John Milton 17th Century England

and Paradise Lost

John Milton 1608-1675

Education—raised in London

At home, then St. Paul’s Cathedral School

1625—enters Cambridge

1630—BA

1632—MA

1632-1638 continued study

1638-1640 European travel—mostly in Italy

Milton’s travels influence his poetry

Geography:

He circled, four times crossed the car of Night From pole to pole traversing each colure, On th’eighth returned and on the coast averse From entrance or cherubic watch by stealth Found unsuspected way. There was a place Where Tigris at the foot of Paradise Into a gulf shot underground till part Rose up a fountain by the Tree of Life. In with the river sunk and with it rose Satan involved in rising mist, then sought Where to lie hid.

Copernican Universe—and Galileo

Some say He bid his angels turn askance The poles of earth twice ten degrees and more From the sun’s axle: they with labor pushed Oblique the centric globe.

Meanwhile—in English politics

1629—Charles I dissolves Parliament and begins 11 years of personal rule

1640— “Short Parliament” opens at Westminster

1640—“Long Parliament” begins and continues until 1660

1649—Oliver Cromwell declares himself “Lord Protector”

Charles I is executed.

1660—Cromwell dies and Charles II returns to England: “The Restoration”

Some Milton dates:1649–marries Mary Powell

1652–Milton became totally blind, his wife dies

1656—marries Katherine Woodcock, who dies that year.

1658—begins to write Paradise Lost

1660—Milton goes into Hiding, is jailed, then pardoned

1663—marries Elizabeth Minshull

1666—Paradise Lost completed

1670—Paradise Lost published

Areopagitica: a Speech for Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England (1644)

“Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life. . . they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them . . a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit.”

When I Consider How My Light Is Spent

When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodged within me useless, though my soul more bent To Serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he returning chide; “Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?” I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best Bear his yoke, they serve him best. His state Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed And post o’er land and ocean without rest: They also serve who only stand and wait.” 1852

from Samson Agonistes

His servants he with new acquist

Of true experience from this great event

With peace and consolation hath dismissed,

And calm of mind, all passion spent

Milton dies in 1675

Paradise Lost

Epic

“Sing Heav’nly Muse . . .”

—a long narrative poem on serious subject.

Vast setting, deeds of great valor, aid from supernatural forces.

Epic Conventions

Invocation of the Muse

Opens in medias res

Lists—epic catalogue

Extended and elaborate formal speeches—called “epic monologue”

Elaborate family backgrounds provided—epic geneology

Extended comparisons—epic simile

Stock phrases—formulaic language

What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support, That to the heighth of this great argument I may assert the ways of God to men.

Working with some passages

(Narrator) So spake the enemy of mankind, enclosed In serpent, inmate bad, and toward Eve Addressed his way not with indented wave Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear, Circular base of rising folds that towered Fold above fold, a surging maze. His head Crested aloft and carbuncle his eyes With burnished neck of verdant gold erect Amidst his circling spires that on the grass Floated redundant. Pleasing was his shape And lovely

from Book IX

Eve— and Narrator

Here grows the cure of all: this fruit divine, Fair to the eye, inviting to the taste, Of virtue to make wise. What hinders then To reach and feed at once both body and mind?

So saying, her rash hand in evil hour Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she eat: Earth felt the wound and Nature from her seat Sighing though all her works gave signs of woe That all was lost . . . .

Greedily she engorged without restraint And knew not eating death.

from Book IX

Eve—an epic monologue

But to Adam in what sort Shall I appear? Shall I to him make known As yet my change and give him to partake Full happiness with me? Or rather not, But keep the odds of knowledge in my pow’r Without copartner so to add what wants In female sex, the more to draw his love And render me more equal and, perhaps, A thing not undesirable, sometime Superior: for who inferior is free?

But what if God have seen And death ensue? Then I shall be no more And Adam wed to another Eve Shall live with her enjoying. I extinct: A death to think! Confirmed then I resolve Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe.

Lucifer in dialogue with Beelzebub

Farewell happy fields Where joy forever dwells! Hail horrors, hail Infernal world! And thou, profoundest Hell, Receive thy new possessor, one who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time! The mind is its own place and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

. . . .

Here at least We shall be free. Th’ Almighty hath not built Here for His envy, will not drive us hence. Here we may reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell that serve in Heaven!

from Book I

And why might Milton choose the epic for his great work?

Terry Eagleton writes, “Paradise Lost is a poem wrihen on the ruin of utopian political hopes. Epics are master narratives which define and delimit what is known and what is valued. They offer a mythological history which is above all an account of their own present. The project of epic is to fix the values of the society.”