Core Course: English Literature/ 2015-16

Target population: 1st year students, 2nd semester

Specialization: Romanian/French-English
Module Tutor: Dr Elena Butoescu
UNIT 1
ENGLISH PURITANISM
JOHN MILTON'S PARADISE LOST (1667)
The Puritans wanted a purer kind of Christianity than the Reformation had brought to the
country. They dreamt about that sort of Christianity which would not be tolerant; an austere
religion which forbade easy pleasures and punished vice in the harshest possible way. The
Protestantism of the Established Church derived a good deal from the German Luther, whose
'reforms' did not move too far away from traditional Christianity; but the Puritans followed
John Calvin of Geneva, who taught that free will did not exist and that men were predestined
from the beginning of time to go to either heaven or hell.
Puritanism was a variety of Protestantism, and Puritans were heirs of the Reformation
inaugurated by Martin Luthers seminal re-reading of Christianitys foundational texts.
Puritans affirmed the great slogans of Luthers Reformation sola fide, sola gratia, sola
scriptura; faith alone, grace alone, scripture alone though there was disagreement over
exactly what these slogans entailed. Like Luther, they were intensely preoccupied with
personal salvation, and convinced that God pardoned sinners in response to simple faith in
Christs redeeming sacrifice on the Cross.
Following the Reformer, they repudiated the penitential system of Roman Catholicism
the mass, confession, absolution, penance, indulgences, pilgrimage, prayer to the saints,
prayer for the dead, and purgatory. Indeed, most Puritans shared Luthers conviction that the
Papacy was the Antichrist predicted in the Book of Revelation. As a Puritan who valued the
Bible more than anything else, John Milton considered the Bible the only Book left us of
divine authority. Milton was disappointed with Restoration and later on, he rejected
Puritanism and condemned all earthly tyrannies in the prophetic books concluding Paradise
Lost.
It is likely that John Milton began writing his superb epic a year or two before the
restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and continued it in the years immediately following that
event. Miltons epic is pre-eminently a poem about knowing and choosing for the Miltonic
Bard, for his characters, and for the reader. It foregrounds education, a lifelong concern of
Miltons and of special importance to him after the Restoration as a means to help produce
discerning, virtuous, liberty-loving human beings and citizens. Unlike any other literary or
theological treatment of the Fall story, almost half the poem is given over to the formal
education of Adam and Eve, by Raphael before and by Michael after the Fall. God himself
takes on the role of educator as he engages in dialogue with his Son about humankinds fall
and redemption (3.80265) and with Adam over his request for a mate (8.357451). Adam
and Eves dialogues with each other involve them in an ongoing process of self-education
about themselves and their world. Milton educates his readers by exercising them in
imaginative apprehension, rigorous judgment, and choice. By setting his poem in relation to
other great epics and works in other genres he involves readers in a critique of the values
associated with those other heroes and genres, as well as with issues of politics and theology.
Miltons allusions in the Proems and throughout the poem continually acknowledge
structural and verbal debts to the great classical models for epic or epic-like poems Homer,

Virgil, Hesiod, Ovid, Lucan, Lucretius and to such moderns as Ariosto, Tasso, Du Bartas,
Camons, and Spenser. Milton incorporates many epic topics and conventions from the
Homeric and Virgilian epic tradition: an epic statement of theme, invocations both to the
Muse Urania and to the great creating Spirit of God, an epic question, a beginning in medias
res, a classical epic hero in Satan, a Homeric catalogue of Satans generals, councils in Hell
and in Heaven, epic pageants and games, and supernatural powers God, the Son, and good
and evil angels. Also, a fierce battle in Heaven pitting loyal angels against the rebel forces,
replete with chariot clashes, taunts and vaunts, hill-hurlings, and the single combats of heroes;
narratives of past actions in Raphaels accounts of the War in Heaven and the Creation; and
Michaels prophetic narrative of biblical history to come.
Yet the Bard claims in the opening Proem that he intends to surpass all those earlier
epics, that his adventrous Song will soar Above thAonian Mount (1.13, 15). He clarifies
what this means in the Proem to Book 9, as he takes pride in having eschewed Warrs,
hitherto the onely Argument / Heroic deemd and in having defined a new heroic standard,
the better fortitude / Of Patience and Heroic Martyrdom (9.2832). He has indeed given
over the traditional epic subject, wars and empire, and the traditional epic hero as the epitome
of courage and battle prowess. His protagonists are a domestic pair, the scene of their action is
a pastoral garden, and their primary challenge is, under long obedience tried, to make
themselves, their marital relationship, and their garden the nucleus of the human world
ever more perfect. In this they fail, but at length they learn to understand and identify with the
new heroic standard embodied in a series of heroes of faith and especially in the greater
man, Christ, who will redeem humankind. For this radically new epic subject, as the Proems
to Books 1, 3, 7, and 9 state, Milton hopes to obtain from the divine source of both truth and
creativity the illumination and collaboration necessary to conceive a subject at once truer and
more heroic than any other. He makes bold claims to originality as an author, but an author
who is also a prophetic bard.
In addition to the new epic subject, Miltons poem holds other surprises for its readers,
then and now. First, and most striking, perhaps, is his splendid Satan, taken by many critics
from the Romantic period to the early decades of the twentieth century as the intended or
unintended hero of the poem. Milton presents him, especially in Books 1 and 2, as a figure of
power, awesome size, proud and courageous bearing, regal authority, and, above all,
magnificent rhetoric: this is no paltry medieval devil with grotesque physical features and a
tail. He is described in terms of constant allusions to the greatest heroes Achilles, Odysseus,
Aeneas, Prometheus, and others in regard to the usual epic traits: physical prowess, battle
courage, anger, fortitude, determination, endurance, leadership, and aristeia or battle glory.
Through that presentation Milton engages readers in a poem-long exploration and redefinition
of heroes and heroism, often by inviting them to discover how Satan in some ways
exemplifies but in essence perverts those classical models. Moreover, Satans moving
language of defiance against tyranny and laments for loss are powerfully attractive, posing
readers the difficult challenge of discerning the discrepancies between Satans noble words
and his motives and actions.
Miltons representations of Hell, Heaven, and Eden also challenge readers stereotypes
in his own age and ours. All these regions are in process: the physical conditions of the places
are fitted to the beings that inhabit them, but the inhabitants interact with and shape their
environments, creating societies in their own image. Hell is first presented in traditional
terms, with the fallen angels chained on a lake of fire.
But unlike Dantes Inferno, where the damned are confined within distinct circles to
endure an eternally repeated punishment suited to their particular sins, Milton presents a
damned society in the making. His fallen angels rise up and begin to mine gold and gems,
build a government center, Pandmonium, hold a parliament, send Satan on a mission of

exploration and conquest, investigate their spacious and varied though sterile landscape,
engage in martial games and parades, perform music, compose epic poems about their own
deeds, and argue hard philosophical questions about fate and free will. Their parliament in
Book 2 presents an archetype of debased and manipulated political assemblies and of
characteristic political rhetoric through the ages. The powerful angelic peers debate issues of
war and peace in the council chamber while the common angels are reduced to pygmy size
outside. Moloch, the quintessential hawk, urges perpetual war at any cost; Belial counsels
peace through ignominious inaction; Mammon would build up a rival empire in Hell founded
on riches and magnificence but, ironically, describes that course of action in the language of
republican virtue, as a choice of Hard liberty before the easie yoke / Of servile Pomp
(2.2567). Then Satan sways the council to his will through the agency of his chief minister,
Beelzebub. The scene closes with Satan accorded divine honors in an exaggerated version of
the idolatry Milton had long associated with the Stuart ideology of divine kingship.
Miltons Heaven is even more surprising: instead of the expected stasis in perfection,
it is also in process, requiring the continued and active choice of good, as Raphael explains to
Adam: My self and all th Angelic Host that stand / In sight of God enthrond, our happie
state / Hold, as you yours, while our obedience holds (5.5357). As a celestial city that
combines courtly magnificence with the pleasures of nature, it offers an ideal of wholeness
through a mix of heroic, georgic, and pastoral modes.
Miltons Style
Seeking an answerable style for his great Argument, Milton produced rushing, enjambed,
blank-verse lines that propel us along with few pauses for line endings or full stops, marked
by elevated diction and complex syntax and by sonorities and sound patternings that make a
magnificent music. He was clearly at pains to create an epic language suited to his exalted
subject, a sublime high style of remarkable range whose energy and power will engulf us
from the beginning. This style is created in part by dense allusiveness to classical myths, to
biblical, historical, and literary names and stories, and to geographical places, ancient and
contemporary, which import into the poem our associations with all those literary and
physical worlds.
Milton devised for his poem a flexible blank-verse line with (almost always) ten
syllables and a masculine or strong stress at the ends of lines. But the basic iambic rhythm
(five weak and five strong stresses), is constantly varied by interspersing other rhythmic feet,
so that some lines contain as few as three and others as many as eight strong stresses. The
lines are organized into verse paragraphs of varying length, so that the reader encounters large
units of verse at once, aided in this by Miltons characteristic light punctuation. Milton also
employs great freedom in the placement of caesuras (the pauses falling within the line) and he
uses enjambment constantly, so that the sense is carried over from line to line.
Milton embeds dense layers of meaning in particular words by exploiting their Latin
or Greek etymological senses. In the description of the rebel angels hurled from heaven With
hideous ruin, ruin keeps its Latin etymological meaning, falling, along with its
contemporary sense, devastation. Or in several descriptions of horrid Arms horrid
means terrible but also keeps its Latin sense of bristling with spikes of flame. At times
only the Latin sense is evoked, as when the rivers of Eden are said to run With mazie error
(4.239): error here means wandering, not mistake or fault. Milton often plays with
serious wit on the multiple meanings of a word, as in Adams honorific address to Eve, Sole
partner and sole part of all these joyes (4.411), where sole first means only and then
unique, probably with overtones of the homonym, soul. Later, in the throes of desperation
after his xxviii Introduction fall, Adam invents a false etymology, deriving evil from Eves
name: O Eve, in evil hour thou didst give eare / To that false Worm (9.10678).

Into this elevated but very flexible grand epic style, Milton incorporated a wide range
of other genres with their appropriate styles: lyrical and dramatic elements, hymns, formal
debates, allegory, soliloquy, and elegy. If the Miltonic style is an organ sound, it is produced
from a multitude of stops, even as the Miltonic epic incorporates, in accordance with
Renaissance theory, a veritable encyclopedia of genres.
Paradise Lost and its influence
A poem is not a lecture; a story is not an argument. The way poems and stories work on our
minds is not by logic, but by their capacity to enchant, to excite, to move, to inspire. To be
sure, a sound intellectual underpinning helps the work to stand up under intellectual
questioning, as Paradise Lost certainly does; but its primary influence is on the imagination.
So it was, for instance, with the greatest of Miltons interpreters, William Blake, for whom the
author of Paradise Lost was a lifelong inspiration. Milton lovd me in childhood & shewd me
his face, he claimed, and in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell he wrote what is probably the
most perceptive, and certainly the most succinct, criticism of Paradise Lost: The reason
Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell,
is because he was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it. And Blakes
continuing and passionate interest in Milton resulted in a long (and, frankly, difficult) poem
named after the poet, as well as a series of illustrations to Paradise Lost which are some of
the most delicate and beautiful water-colours he ever did.
Other poets at the same period felt the influence of Milton, Wordsworth in particular,
who began one of his sonnets with the words: Milton! Thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee; And very near the beginning of his own great long poem, The
Prelude, Wordsworth deliberately echoes the phrase in the closing lines of Paradise Lost:
The earth is all before me . . . as if hes taking hold of a torch passed to him by Milton.
Today, nearly three and a half centuries after Paradise Lost was first published, it is more
influential than ever. Two separate dramatic adaptations have recently played on the stage in
Britain. It will not go away.
Exam Topics:
1. Focus on Milton's life and comment on the relationship between his life and his works.
Is the Puritan context of any importance in observing Milton's development as a
writer?
2. How can you define Milton's style in Paradise Lost? What is the metre in Paradise
Lost? Find examples in the poem.
3. Describe the events in Book 1 of Paradise Lost.
Bibliography:
Coffey, John, Paul C. H. Lim (Eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Danielson, Dennis. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Milton. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. A Poem in Twelve Books. Philadelphia: Hayes and Zell
Publishers, 1854.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. An Illustrated Edition with an Introduction by Philip Pullman.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Edited by Barbara K. Lewalski. London: Blackwell, 2007.