Week 9 Milton and Paradise Lost

Topic 2 —About Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost, the greatest poem by Milton, is a long narrative epic divided into 12 books. The stories of the poem were drawn from the “Genesis” of the Bible and from various elaborators of the Bible. The poem was a triumph of soaring imagination and farranging intellectual grasp in his most forceful and exalted style. The epic is composed in blank verse, which permits the narrative sweep Milton needed for his subject.
John Milton
Topic 1—Introduction to John Milton Milton is one of the very few truly great English writers who is also a prominent figure in politics, and who is both a great poet and an important prose writer. The two most essential things to be remembered about him are his Puritanism and his republicanism.
Milton’s works：
1. Lycidas（1637）
Lycidas is Milton’s first attempt to justify the ways of God to himself and to men. It was an elegy composed in honor of a fellow student of Milton’s at Cambridge. The drowning of a virtuous and promising young man brought home the whole enigma of life and death, of the rightness of things in a world where such events could happen. Lycidas is considered by many to be one of the finest elegies in English.
2. Milton’s humanism was crossed by a respect for the conscience acting in pursuing those things that it knew were right. He wished to “contribute to the progress of real and substantial liberty, which is to be sought for not from without, but from within”.
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4. Samson Agonistes（1671） Composed partly in blank verse and partly in unrhymed choric verse of varied line length, it depicts Samson, betrayed by Dalila （ Delilah ） and blinded by the Philistines, defeating his captors at the cost of his life. Milton employed the Old Testament story to inspire the defeated English Puritans with the courage to triumph through sacrifice.
3. Paradise Regained（1671） The companion epic of Paradise Lost, Paradise regained is a four-book “brief epic” composed also in blank verse. Based loosely on the Gospels, it shows Christ in the wilderness withstanding Satan’s temptations, thereby proving his fitness for ultimate trial and, in his human role, showing what humankind might achieve through strong integrity and humble obedience to the divine will. It has all the fire of Milton’s religious and moral passion and his reverence for true heroism.
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● In his life, Milton shows himself a real
revolutionary, a master poet and a great prose writer. He fought for freedom in all aspects as a Christian humanist, while his achievements in literature make him tower over all the other English writers of his time and exert a great influence over later ones.
Milton is a great stylist. He is famous for his grand style noted for its dignity and polish, which is the result of his life-long classical and biblical study. ● Milton has always been admired for his sublimity of thought and majesty of expression.
● Belinsky wrote: “The poetry of Milton is
obviously the product of his age: he himself, without suspecting the fact, depicted in the person of his proud and somber Satan an apotheosis of rebellion against authority, though his intention had been quite different.”
Special features of Milton’s works：
1. Milton’s style is distinguished by its rich and complex texture, the multiplicity of its classical （Biblical and mythological）reference, its wealth of ornament and decoration. 2. Milton’s subjects are lofty and magnificent. The theme of Samson Agonistes—the agony and the final triumph of the blinded Samson—is tragic and sublime. The conflict between Satan and God in Paradise Lost is one that is basic to all religious thought.
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Milton wrote many different types of poetry. He is especially a great master of blank verse. He learned much from Shakespeare and first used blank verse in non-dramatic works.
2. Paradise Lost （1666, 1667） Paradise Lost, the greatest poem by Milton, is a long narrative epic divided into 12 books. The stories of the poem were drawn from the “Genesis” of the Bible and from various elaborators of the Bible.
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John Milton’s literary achievements can be divided into three groups: the early poetical works, the middle prose pamphlets and the last great poems.
Milton’s viewpoints
1. Milton is allied to the humanists in his passionate belief in free will, his zeal for knowledge, and his respect for truth. He was greatly influenced by classical Greek and Latin authors. He especially showed his humanism in the way he handled the scriptural materials. He believed they could be interpreted by individual judgment and treated them freely. Milton’s God represents not only power and love, but also the rule of reason in the universe (the macrocosm) and in the soul of man (microcosm). His emphases on religion and virtue in the discipline of the moral judgment conformed to the chief end of Christian humanism.