Paul's, one of the finest schools in the land, for his seven years at Cambridge and the six years of reading that followed. and for his "grand [QUI''' of France. Italy, and Switzer- land at the age of thirty. Yet Milton's connection with the class that stood to ~enefit most directlv from Europe's first bourgeois revolution does not account for hIS pas- sionate political views. His brother, Christopher, fought on the royaI~st s~.fgr the Milton brothers. as for most of.their c~'!t~l'!:!P<?~r_i.r£!~1!~'..':a.Id~l!.'?!-,~~~
From the outbreak of the conflict until his death. Milton was allied \lith the Puntan. cause. Yet hIS religtous opinions developed throughout his life. from r~lati'e ortho- dcxv in hjs youth to ever more heretical positions in his later years. Milton went up
In the hindsight of 1642. he blamed the lack of reformation and the corruption in the English Church under Archbishop Laud for forcing him to abandon that goal,
must also have been linked to the fastidious contempt he ex-pressed for the ignorant and clownish clergymen-in-making who were his fellow students at Cambridge: "They thought themselves gallant men, and I thought them fools:' Those fellow students
he was destined to sen'e his language, his country, and his God as a wet, In his first
of twenty-one)! Milton had already begun to construct himself as a prophetic hard. His sense of poetic mission grew over the next decade, accompanied by growing disillusion with the Church of England. Both are present in Lycidas (I638), written to lament the untimely death of his Cambridge contemporary Edward King. The figure of King recedes in the poem nexr to Mi}ran's anxious contemplation of poetry as a vocation and his furious diatribe against the corrupt Anglican clergy who leave
Grand Tour (1638-39). i\Iilton delighted in exchanging verses and learned ccmpll- ments with various Catholic intellectuals and men of [etters. some of whom became friends. Milton could always maintain friendships and family relationships across ideological divides. Upon his return to England. Milton opened a school and was soon involved in Presbyterian efforts to depose the bishops and reform Church liturgy, writing five "Antipreladcal" tracts denouncing and satirizing bishops. These were the first in @ remarkable ~~ties~f'po1itical i~:~I'!TJQ!l~.\y__l:t!.c;h9~cupied i:m!2!!..fu~,:th~.!L~!'5: vears, untIl the disaster tEar him} of the Restoration, He wrote successively on church g;:emment~ divorce, education, freedom of the press. regicide, and republicanism. He also served as Latin Secretary to the Commonwealth Government (1649-;3) and to Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate (1654-;8). writing the official letters-mostly in Latin-to foreign governments and heads of state. Yet Milton was the very opposite of a faceless spokesman for a party line, From the beginning to the end of his polem- ical career. his publications show an extraordinary courage and independence of thought. In his tracts ad-'ocating divorce on the grounds of i~~~..2.1!.~_i~~and wit~
ment determined to restore effective censorship. And just as he was among the first
his youth, publishing works on grammar and logic chiefly written during his days as schoolmaster, a History afBritain (1670) from earliest times to the Nonnan Conquest, and a treatise urging toleration for Puritan dissenters (1673). He also continued work
from the orthodoxies of his day. The work denies the Trinity (making Christ and the
and Milton's C1nistiall Doctrine was lost to view for over 150 year5. In 1671 Mtlton published two poems which resonate with echoes of the harsh repression and the moral and political challenges Puritan dissenters faced after the Restoration. Paradise Regained, a brief epic in four hooks, treats Jesus' Temptation in the wtldemess as a hard intellectual struggle through which the hero comes to understand himself and his mission and defeats Satan by renouncing the whole pan- oply of false or faulty versions of the good life and of his kingdom. Samson Agonistes, a classical tragedy, is the more harrowing for the resemblances between its tragic hero and its author. The deeply flawed, pain-wracked, blind, and defeated Samson strug- gles, in dialogues with his visitors, to gain self-knowledge, discovering at last a des-
political wisdom and virtue. Only through such inner transformation, Milton now firmly believed, would men and women come to value-and so perhaps reclaim-s-the intellectual, religious, and political freedom he so vigorously promoted in his prose
primordial Chaos, ~~ Jh~.J~I~et Earth, It.features battles among immortal spirits, voyages through space, ana lakes of fire. Yet its protagonists are a married couple
Lost is ultimatelv about the human condition, the Fall that caused "all our woe," and the promise and means of restoration. It is also about kno\"ing and choosing, about ~.ln the opening passages of Books 1, 3, 7. and 9.l'-liltonhighlights the choices and difficulties he faced in creating his poem. His central characters-Satan. Beel- zebub. Abdfel. Adam, and E"e-are confronted with hard choices under the pressure of powerful desires and sometimes devious temptations, ;\lilton's readers, too, are 50ntinuaUv challenged to choose and to reconsider their~most 6aslc_~:~_~~~~~.~s
about freedom. heroism. work. pleasure. language. nature. and lovefn,~ great the~es
forward. This is a poem in which Satan leads a revolution against an absolute m~narch and i which questions of tyranny, servitude, and liberty are debated in a P~rliame~t in Herui'Iilton' 5 readers are hereby challenged to re~ink .th~e ~opics and, like Abdtel debating with Satan in Books 5 and 6, to make crucial dis~ncnons.... In Milton's time. the conventions of epic poetry compnsed a familiar recipe. The
ment of his theme and invocation of his Muse. The reader coUld expect grand battles and love affairs, supernatural Intervention, a descent into the underworld, catalogs
and his poem abounds with echoes of Homer and Virgil. the fifteenth-century ~talians
epic conventions and values and utterly transforms them. This is the epic to end all epics, Milton gives us the first and great~~n ,,"-an (between God ..~d S~) and the first and greatest of love affairs (between Adam and Eve), His theme is the destiny of the entire human race, caught up in the temptation and FaIl of our first "grand parents,"
our expectations. Nothing in the epic tradition or in biblical interpretation can prepare us for the Satan who hurtles into view in Book 1~ with his awesome energy and defiance, incredible fortitude, and, above all, magnificent rhetoric. For some readers, including Blake and Shelley, Satan has been the true hero of the poem, But Milton is engaged in a radical re-evaluation of epic values. and Satan's version of heroism must be contrasted with those of the 10~'3]Ahdie1 and the Son of God. Moreover, the poem's truly epic action takes place not on the battlefield but in the moral and domes- tic arena, Milton's Adam and E"e are not conventional epic heroes. but neither are they the conventional Adam and EYe. Their state of innocence is not childlike, tran- quil, and free of sexual desire. instead, the first couple enjoy sex. experience tension and passion, make mistakes of judgment, and grow in knowledge. Their task is to prune what is unruly in their own natures as they prune the vegetation in their garden, for both have the capacity to grow wtld. Their relationship exhibits gender hierarchy,
Eve's character and the centrality of her role. not only in the Fall but in the promised restoration, We expect in epics a grand style. and Milton's style engulfs us from the outset with its energy and power, as those rushing, enjambed, blank-,'erse lines propel us
sonorities and patternings, make a magnificent music. But that music is an entire
the evocative sensuousness of the descriptions of Eden, the deiicacv of Eve's love
speech rhythms of Adam and Eye's marital quarrel in Book 9. This majestic achievement depends on the poet's rejection of heroic couplets, the nann for epic and tragedy in the Restoration. \igo~r defended by Dryden, but denounced by Milton in his note on "The Verse." [The choice of verse form was, like so many other things in ~lilton's life, in part a question of politics, Milton's terms associate the "troublesome and modem bondage of rhymmg" with Restoration monarchy and repression of dissidents and present his use of unrhymed blank verse as a recovery of "ancient Hberty,"(
recast it into twelve ~after the Vlrgilian model, splitting the original Books 7 and
o much deceived, much failing,O haples-s° Eve,
"* For now, and since first break of dawn the Fiend,
400
405
4' .n.
,
415
420
425
430
erring/unlucky
luck
heedless
"Vertumn~'5;; 'in ma-~y g~ises ~ef~re' surrendering
. to him; Ceres was impregnateJ by Jove with Pro- serpina-Iater carried off to Hades by Pluto. 6. Le., which they had cultivated or planted for thcirplcasure .. ·. < "';. 1:1,: 7. The conceit of the' flower-gatherer who is her- self gathered evokes Ihe"story Of Proserplna, to whom it was applied in 4.269-71. '_-,.
470
, '" ~,
PARADISE LOST, BOOK 9 / 197 I
,,
As one who long in populous city pent, Where houses thick and sewers annoy? the-air,
Among the pleasant villages and farms
Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound,'. If chance with nymph-like step fair.virgin.pass,
She most, and in her look sums all delight.. i
This fIow'ry plat," the sweet recess'tof Eve Thus early, thus alone; her heav'nly form- Angelic, but more soft, and feminine,. Her graceful innocence, her every air" Of gesture or least action overawed His malice, and with rapine sweet' bereaved His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought: ' That space the Evil One abstracted" stood From his own evil, and for the time 'remained- Stupidly good," of enmity disarmed,' :,:,' Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge; .. ",.- But the hot hell that always in him burns, Though in mid-heav'rr, soon ended hisdelight.s.. And tortures him now more, the more he- sees - Of pleasure not for him ordained:' then .soon Fierce hate he recollects, and all his thoughts Of mischief gratulating," thus excites! "Thoughts, whither have ye led me, with what sweet Compulsion thus transported to forget What hither brought us, hate, not love, ncrhope. Of Paradise for Hell, hope here to taste Of pleasure, but all pleasure to destroy, Save what is in destroying, other joy, To me is lost. Then let me not-let pass Occasion which now smiles, behold alone The woman, opportune" to all attempts, (^) open
undulating small trees handiwork
445 make noisome, befoul
.
.',because-of .i, , 'plot/tetre~i
manner .
withdrawn , , (^465) -.good because stupefied
greeting
of Sheba, in a' real garden {not "mystic," or "Feigned.vas the others were).
PARADlSE LOST, BOOK 9 I 1973
By angels numberless, thy daily train."~
By tongue of brute, and human sense expressed?
-I knew.but not with human voice endued:"
535
540
550
5"
570
flattered/prelude
hesitate about
endowed
able to speak
1978 / JOHN MILTON
begrudges
power
merry/jolly