Milton Paradise Lost (adapted from the guide by Al Drake)
“The Verse”
What arguments does Milton use in explaining his choice of blank verse?
Before you read:
The epic poem is a codified genre and Milton uses a number of poetic devices which are inextricably connected with it:
- the poet starts with stating his theme
- invocation
- the epic question and answer (O Muse, what happened? This is what happened)
- the narrative opens in medias res, not ab ovo (find out what it means)
- extended formal speeches by main characters
- epic simile (a very extended comparison)
- catalogue (a long list, e.g. the list of all Greek ships that arrived at Troy in The Iliad)
Try to spot as many of them as you can and also consider how Milton adapts them to his own purposes.
Book One
1. Examine the narrator's invocation (lines 1-25) and his epic question and answer (lines 26-49).
a) What is the source of the narrator's authority?
b) In what way is the Muse Milton invokes here similar/different from the Muses of the ancient poets?
2. What purposes do the lines (50-83) serve that immediately follow the invocation and question and answer? What do the readers learn from them about Satan, his troops and their situation?
3. Examine the first speech that Satan makes, the one he makes only to his arch-lieutenant, Beëlzebub. Also examine the latter's response to this speech as well as Satan's counter-response to Beëlzebub's words. (84-124, 128-55, 157-91)
a) Work out what the arguments of these two speakers are.
b) Does Beelzebub admit something that Satan will not admit?
4. From lines 195-210, we are treated to Milton's first major extended simile. Actually, it is a series of similes, and a complex one at that. Examine these lines - in what way are they relevant, even vital, to the task of Milton and his narrator in describing heavenly things that really are not describable from a fallen human perspective?
Book Four
In the evening, what do Adam and Eve do after they say a short and spontaneous prayer?
Why does Milton criticize “hypocrites” in line 744?
Milton writes about various kinds of love. What are they, which one is supreme and why?
Book Nine
1. From lines 205-384, Eve and Adam debate whether or not to separate.
a) What arguments does Eve make for parting?
b) What arguments does Adam make for remaining together?
c) What is the attitude of each to the other at parting?
d) Eve wins the argument and goes to work alone. What are the implications of this act, especially in the context of the subsequent Fall? Is Eve to be more blamed, according to Milton?
2. From lines 410 - 472 Satan enters the Garden of Eden. How does he feel in it? What does the epic simile in 445 - 451 imply? And how about the moment towards the end of this passage when Satan feels “stupidly good”?
3. From lines 532-732, Satan, in the form of a serpent, tempts Eve. Follow Satan's rhetoric to its conclusion. What arguments does Satan use? What is his best argument or appeal?
4. Around l. 635, in another simile, the serpent is compared to a will-o'-the-wisp. What does this comparison suggest? What were these fires and what was believed to be their cause in European foklore?
5. Eve tells the serpent in ll. 653 - 4 that the commandment forbidding her and her husband to eat of the tree of knowledge is the only commandment they need. Why?
6. Paradise Lost includes one striking instance of rhyme, at the moment Eve takes the forbidden fruit: "Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she eat. / Earth felt the wound, and nature from her seat . . ." (Book 9, lines 781-82). What, in view of the significance of Eve's act, and Milton's comments on rhyme, might explain this startling couplet?
7. What changes in Adam and Eve's relationship after Adam eats the fruit? How is it different from their prelapsarian state? (You might find it helpful to check St Augustine's City of God https://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/17century/topic_2/augustin.htm )
General Questions from the Norton website. The Norton website https://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/17century/topic_2/welcome.htm contains a huge library of additional texts, images etc. which you may want to explore)
1. In writing Paradise Lost, Milton drew on an immense reserve of biblical, classical, and other learning. Yet many of those who read and admired Milton's poem in the next two centuries were not learned; Paradise Lost was often one of the very few books found in British and Ameri households. While it is clearly possible to enjoy Paradise Lost on its own, how necessary is an understanding of Milton's learning and his sources to an informed appreciation of the poem? How, if at all, has reading the texts gathered on this Web site changed your way of reading Paradise Lost?
2. To Romantic poets such as Blake, Shelley, and Byron, Satan could be seen as the true hero of Paradise Lost. The Satanic/Byronic hero had an enormous impact on nineteenth-century literature and continues to influence our way of reading Paradise Lost. Is it conceivable that a man of Milton's learning and reflectiveness could have been, as Blake claims, "of the Devil's party without knowing it"?