Book IX Plot



Paradise Lost Books IX – X

English OCR 2710

Contents

Book IX Plot 3

Book X Plot 3

The Characters of Paradise Lost 4

Passages Relating to themes 9

Milton’s Inheritance 12

Milton’s Religious Context 17

Milton and the critics 22

Essays on themes 25

Paradise Lost Quotations 36

Book IX Plot

BY NED ALLEN

The book opens with a personal prologue and a restatement of the poem's central theme. The poem is said to be, from here on, of the tragic mode. What Milton has to relate is, moreover, epic, and he means to demonstrate how the Fall - a Christian story - is superior to other stories in which legend and myth play a significant part. It is thanks to his celestial (heavenly) muse that he is able to commit his thoughts to paper.

The action starts with Satan, compassing the earth, soliloquizing on his torment. He finds a way to sneak in to Paradise and adopts the guise of the serpent.

As day dawns, Eve suggests that they divide their labours in the garden to work more effectively, unheeded by the distractions of 'smiles' and 'casual discourse' (222-23). Adam admits the sense of Eve's suggestion, and despite voicing at some length his fear for her safety, and the pair debating whether virtue were better left untried, he eventually allows her to go. The narrator declaims against this folly, unable to let the 'event perverse' (405) pass without comment.

Satan catches sight of Eve - the 'fairest unsupported flower' (432) - and he is momentarily disarmed. But he gains her attention and begins his fraudulent temptation. Eve marvels at the serpent's human voice and Satan leads her to the tree which he claims gave him the power of speech. She resists when she discovers it is the one forbidden, but Satan commands her to look at him, and to see that the tree has yielded him a 'life more perfect' (689). Astonished by Satan's command of reason, persuaded by his flattery, and in hunger of knowledge and godhead, Eve begins to persuade herself to succumb, and plucks and eats the 'intellectual fruit' (794). She considers keeping it for herself, but decides finally to share all and brings her spouse a sample. Adam is horrified. However, he cannot bear to be separated from Eve, even if this means death, and he reconciles himself to what seems necessary: he completes the 'mortal sin | Original' (1003) by eating the fruit himself.

Adam and Eve later wake to find themselves naked and miserable. They cover themselves, ashamed, and weep at the discord of the post-lapsarian world. The book leaves them arguing and casting blame at one another.

Book X Plot

BY RUTH RUSHWORTH

God sends his Son to have just words with Adam and Eve, giving them their sentences - for Eve, pain in childbirth; for Adam, hard toil; and for both (ultimately) death.

Meanwhile in Hell, Sin and Death, feeling Satan's victory, build a bridge across Chaos to ease their passage into the mortal world. Satan returns victorious and relates his tale of success, just moments before he and his followers receive their sentence and are turned into snakes.

At the end of the book, Adam and Eve begin to reconcile with each other and to repent of their actions, offering up supplications to God to spare their offspring. God has promised that the Son will one day redeem man's wrong, but for the minute, things look pretty bleak for Adam and Eve.

THE CHARACTERS OF PARADISE LOST

Satan

BY NICHOLAS ZENG

'O, speak again, bright angel!'

~William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, II.ii.26

Romeo and Juliet may be the last place you would look for a literary inspiration for Satan, and I don't think it was one for Milton (we can't completely rule out the possibility, but I think we can safely agree it is considerably less likely than England winning the World Cup). But looking at this famous quote gives us a number of interesting ways of thinking about Satan's character in Paradise Lost.

Satan used to be one of the most important of God's angels, but rebelled when God declared the Son to be above all the angels in glory. Satan persuaded a third of the angels to rebel with him, and declared war on God. Satan was defeated by the Son and cast into Hell with all the other rebel angels.

Light-bringer

'Lucifer' means 'light-bringer' in Latin, which is not far away from Shakespeare's 'bright Angel', but 'Satan' means 'the adversary' in Hebrew. In fact, he is first described to us in Paradise Lost as 'the arch-enemy, | And thence in heaven called Satan' (I.81). He is defined only by his opposition and relation to God and is often presented with reference to his former beauty: 'the excess | Of glory obscured' (I.593). We are never allowed to forget that he was once a glorious angel of God, good rather than evil. We are constantly reminded by the 'bright angel' motif that Satan was created by God, but then opposed him; a failed creation, if you like. We are led to St. Augustine's idea that evil is not an essential attribute, something existing in itself, independent and exclusive from that which is good. Evil is rather something chosen, acting through free will in conscious opposition to God's will.

Free will

The allure of free will is where the attractiveness and power of Satan's character lies. Satan may be quite useless when it comes to fighting the ten thousand thunders of Christ's fury, but in his will he is free and in his mind he is supreme: 'What though the field be lost? | All is not lost; the unconquerable will' (I.105). Satan was defeated but not defeated, or to draw a slightly blasphemous parallel to Saint Paul, he was 'perplexed, but not in despair; [...] cast down, but not destroyed' (II Corinthians, 4.8-9). We may indeed argue that he (Satan, not Paul) is deluding himself when he preaches 'the mind is its own place, and in itself | Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven' (I.254) - this is a clear case of sour grapes; Satan is exiled from heaven and pines for lost joys. But in hell, Satan is sovereign and free from having to worship the Son. When Satan comes into Eden, he is tormented by 'the hot hell that always in him burns' (IX.467). One may choose to read this as the narrator's sardonic comment on Satan creating 'a hell of heaven', but this mental extension of the physical torment of hell as well as trapping him, also in a way represents Satan's freedom: this is a hell of Satan's own choosing and creation, caused 'in him' by his hate and envy of everything good. Satan's mind is not only unconquerable and unconditionally opposed to God, it also influences other minds to use their free will to oppose the will of God. And this is where the 'speak again' of the opening quotation needs to be considered. Speaking is what Satan does extremely well; his speeches in the first two books of Paradise Lost are a rich store of quotes for any motivational speaker. We must never forget that the two major events of the poem are created through the persuasive speech of Satan - he convinces the angels to take up arms, and convinces Eve to eat the fruit. In the former achievement he takes a third of the heavenly host with him, in the latter he takes the whole of the human race (or so he thinks until Christ spoils his party). Satan is charismatic, eloquent, and unanswerable; the bright angel speaks again and again, tempting with knowledge, tempting the reader, as he tempted Eve, to think, question, explore, reinterpret, and to eat of 'this intellectual food' (IX.768) and 'make wise' (IX.778), to be won over by the power of the free-willed mind and make it 'its own place'.

Satan's speeches

I suspect that the pious Milton was uncomfortable with how attractive a character Satan was becoming, and so gradually reduced the role of Satan's speeches as the poem progressed (although of course, this is just my opinion). In Books I and II, Satan reigns supreme as he addresses the fallen angels in direct speech. In contrast, when Raphael tells Adam about Satan's revolt in heaven, Satan's oratory comes to Adam (and the reader) as reported speech. The narrative conventions of the poem demand this, and we would scarcely expect Raphael to misrepresent Satan's words, but still the oratorical power of Satan is mediated through the medium of the tale-teller. There is nobody to question Raphael, nobody to protest at errors or omissions, and no chance for Satan to defend himself or tell his side of the story. In the next instance of Satan's speech, he speaks to Eve in 'human voice' (IX.561). It is a plea, rather than a speech; rather than commanding and rousing his troops to action, he is now convincing a woman to eat fruit. In one sense this is a step down, but it does also demonstrate another kind of power; one of persuasion and subtlety. The final humiliation comes in Book X, when Satan and his troops are turned into serpents, and deprived entirely of the power of speech:

                               he would have spoke,

But hiss for hiss returned with forkèd tongue 

To forkèd tongue.       (X.517)

In Books I and II, Satan's speech dominated the narrative, and the action of the poem stopped while he had his say. Now the words of the narrative swallow him up - 'to serpents all as accessories' (X.520). The sibilant 's' sounds of this description mockingly imitate his speechless hissing. Satan has been silenced completely and humiliatingly for the rest of the poem. It seems to me that the only way to give God's life-giving word prominence is in a monologue. Satan's speech must be silenced, as its immense power over the poem and the reader is too attractive and too great a competitor. There is only room for one king at the end of this poem, one majesty, one talk.

Sin and Death

BY BETH SIMS

Sin

Sin is an allegorical character, met by Satan at the gates of Hell in Book II ofParadise Lost. She holds the key to Hell's gate and opens the gate so that Satan (her father) can pass through on his way up to heaven. Sin has no mother but was born out of Satan himself at his rebellious assembly in heaven, both an allegorical representation of his sin against God and a parody of God's creation of the Son. Sin is 'woman to the waist' (II.650) and has a fish's tail, but she shifts shape and is constantly re-forming and breeding, giving birth to dog-like young. She has no control over these changes but is held captive by cruel pregnancies in a body in perpetual labour, cursed by her own fertility. Satan raped his daughter in heaven, and she gave birth to Death. 

Death

Death is a shadow-like character who appears in Book II of Paradise Lost, but is only mentioned briefly and fleetingly. Allegorically, he is the consequence of Satan's sin. He is not as sad a figure as Sin because he is empowered and in control of his condition. However, Death is malicious and armed, an aggressive character, carrying arrows and darts. Rather than suffering himself, Death takes pleasure in human pain and also in inflicting this pain. The only thing he fears is the Son who is fated to destroy him.

Adam and Eve

Before the Fall, Adam and Eve coexist harmoniously in Eden, almost as one flesh and spirit, but they become more distinct from each other throughout the course ofParadise Lost. Eve is alienated from Adam and also defined by experiences she has on her own. She has a dream which she can only share with Adam by telling him about it, and then, alone, she encounters Satan and tastes the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Eve shares the fruit with Adam, but the whole experience is different; the seduction by Satan is not felt, but related second-hand. Adam and Eve are created by the same God and have nature in common, but in some ways nurture separates them. After the fall, their love turns to blame. However, in realizing and repenting of their sin, they learn of forgiveness, and are reunited in a relationship of mutual support in the face of hardship, wending their solitary way out of Eden hand in hand.

Adam

Adam is the first man and the father of mankind. He prefigures the human race, representing the perfect male form. Adam is all fathers, sons and brothers rolled into one. Formed in the image of God, he is God-like, but not a God. Neither is he flawless as he is a kind of replica, inferior to his maker. Adam is created with free will and so has to make a choice whether to be obedient to God and refuse the apple, or to follow Eve. His fond (which also means foolish) love for Eve is his downfall. Adam is superior to Eve - he was created in the image of God, she in the image of man, and Adam is even called her 'author' - but he does not initially assert his authority. Adam is too trusting of Eve, taking the fruit she offers to him, and too devoted, choosing to share her fate against the command of God.

Eve

Eve embodies every mother, daughter and sister. Other women are compared to her, like Mary, mother of Jesus, who is described as a 'second Eve' (X.183). She is beautiful and slender, a fair creature with golden hair.

Milton's Eve is Adam's counterpart and other half but she is crucially not Adam's equal. This imbalance between the couple, with Eve as the more submissive and subordinate of the two, is evident in Paradise Lost both before and after the Fall, before Eve does anything wrong. This is in contrast to the story in Genesis in which it is only after the Fall that Eve seems second-rate in relation to Adam.

Eve is blamed for the Fall because she is tempted by Satan to taste the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. She is tricked, but it is, at least in part, her own fault; she wanted to be tested, to prove herself, and so put herself in harms way, and, once the idea is suggested by the serpent, she persuades herself and then Adam to eat the fruit. She is portrayed as innocent, making a childish mistake in her inexperience in dealing with falsehood, but at the same time she is characterized as foolish in more adult ways, as both sexualized and vain. When she is first introduced to Adam she is narcissistically distracted by the sight of her own reflection in a pool of water. This is a symptom of Eve's susceptibility to be lead astray and demonstrates that some of her main failings, being inclined to distraction and following her desires, are present in Eve before as well as after the Fall. It is her combination of naivety, greed and self-importance which make Satan's suggestion so successful.

This negative view could be explained by the fact that Milton was writing from a post-lapsarian (i.e. post-Fall) perspective. The view of women and their sexuality was tainted by the Fall, and centuries of blame traditionally placed at Eve's feet. It is impossible to imagine Milton treating Eve in a way that is not partly misogynistic because he is writing a story which is fundamentally anti-female. However, Raphael calls Eve, 'mother of mankind' (V.388), alluding to the idea of felix culpa or 'Fortunate Fall'. Eve may bring about the Fall of Man, but this in turn brings about the coming of Christ.

God

BY EILY-MEG MACQUEEN

Milton's presentation of God in Paradise Lost has sparked one of the most controversial and long-running literary debates. The debate has achieved this status because readers and critics find it difficult to view God as just a character in a fictional poem. The debate surrounding Milton's presentation of God is wrapped up in our knowledge and speculation about his religious beliefs and is also affected by the beliefs of critics themselves.

It is an extremely tricky business to attempt to represent God in literature. Caution over this difficulty perhaps explains God's absence from the first two books ofParadise Lost and the conventional descriptions when he does appear. He is 'the almighty Father' (III.56) and 'the great creator' (III.167), and his actions are cast in a traditional, impressive and positive light, for example, 'Thus while God spake, ambrosial fragrance filled | All heaven' (III.135). In the whole of Paradise Lost, a surprisingly low number of lines are dedicated to God. He does not communicate directly with Adam and Eve, instead sending the Son or angelic messengers to speak to them. Yet his decision to send Raphael in Book V and Michael in Book XI confirms the idea of a God who is involved with, and cares about, his creation, and his forgiveness of Abdiel in Book VI and acceptance of Adam and Eve's prayers in Book XI also reveals a forgiving side.

Yet, Milton's presentation of God is not always so cautious. He does not allow his God to remain a vacuous cliché, but rather, has him speak independently. George Miller acknowledges the risk involved in this when he says, 'Milton made a bold decision in allowing God to speak in Paradise Lost. No matter what God said or how he said it, someone was likely to object to the representation.'1 And so they have. Some complain that when God does speak, starting in Book III, his speech is dull and unpoetic. This is perhaps because God's absence in the first two books allows another character to steal the limelight; Satan. Satan's speeches are so lively and persuasive that we are tempted to predominantly associate a poetic and grand style of speech with him. Yet, if we look at God's first words, he also uses the rhetorical features present in Satan's speech. For example, the asyndeton (listing without conjunctions) and use of synonyms seen in Satan's question, 'Is this the region, this the soil, the clime...' (I.242), are present in God's description of the adversary:

                                       whom no bounds 

Prescribed, no bars of hell, nor all the chains 

Heaped on him there, nor yet the main abyss 

Wide interrupt can hold.       (III.81)

The problem with having God speak in Paradise Lost is that speech is the best indicator of a character's opinions and personality. For example, several critics, including A.D. Nuttall, complain that when God first speaks, his words, 'Only begotten Son, seest thou what rage | Transports our adversary' (III.80), are cruelly punning at the expense of the fallen angels, using the etymological source of movement in 'transports' to mock the devils' physical attempt to climb into heaven.2 However, what is clear about the effect of God's sporadic but influential appearances in the poem is that they are controversial; we are all invited to make up our own minds about the role and character of God in Paradise Lost.

The Son

BY KATHARINE FLETCHER

Christ, usually referred to as 'the Son', is the 'one greater man' (I.4) who will restore mankind after the Fall of Adam. He is the poem's hero, but his heroism is largely a quiet one. The great heroic act of the poem comes when the Son answers God's call to the heavenly powers for one to offer satisfaction for man's crimes, 'death for death' (III.212). The Son offers to become mortal and give his life to redeem man's:

Behold me then, me for him, life for life 

I offer, on me let thine anger fall; 

Account me man.     (III.236)

As this is a decision and a conversation rather than a dramatic act - the crucifixion itself takes place long after the events of Paradise Lost- it is easy to let it slip into the background. However, throughout the poem, the anticipation of Christ's sacrifice and man's redemption softly breathes hope and gives meaning to the Fall; after all, without the Fall, there would be no need for the Son's sacrifice which is seen by Christians (including Milton) as the fullest example of God's love for mankind. (This idea is known as the Fortunate Fall or felix culpa.)

The Son also has other roles in Paradise Lost. In Book X, he acts as an intermediary between man and God, bringing judgement from God to Adam and Eve, but also interceding for them, making sure God hears their prayers for forgiveness. God describes the Son as 'Man's friend, his mediator' (X.60).

The Son is also the Word of God, a theological idea which means that the Son is the agent by which God makes things happen, as we see in the story of Creation, narrated to Adam by Raphael in Book VII. It is the Son who defeats Satan in the battle in heaven, narrated in Book VI.

Passages relating to themes

1. Opening

No more of talk where God or angel guest

With man, as with his friend, familiar used

To sit indulgent, and with him partake

Rural repast, permitting him the while

Venial discourse unblamed: I now must change

Those notes to tragic; foul distrust, and breach

Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt,

And disobedience: on the part of Heaven

Now alienated, distance and distaste,

Anger and just rebuke, and judgement given,

That brought into this world a world of woe,

(ix, 1-11)

2. Satan’s guile and the inevitability of the fall

… dictates to me slumbering; or inspires

Easy my unpremeditated verse:

(ix, 23-24)

Now improved

In meditated fraud and malice, bent

On Man's destruction, maugre what might hap

Of heavier on himself, fearless returned.

(ix, 54-57)

Him after long debate, irresolute

Of thoughts revolved, his final sentence chose

Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom

To enter, and his dark suggestions hide

From sharpest sight: for, in the wily snake,

Whatever sleights none would suspicious mark,

As from his wit and native subtlety

Proceeding, which in other beasts observed

Doubt might beget of diabolic power

Active within beyond the sense of brute.

(ix, 87-96)

… but I in none of these

Find place or refuge; and the more I see

Pleasures about me, so much more I feel

Torment within me, as from the hateful siege

Of contraries;

(ix, 118-122)

… of these the vigilance

I dread; and to elude, thus wrapped in mist

Of midnight vapour glide obscure, and pry

In every bush and brake, where hap may find

The serpent sleeping, in whose mazy folds

To hide me, and the dark intent I bring.

O foul descent! That I who erst contended

With gods to sit the highest, am now constrained

Into a beast, and mixed with bestial slime,

This essence to incarnate and imbrute,

That to the highth of deity aspired;

But what will not ambition and revenge

Descend to?  Who aspires must down as low

As high he soared, obnoxious first or last

To basest things.

(ix, 157-171)

That space the evil one abstracted stood

From his own evil, and for the time remained

Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed,

(ix, 463-465)

3. Gardeners in paradise

The only two of mankind, but in them

The whole included race, his purposed prey.

(ix, 415-416)

… for much their work out-grew

The hands' dispatch of two, gardening so wide

(ix, 202-203)

… but Delia's self

In gait surpassed, and goddess-like deport,

Though not as she with bow and quiver armed,

But with such gardening tools as art yet rude,

Guiltless of fire had formed,

(ix, 388-392)

… both by thee informed I learn,

And from the parting angel overheard,

As in a shady nook I stood behind,

Just then returned at shut of evening flowers.

(ix, 275-278)

How are we happy, still in fear of harm?

(ix, 326)

4. Epic similes

As when of old some orator renowned

In Athens or free Rome, where eloquence

Flourished, since mute, to some great cause addressed,

Stood in himself collected, while each part,

Motion, each act won audience ere the tongue,

Sometimes in highth began, as no delay

Of preface brooking through his zeal of right.

So standing, moving, or to highth upgrown

The tempter all impassioned thus began.

(ix, 670-678)

As one who long in populous city pent,

Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,

Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe

Among the pleasant villages and farms

Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight,

The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,

Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound;

If chance with nymph-like step fair virgin pass,

What pleasing seemed, for her now pleases more;

She most, and in her look sums all delight.

Such pleasure took the serpent to behold

This flowery plat,

(ix, 445-456)

Reading critically

So glistered the dire snake, and into fraud

Led Eve our credulous mother, to the tree

Of prohibition, root of all our woe;

(ix, 643-645)

Yet Milton’s grandeur and his subtlety … often co-exist in the very same lines, which makes it particularly important not to cordon off the poem from meddling practical critics. The following lines would generally be agreed to belong to Milton’s sterner style, but their bareness is combined with local subtlety to produce an effect of astonishing breadth and power:

So glistered the dire snake, and into fraud

Led Eve our credulous mother, to the tree

Of prohibition, root of all our woe;

These lines stamp themselves at once as in the Grand Style. What is remarkable, though, is that they are verbally subtle and active without any fussiness or any blurring of the grand austerity. I am thinking not only of the sombre gleam in the pun on root; but also of subtler effects: the playing of the bright glistered against the dark dire, for instance. Or the superb use of the curt ‘snake’. (Milton calls it the serpent fifteen times in Book IX; but the snake only three times: once literally, before Satan enters it; and twice with calculated brutality: ‘So talked the spirited sly Snake’, and here.)

There is the superbly suggestive diction: ‘our credulous Mother’, which must be one of the finest, most delicate, and most moving of all the oxymorons in the poem. A mother ought to be everything that is reliable and wise – here she is credulous. And our clinches the effect; credulous is pinioned on each side (‘our … Mother’), and the full tragic pathos of the oxymoron is released …

There is the majesty of ‘the Tree of prohibition’ – no mere stilted Latinism, since it is literally true: the Tree is not just ‘the prohibited tree’ but the Tree of all prohibition. And there is at this fatal moment the ringing echo of the opening lines of the poem in ‘all our woe’. But perhaps the most irresistible of all the effects here is syntactical. ‘Into fraud led Eve …’ overlaps magnificently with ‘… led Eve to the Tree’, so that what begins as a moving and ancient moral metaphor (lead us not into temptation) crystallizes with terrifying literalness. There is a touching change of focus, superbly compressed and yet without a shock or a jerk.

Christopher Ricks, Milton’s Grand Style (Oxford, 1963)

5. A hangover in paradise?

Soon as the force of that fallacious fruit,

That with exhilarating vapour bland

About their spirits had played, and inmost powers

Made err, was now exhaled, and grosser sleep

Bred of unkindly fumes, with conscious dreams

Encumbered, now had left them; up they rose

As from unrest, and each the other viewing,

Soon found their eyes how opened, and their minds

How darkened; innocence, that as a veil

Had shadowed them from knowing ill, was gone;

(ix, 1046-1055)

Thus they in mutual accusation spent

The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning,

And of their vain contest appeared no end.

(ix, 1187-1189)

Paradise Lost: MILTON'S INHERITANCE

 

BY EWAN BLEIMAN

 

Anachronistic Neologism

A rather often stated paradox about Milton is that, in creating one of the most seminal works in the English canon, he pushed the development of literature forward whilst looking backwards - to the Civil War, to his precedents in English epic, to the classics and ultimately to the Bible. The poem celebrates that which is lost in both subject-matter and Milton's use of language; like Spenser before him, he resuscitated archaic words, formed new Latin-sounding creations and wrote in a syntax and grammar that is convoluted, and has never been easy to read. It is comforting to think, when reading Paradise Lost, that generations of readers and critics before you have got lost in its verse-paragraphs, have struggled to identify where on earth the verb actually is. Because of its anachronism and highly 'poetic' style, T.S. Eliot famously described Paradise Lost as an undeniably great work that had, however, held back English poetry for years: even in the twentieth century, it represented 'an influence against which we still have to struggle'. Just as the poem confronts both the danger and the romance of revolution, it was forged from the influence of previous works into something at once new and reactionary, pushing forward whilst looking back.

Quotation and Invocation

Perhaps the most important of Milton's influences in writing Paradise Lost is the classical epic form. Milton was clearly interested in the investigation of classical genres and their relation to an English poetry still trying to decide where it stood: amongst the Greek and Roman classics, with the influential Italian and French literatures, or following the British vernacular tradition back to Chaucer and his contemporaries. Indeed, the first of the poem's invocations to the Muses seems almost hyperactive in its referencing, compressing together Milton's many influences:

Sing heavenly Muse, that on the secret top

Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,

In the beginning how the heavens and earth

Rose out of chaos: or if Sion hill

Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed

Fast by the oracle of God, I thence 

Invoke thy aid to my advent'rous song,

That with no middle flight intends to soar

Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues

Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. (I.6-16)

The second line seems almost like a joke, a trick on the reader. Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer and Spenser (amongst many others) all opened their epic poems with prayers for help from the Greek Muses, the goddesses who embodied and inspired the arts and those who practiced them. Whilst to later, Christian, poets there is always a hint of Christianity read anachronistically into these pagan invocations, Milton here catches the reader out by subverting convention and making it explicitly Christian: the 'secret top' is not of Parnassus, the home of the Muses, but of 'Oreb, or of Sinai', where Moses received the Ten Commandments. A studied, conventional archaism becomes in Milton's hands not just a requirement of the epic form, but a tool to show his relation to it: he desires to soar 'Above the Aonian mount', to surpass rather than merely to follow the epic tradition.

Rewriting Convention

In some ways the invocation can be seen as a conscious act of rebellion, even in its imitation of previous conventions: Milton not only 'blasphemes' against the Classical tradition but also, in invoking Christian divinity, makes a bold gesture. Contemporary theological and poetic theory saw Christian invocation of God as over familiar, as poetry was considered by some an unsuitable place for prayer. The whole invocation is a kind of collage, putting the Biblical 'in the beginning' in a setting that seems borrowed in style from the Italian epic poet Dante. Significant, too, in our understanding of Milton's relation to his poetic forefathers is line 16, where he promises to pursue 'Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme'. Ironically, this line staking a claim to new ground is actually a translation, and a very literal one at that, from Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, another incredibly influential Italian epic ('Cosa non detta in prosa mai, né in rima'). What we have here is an intense self-consciousness of style and of genre: where Chaucer, inTroilus and Criseyde, sidesteps the issue of the morality of invoking a false God, Milton seems to investigate even the most conventional aspect of his form and tune it to his own ends. The invocation uses fragments of other work to fit a conventional shape to make a picture that is altogether new. It is here that we find the answer to the paradox of Milton's revolution in being reactionary: the first truly Christian Epic.

The Epic Tradition

It is worth considering what exactly we mean by 'epic' poetry - how much we can gain from thinking about Paradise Lost as an epic, and how fixed the 'rules' of genre really are. Milton was clearly interested in regulated literary form and the distinctions between genres. In some ways, he represents the end of a certain trajectory in English literature as well as the beginning of one: he wrote his sonnets decades after the form's heyday, his pastoral Lycidas well after the late sixteenth century fashion for the genre, and his great epic Paradise Lost nearly eighty years after Spenser's definitive English epic The Faerie Queene. Literary critic Colin Burrow has described the publication of Milton's poem as 'deliberately untimely'. It's clear that Milton was not merely following literary conventions and fashions, but rather reviving and re-evaluating the judgments made by Renaissance literary theorists like Sir Philip Sidney, and classical philosophers like Aristotle.

We could spend a long time worrying about the exact definition of the epic, but it can be summarized quite simply: most of the time, an epic is what announces itself as such by its length and generally grand scope, and its conformity to several conventions. Not all of these need be in evidence, and epic seems generally a less regulated form than pastoral, comedy or dramatic tragedy. Most epics, however, have a strong single central character, a scope that encompasses various locations and often includes elements of the supernatural or divine, a narrative opening in media res (in the middle of things), and use long, rhetorically formalised speeches rather than the more naturalistic speech found more often in drama.

Milton's Epic

Milton was by no means the first poet to set Christian matters in the epic frame: in the fourteenth century, William Langland's Piers Plowmanpresented Christ as a chivalric knight fighting for mankind, while in the 1590s Spenser wrote into The Faerie Queene (amongst endless Christian and philosophical allegories) an allegory where the Redcrosse Knight is both St. George and Christ, linking medieval romance to biblical allegory and to neoclassical epic. But in Milton we do not merely find a redeployment of the epic form to Christian ends: he at once provides English Literature with its most perfect epic (students and academics will argue the comparative greatness of Spenser and Milton for centuries; but where The Faerie Queene is idiosyncratic, singular and unfinished, Paradise Lost fulfils most of the requirements for a 'proper' epic), and essentially kills off the form.

As an example of Milton's simultaneous use and subversion of epic convention, we need look no further than Milton's Satan cast as epic hero. That he is the 'hero' of the poem is undeniable in as far as he is its most present character, the figure we follow most often and the progenitor of the poem's main action. Perhaps the tendency for generations of readers to find him sympathetic is actually a result of our conventionalised response: we find him heroic because of the perspective that comes from his role, because he is given the chance to speak at greater length than others and because he is the subject of conventions fitting for a hero (his spear, for example, is described at length, just as Homer famously describes Achilles' shield). The material and form of the poem cannot be seen as two separate edifices: we find Satan heroic because Milton has decided to write this tale as an epic poem, and so we align Satan with other, earlier heroes and respond to the accepted conventions of the genre.

 

Rethinking Genre

So Paradise Lost is both a consummate example of Milton's literary heritage and scholarly interest in form, and an anti-epic, seeking to surpass, rewrite and rethink that which has gone before. Do we find Satan noble just because he is the hero of Paradise Lost, or was he written as the hero because Milton thought him noble? Can we be tricked into false moral judgment by responding to convention, by treating the Bible like other literature? Does generic literature (and all literature is to some extent generic, even if that genre is 'The Novel') always have certain moral judgments or sympathies implicit in its conventions? These are all questions that Milton confronts when he uses the epic form, and ultimately we must follow his example in reading the poem: there is no authoritative voice in Paradise Lost. If we see even the voice of the narrator as an exercise in form, then we are faced with the ultimate significance of Paradise Lost as Christian epic: the revelation of the power of the form and of poetry to bewitch the reader by its majesty and its associations to previous works, but also the imperative of its readers to think beyond what they are told, to read critically and to be aware of the implications of form and genre.

Further Reading

Colin Burrow's Epic Romance: Homer to Milton (Oxford, 1993)

provides a useful overview of how millennia of poets have interpreted the form, and is useful for thinking about Milton's place as a crossroads, ending one tradition of literature and forcing a crux in the development of the canon.

 

The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry by Harold Bloom (1973)

is notorious, and worth reading with a critical mind: it looks at Milton from both sides, and places him at the centre of a larger theory of how poets influence one another.

MILTON'S RELIGIOUS CONTEXT

 BY DAVID PARRY

Introduction

| |

| |

In October 1656, the Quaker leader James Nayler rode into Bristol on a donkey, imitating Jesus Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Women surrounded Nayler, laying palm leaves in front of him. This incident was debated in parliament for six weeks, many MPs arguing that Nayler should be put to death for blasphemy. In the end, a more lenient punishment was decided upon, and Nayler had his tongue drilled through.

Welcome to the seventeenth century!

In the past couple of years, religion has become headline news in a way that (at least in the UK) it hasn’t been for decades. This has taken politicians, journalists and academics by surprise, and many are struggling to catch up. In the academic world this has led to a new interest in writers like Milton.

In our time, we have a view of reality which separates out the public space of ‘facts’ (where we put science and politics) and the private space of ‘values’ (where we put morality and religion). This distinction was less sharp 400 years ago. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers frequently used ‘religious’ arguments and quotations from the Bible to defend ideas about politics, literature and even fishing.

Milton cannot be understood out of his religious context. When he was a young man, Milton was preparing to become a clergyman in the Church of England, as his parents had intended. However, he later decided that because ‘tyranny had invaded the Church’ he could not be ordained in the Church of England with a good conscience (The Reason of Church-Government, CPW I.823). Why was this? Well, to explain this, we need to go back to the sixteenth century, the century before Milton.

 The Reformation

In the later Middle Ages, many people in Europe were concerned about problems in the church including corruption, low educational standards for priests, and religious apathy among the general population. In the early sixteenth century, some people, such as Martin Luther in Germany and John Calvin in France and Switzerland, started to argue that the root problem in the church was that its message had drifted from the original message of Jesus Christ and his first followers. Around this time the Bible was printed and translated into national languages (not just Latin) and so became available to a wider audience than ever before.

The reformers argued that the Bible teaches that we enter into a relationship with God which brings us eternal life and the forgiveness of sins simply by putting our trust in Jesus Christ and his sacrifice of himself for our sins. They held that this message had become confused by the Church’s emphasis on religious observance, good works, and the financial support of the Church as means of attaining salvation, ideas which suggested that people could buy their way into God’s good books. Some reformers stayed loyal to the Catholic Church, and instigated changes collectively known as the Counter-Reformation, but many reformers left or were expelled from the Church and began founding their own churches. Those who belonged to these reform movements outside the Catholic Church became known as Protestants.

The Reformation was a messy business, which was tangled up with all kinds of economic, political and personal motives. Non-theological reasons for becoming Protestant might include cashing in on the market for selling books on these controversial ideas, or, for kings and princes, increasing your political power by ditching the authority of the Pope. In England, Henry VIII broke away from the authority of the Pope and made himself ‘the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England’ (Act of Supremacy, 1534). This was largely motivated by political reasons related to his divorce of Catherine of Aragon and subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn. Henry VIII wasn’t too interested in the new religious ideas floating around, and, in fact, was strongly opposed to some of them, but his break with the Pope opened a door through which Protestant theology started to come.

Henry’s son Edward VI and his advisers promoted a much more thorough form of Protestantism when he came to the throne in 1547. However, when Edward died in 1553, the pendulum swung right back the other way. When Edward’s sister Mary came to the throne, she gave England back to the Pope, and started burning Protestants. Unsurprisingly, many Protestants ran away to places under Protestant control in Europe, such as parts of Switzerland and Germany. When Mary died in 1558, and her Protestant sister Elizabeth became queen, these people came home. You would have thought they would be happy...

Puritanism

Well, some of them were. But after a while things started to bother some of the returning Protestant leaders. Elizabeth made England Protestant (again), but for some, it wasn’t Protestant enough. Elizabeth wanted to hold the country together and so tried to manage the national church in a way that included as many people as possible. Because of this, the Church of England signed up to a Protestant theology, but many of the outward features of the old church stayed the same – such as bishops, ministers wearing robes, and using a written service book. For some people these things could be used perfectly well in a Protestant context, but others thought that because they couldn’t find these things in the Bible, they shouldn’t be used. These people are often known as Puritans. Church historian Patrick Collinson has called the Puritans ‘hot Protestants’, meaning people who were keen to reform the Church of England further to be more extremely Protestant.

| |

Different scholars have suggested different ways of defining Puritanism. Some of the common characteristics include emphasis on the importance of preaching and on the importance of spiritual experience. Milton is often counted as a Puritan, though this depends on which definition of Puritanism you are thinking of.

When Milton studied at Cambridge, his college, Christ’s, was a stronghold of Puritanism. Some of the fellows (i.e. tutors and lecturers) of the college got in trouble with the university authorities for attacking some of the practices of worship used in the college chapel and for speaking to each other in English instead of Latin. As the seventeenth century went on, Puritans became concerned with the way the Church of England, particularly under Archbishop William Laud, was starting to move back to ritual and ceremonial practices found in the Catholic Church, and was starting to downplay the importance of preaching from the Bible.

The Puritans often suffered (and still suffer) from a negative stereotype of being miserable killjoys. While there are some things about some Puritans which might fit this view, such as the Puritan attack on theatre, many of them lived out their faith in a joyful way and some of them really enjoyed the natural world and the arts. (Milton fits in here, since he wrote some of his poems to be set to music and helped to put on shows for the nobility.) All of them believed that ordinary people were important and wanted the whole population to be educated to understand God’s message to them.

At the time of the English Civil War (a series of disputes and battles between 1642-51), Puritanism was generally associated with the Parliamentarian side, and Laudianism with King Charles’ supporters. These religious disagreements contributed to the mix of tensions leading to the wars. When Parliament won the war and set up a republic, the ideas of different Puritan groups had an input into political decision-making.

One possible explanation for why the republican government didn’t ultimately succeed is that when the Puritans got into power, they split into their different factions. There was a whole spectrum of different religious groups in the broader Puritan movement, some more bizarre than others, but the distinction which is most significant for thinking about Milton is the distinction between Presbyterians and Independents. The Presbyterians wanted to keep a national church, but to have it led by a council of ministers (presbyters) who had equal status to each other, instead of by bishops. The Independents wanted each specific congregation to be able to decide for itself its beliefs and practices. Milton seems to have moved from working with the Presbyterians against the bishops, to being disillusioned with the Presbyterian desire to bring in a new system of religious control. His sympathies probably moved to the Independent side.

Milton’s own beliefs

It’s hard to pin down Milton’s exact beliefs, except to say that he was a strong Protestant who emphasised the freedom of the individual. It is fair to say that Milton probably held a number of controversial beliefs, such as the idea that the soul dies with the body and will be resurrected with the body on the Day of Judgement. He certainly held controversial views on divorce and may well have had sympathies with Arminianism, a new variant of Protestant theology, which, in contrast with mainstream Calvinism, emphasised human freedom rather than God’s ruling power over all things.

Milton probably held heretical views, which contradict orthodox Christian belief, on the Trinity. Instead of the standard Christian belief that God is one God in three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – Milton seems to have believed that these were three separate beings, and that the Son and Spirit were not equal with the Father. These ideas are found in a theological work traditionally attributed to Milton, De Doctrina Christiana (meaning ‘On Christian Teaching’), although there is currently some debate over whether Milton wrote it.

These debates about Milton’s theological beliefs influence how we read Paradise Lost, where, for example, it seems to me that the Son is a being who is greater than the angels but not strictly equal to God the Father.

Paradise Lost was written after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, who returned the Church of England to how it was in his father’s time before the Civil War. It seemed as if the Puritan cause had been defeated. We might see Abdiel in Books V and VI ofParadise Lost as representing this Puritan cause, standing for purity and truth in the midst of a corrupt society. In Book V, lines 809-48, Abdiel defends a radical obedience to God with ‘zeal’, even though his manner seems ‘out of season’ and ‘singular and rash’ (V.849-51). Many Puritans seemed this way to the people around them. It seems that Milton became increasingly isolated, politically and religiously, in his later life. Perhaps he saw himself as an Abdiel figure: ‘Among the faithless, faithful only he’ (Paradise Lost, V.897).

MILTON'S POLITICAL CONTEXT

 BY GABRIEL ROBERTS

 

The Political Climate of Milton's Day

| |

| |

The mid seventeenth-century was a time of great social and cultural turmoil. A series of political and military conflicts, now known as the English Civil War or the English Revolution, was waged intermittently between Parliamentarians and Royalists from 1642 to 1651.

There were many factors contributing to the tensions between the Crown and Parliament, including Charles' marriage to the Catholic princess, Henrietta-Maria of France, and his desire to be involved in European wars. But the most interesting were the ideological questions being raised about the nature of government and authority. In the seventeenth century, the Crown played a much greater role in the running of the country than it does today. Parliament's power was growing, but before the Civil War, it was called and dissolved at the will of the monarch, and used mostly to issue taxes when the king needed money. Charles I believed in the 'divine right of kings' and ruled fairly autonomously, but much of Parliament believed that the king had a contractual obligation to the people to rule without tyranny. Parliamentarians were angry that Charles refused to call a Parliament for most of the 1630s, during which time he tried to levy what were considered to be illegal taxes. With Archbishop Laud, he tried to take the Church in the direction of High Anglicanism, which aroused suspicion that he was trying to revert the country to Catholicism.

In 1649, after years of various political manoeuvres and bouts of fighting, King Charles I was executed for treason. For the next decade England had no monarch. Initially, a Commonwealth was formed and England was ruled by a republican government, but in 1653 Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector, essentially a military dictator. He was succeeded by his son Richard in 1658, but because of faction fighting and Richard's lack of popularity as a leader, the republic failed. Charles II, the executed monarch's son, was declared King in the Restoration of 1660.

Milton

In 1641 Milton published Of Reformation Touching Church-Discipline in England, marking the beginning of a career of political prose writing which would last almost until his death in 1674. Close analysis reveals a subtle change in his thought away from the youthful orthodoxy which had led him to consider ordination as a priest, and towards the increasingly heretical and subversive theology which typifies his later writings. However, the general thrust of his political writings is towards Puritan reformation in the church, and the replacement of the monarchy with a free commonwealth. His enduring support for Cromwell resulted in his appointment in 1649 as Secretary for Foreign Languages, a position which involved acting as the voice of the English revolution to the world at large. He remained stalwart in his belief in the republic, publishing The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth only a few months before Charles II's return in May 1660.

Milton's thought always appears highly integrated, and his political views cannot easily be separated either from his religious beliefs or from his poetry. An understanding of the politics of Paradise Lost must therefore be informed by an awareness of Milton's political life, his work as a prose writer, and the subversive elements of his theology.

 

On Kingship

Milton's political views can be seen with particular clarity in relation to the execution of Charles I. Arguments both for and against Charles' reign exhibit a distinctively legal approach to scriptural exegesis (i.e. to the systematic interpretation and citation of passages from scripture). During his trial, Charles refused to make a plea to the court, claiming that no court could possess the necessary authority to try him. In thus denying the accountability of the monarch either to his subjects or to the law, Charles asserted that his rule was divinely ordained. The belief that the monarch is answerable only to God finds Biblical support in the Old Testament's records of God's endorsement of the kings of Israel and Judah, and in the New Testament in Romans 13:1-2. Writing in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (which was published only a month after Charles' execution in January 1649 and which serves primarily to justify the regicide), Milton adopts a markedly different interpretation of scripture:

No man who knows aught can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free, being the image and resemblance of God himself, and were, by privilege above all the creatures, born to command and not to obey. (CPW, III.198)

The emphasis here is upon the nature of the created order, and upon man's position as part of the divine hierarchy. Milton argues that a tyrannical ruler contradicts this divine order, and that the role of the king is primarily to maintain this order, rather than to destabilize it. Arguing conceptually, historically and legally, Milton claims that the king must be understood as a servant of the people, bound to their service by the vows made in his coronation. He argues:

It follows that to say kings are accountable to none but God, is the overturning of all law and government [...] for if the king fear not God, [...] we hold then our lives and estates by the tenure of his mere grace and mercy, as from a god, not a mortal magistrate. (CPW, III.204)

Milton's argument is sublimely clever. He contends that for the king to make himself answerable only to God is to make himself a god, heretically contradicting the divine ordering of creation. However, whilst Milton's argument contains a cunning blend of biblical exegesis and political pragmatism, his influence from classical sources is clear. His definition of a monarch is rather incongruously drawn from Aristotle, and his repeated emphasis on the idea of tyranny evokes both Greek political thought and Latin writers such as Plutarch and Tacitus. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates thus serves as a useful microcosm for broader aspects of Milton's politics: the blend of politics and religion, the importance of textual learning in his thought, and the unification of biblical and classical references, which would come to its fullest expression in Paradise Lost.

Poetry and Politics

It is important to recognise that just as Milton's political writings attain an extraordinary forcefulness through the use of literary devices, his poetry often overflows with political fervour and antagonism. Writing in Areopagitica, a tract denouncing restrictive censorship, Milton famously describes 'a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks'; he goes on: 'methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam' (CPW, II.558). The imagery is poetic, and the tone is elevated. The reverse effect can be found in many passages of Milton's poetry. In the penultimate speech of Samson Agonistes, Samson (before leaving to massacre the Philistines by pulling their temple down on their heads) argues: 'Masters' commands come with a power resistless | To such as owe them absolute subjection' (1404). In his consideration of divine authority, Samson seems to adopt the tone (and even the arguments) of Milton's early political writings. Both Samson contemplating mass murder and Milton attempting to justify regicide seem to fall into the same state of mind, and to share a common means of expression.

Politics in Paradise Lost

In attempting to situate Paradise Lost in its political context we face a particular critical choice, which rests upon the kind of context which we have in mind. On the one hand, we can examine the stylistic and argumentative similarities between sections ofParadise Lost and Milton's more explicitly political writings. On the other hand, Paradise Lost can be read as a political allegory, which is to say that events and characters in Paradise Lost can be aligned with aspects of the political context of the poem's creation.

Satan's speeches provide the strongest example of a distinctively political voice appearing in the poem. When he addresses the fallen angels Milton draws on rhetorical techniques which are well-established in his political prose.

Is this the region, this the soil, the clime, […]

That we must change for heaven, this mournful gloom 

For that celestial light? (I.242-5)

Here Satan uses a series of rhetorical questions with progressively more contracted syntax in order to assert his point. But Milton's rhetorical sophistication also allows him to weave subtle flaws into Satan's arguments, expressing his corrupted nature at a particularly detailed level. When in Book IX Satan persuades Eve to eat the fruit, Milton strikes a fascinating balance between making Satan convincing and making sure that his arguments are misleading. For example:

Indeed? Hath God then said that of the fruit

Of all these garden trees ye shall not eat,

Yet lords declared of all in earth or air? (IX.656)

Satan deliberately misunderstands Eve in order to make God's restriction appear more authoritarian and perverse. But more than this, he implies that there is a contradiction between Adam and Eve having been created as lords over the world and their being restricted from eating the sacred fruit. The implication is gentle, and avoids direct criticism of God, instead putting pressure on Eve to justify God's prohibition. These examples also demonstrate Satan's ability to modulate between different kinds of rhetorical questioning, much as Milton's prose works combine both blistering interrogation, and the barbed, faux-naive attitude which Satan adopts towards Eve.

But the stylistic similarities between passages of Paradise Lost and Milton's political works are not mere chance. They arise in part because the characters in Paradise Lost find themselves in situations which genuinely are political. In directing the Son to create earth, God the Father is conducting an act of rulership, which is inescapably political. Likewise, Satan's attempts to rouse the fallen angels in Book I really are reminiscent of Milton's desire to rally support for the Cromwellian government. These broader political parallels lead us towards a more allegorical interpretation of the poem as a whole. We can begin to see how the great debate in Book II might be read as a political satire, mocking the tiresome debates which Milton conducted in his youth. Similarly, the interaction of Adam and Eve is a fascinating study of gender politics, whilst the relationship between God the Father and God the Son presents an obvious ideal of kingship and the delegation of power. But the danger of such readings is that they quickly lose their specificity. The figure of Satan especially accommodates a wide variety of different allegorical interpretations. He can be seen as a false leader to the fallen angels, his enforcement of his own will on the great debate in Book II recalling Charles I's willful disregard for parliament. But alternatively, he can be seen to represent something of Milton and Cromwell in their revolutionary struggles against the king. At a slightly more general level he can even be seen to represent the failure of any political discourse in this period, and of religious culture which attempts to exist apart from divine authority and biblical revelation. The problem is that Satan is primarily identified as a force of rebellion against God, and Paradise Lost rarely seems to require us to construe him as anything else. 

Closing thoughts

An understanding of the politics of Paradise Lost clearly depends on an understanding of the politics of the English Civil War and particularly of Milton's position in it. The application of this knowledge to the text of Paradise Lost is perhaps most effectively conducted through an appreciation of the interplay of ideas between Milton's poetic and political writings. Allegorical interpretations, although interesting and to some extent the natural result of a stylistic analysis of the poem's politics, must be carefully qualified. Although Paradise Lost is very much a poem of its times, it is important to remember that its setting is metaphysical and its direct concern religious. 

Further Reading

Stephen M. Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers: Poetry and Materialism in Seventeenth-Century England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991).

This is a useful book dealing with Milton's intellectual historical context. It covers Descartes and Hobbes in especially good detail, but also reflects interestingly on the nature of fictive writing and allegory in such contexts.

 

William J. Grace, Ideas in Milton (London; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968).

This book gives a very clear summary of Milton's humanist, theological and religious background, and breaks the topics down into very manageable chunks. It makes a very good reference tool, and gives some quite original readings ofSamson Agonistes and Lycidas.

 

Stevie Davies, Images of Kingship in Paradise Lost: Milton's Politics and Christian Liberty, (Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1983).

Although this book probably does too little to get beyond the dichotomy of Christian freewill and oppressive institutional power structures it does give a clear idea of the different notions of kingship with which Paradise Lost engages. This is probably best used simply to dip into.

 

Barry Coward, The Stuart Age: England 1603-1714, 2nd edition (London: Longman, 1994).

Although quite dense, this book puts forward a clear account of the history of the seventeenth century, including chapters on the Civil War and Restoration which can be read in isolation. Its approach is excellent as Coward does not try to separate political, religious, social, economical or intellectual strands, but instead looks at the whole picture.

MILTON AND THE CRITICS:

The Reception of Paradise Lost

BY SOPHIE READ

Publication

In 1667 John Milton published Paradise Lost, perhaps the greatest long poem in the English language. It was recognised as an extraordinary achievement shortly after it appeared, and has, in the three hundred and fifty years that people have been reading and thinking about it, provoked a great deal of critical debate. Despite its current canonical status, a favourable reception for Paradise Lost in the late seventeenth century was no foregone conclusion, and its reputation has fluctuated surprisingly ever since.

With the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Milton was out in the cold: as a staunch republican, a supporter of Cromwell and an apologist for the regicide, he was lucky to escape execution for treason. His unorthodox views on various sensitive subjects, including divorce (he was in favour) were well known: Milton was an active writer of political pamphlets as well as a poet, and he had many influential enemies. England in 1667 was reeling from the events of the previous year, when plague and fire had swept the capital, causing a devastation many people thought was divinely inspired; a biblical epic from a blind, grim old controversialist was by no means certain of being sympathetically received, as the poet's wish that his poem might 'fit audience find, though few' (VII.31) perhaps recognises. In spite of this unwelcoming climate, whenParadise Lost appeared, it was hailed as a work of genius, even by Milton's political opponents. The audience was not few, but was it fit?

Contemporary Response

From the start, this epic poem attracted a number of disobedient readers. One of the first major responses was an adaptation for the stage by John Dryden, The State of Innocence (1671). He sought and received Milton's permission to put Paradise Lost into rhyme (unconvinced, presumably, by the comments on the 'troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming' in the note on the verse), and his version outsold the original until the end of the seventeenth century. Dryden's political affiliation (he was a royalist) prompted him to play on a crux in Milton's poem: Satan, who disdains servitude and tries to overturn his monarch, becomes in Dryden's rewriting an unmistakeable portrait of Oliver Cromwell, the king-killer. He also believed that the fallen angel, and not Adam, was the hero (in the sense of his structural position as the protagonist of the epic), and weighted his adaptation accordingly.

This was not an isolated instance of wishful interpretation. Contemporary readers who thought there was a whiff of sulphur about the unrepentant republican poet were not surprised to find these sentiments in the mouth of the arch-fiend; and there were those who believed that Milton was in fact disowning his previous stance by associating it with Satan. Neither reading does justice to the complexity of Paradise Lost, but this does identify what was to become a recurrent theme in later responses to the poem: the contested interpretation of Satan, its eloquent anti-hero.

 

The Early Eighteenth Century

Milton's epic achieved classical status in the last years of the seventeenth century, when it was published with explanatory notes - the first poem in English to be so presented. Twenty years later, its position was consolidated by an influential series of articles written by Joseph Addison in the Spectator (a daily paper). This, however, did not protect the poem from interference: in 1732, Richard Bentley (one of the earliest textual critics in England) produced an 'emended' edition, in which he argued that the blind poet had employed an incompetent amanuensis, and that as a result many errors of wording and logic had crept into the published version. Bentley's unjustified and insensitive revisions attracted widespread ridicule - not least from Alexander Pope, who pilloried him in the Dunciad (a satire against dull poets). These revisions reflected, however, a feeling that Paradise Lost, though a national classic, was somehow unorthodox in its theological and philosophical outlook. Pope's poem, and indeed his earlier work Rape of the Lock, show another kind of response to Milton. They are 'mock-epics', and re-deploy elements of Milton's style (and, of course, that of his classical antecedents) to comic ends. Milton's achievement was felt to be so great that no contemporary poet could rival or match it: writing a serious epic would be out of the question.

Romantic Milton

At the end of the eighteenth century and the start of the nineteenth, the complex poetic response to Paradise Lost turned once again to the figure of Satan. Milton was hugely important for the Romantic poets, for his political stance as well as the model of his writing. As far as Coleridge was concerned, he sat, with Shakespeare, on 'one of the two glory-smitten summits of the poetic mountain'. Though some writers, notably John Keats, were uneasy under his influence, Milton was widely read and highly regarded. 'Milton!', William Wordsworth opens his sonnet on London, 'thou shoulds't be living at this hour:| England hath need of thee'.

Such straightforward veneration, however, was not to be the lasting legacy of Romantic interpretations. William Blake voiced a thought that had been troubling readers almost since the poem's publication, and has dogged it ever since. Noticing that Books I and II are rather more absorbing than Book III, Blake concluded: 'The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it'. Whatever Milton's intention - and Blake here concedes that the effect was not deliberate - the power of the poetry glamorizes the figure of Satan at God's expense. Shelley went further; ignoring the theological constraints of Milton's framework, he considered the divine and the diabolic as literary characters, and decided that Satan came out rather better. 'Milton's Devil as a moral being' is, he writes, 'far superior to his God'. Satan's noble striving against immense adversity, his valorization of the individual, had greater appeal than what Shelley read as God's cold and certain execution of the preordained plan of the devils' (and Man's) destruction. Such an impression, Shelley believed, could not have been accidental: 'this bold neglect of a direct moral purpose is the most decisive proof of the supremacy of Milton's genius'. 

Critical Controversy

Blake's and Shelley's views, corroborated by Satan's powerfully persuasive rhetoric, have enjoyed some currency with subsequent readers, though the Romantics' admiration has not always been echoed along with their interpretations. The early years of the twentieth century saw the study of English literature institutionalized as a degree subject in the universities: an enterprise to which Milton, in some ways the country's first classic poet, might have been central. There emerged, however, a growing antipathy towards Milton's 'stifling' presence, and it expressed itself in a desire to dislodge him from the pre-eminent position he had come to occupy. F. R. Leavis, an influential Cambridge critic and teacher, had little time for Milton. T. S. Eliot objected to Milton as a man ('Milton is unsatisfactory'), as a poet ('Milton writes English like a dead language'), and as an inspiration ('Milton's bad influence may be traced much further than the eighteenth century'). Milton found a passionate advocate in Christopher Ricks, whose seminal 1967 work Milton's Grand Style still, however, needed to adopt a defensive stance. Harold Bloom, writing a few years later, proposed Milton's very mastery of the language as an explanation for these responses; he is, Bloom believes, 'the great Inhibitor, the Sphinx who strangles even strong imaginations in their cradles'.

Serious objections to Milton's style and his place in the canon were not generally sustained. But the years that followed saw a new iteration of the old dispute over the interpretation of Paradise Lost. The poem was accepted as a great work, but the reasons for this greatness were contested. In Milton's God (1961), William Empson set about refuting the attempts of C. S. Lewis and others to rehabilitate the character of God and to maintain that Milton succeeded in his avowed intention to 'justify' the divine purpose. Empson concluded, after an idiosyncratic and spirited demolition of God's motives and actions, that 'the reason why the poem is so good is that it makes God so bad'. The critical battle lines were firmly drawn, and no negotiation seemed possible. Either Milton was on God's side and any attempt to suggest otherwise was unchristian and perverse, or Paradise Lost was a veiled critique of the heavenly hierarchy, and Satan's charisma and plausibility a result of Milton's sympathy for his plight. In 1967, Stanley Fish publishedSurprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost, which tried to reconcile these opposing viewpoints by arguing that the true hero of the poem is in fact the reader: seeing God as malevolent or Satan as attractive is simply an indication of a fallen state, and part of the poem's purpose.

Fish was not entirely successful (his book provoked much controversy of its own) and these disputes have not, even now, been resolved. In the last decades of the twentieth century there was a movement away from addressing the question directly, and works on Milton's theology (e.g. Robert Entzminger's Divine Word), politics (e.g. Milton and Republicanism, a collection edited by Quentin Skinner, among others) and language (e.g. John Leonard's Naming in Paradise) started to take precedence. New and important works on Milton continue to appear, and testify to the centrality in the canon of this rich and difficult epic. There is, it seems, still much to say about Paradise Lost.

Essays on Themes

Self-reference, Allusion, and Inversion —George Herbert, "The H. Scriptures II"

In the context of her work on Milton’s polemics (Milton and the Revolutionary Reader), Sharon Achinstein has characterized Milton as "a writer compelled to show readers how to act by reading . . . the enemy argument properly," which is to say that, by cross-examining the opposition’s logic point by point and challenging his audience to do likewise, "he show[s the politically naive] how criticism ought to be conducted." If he is successful, the fit readers of Paradise Lost will come away from the text knowing not only what is wrong with the rationalizations offered by Satan, Adam, and Eve, and why (regardless of how seductively plausible it may seem to be at the outset) the reasoning of their exculpations is specious, "but also how to perform similar critical acts [themselves] in the future"(Achinstein, 146-7)—a crucial capability in a world in which even the most innocuous of truths could be no longer be relied upon as given, and in which all of the received epistemology (geocentrism, heavenly perfection, divine right kingship, the sacredness of the Bible, the infallibility of the Pope, etc.) had been refuted or cast seriously into doubt. Like Herbert, Milton was intimately familiar with the self-referentiality of the Bible, and conscious of the way in which, for example, the Old Testament Pascal lamb becomes the New Testament Agnus Dei, or the Lenten triumphs of One Just Man in the wilderness subsume, amplify, and supersede the trials and achievements of all of the solitary heroes (Noah, Moses, Abraham, Job) who have gone before, and he reverently appropriated such biblical techniques to justify the ways of God to men. As Fish suggests in "Driving from the Letter," Milton’s rhetorical strategy "involves encouraging the reader to a premature act of concluding or understanding which is then undone or upset by the introduction of a new and compelling perspective"; this "happens not once, but repeatedly" (243), so that, by means of his deft manipulation of language and imagery along the lines suggested by the matrix that follows, Milton induces the reader again and again to recapitulate Fish’s now-classic model, "Adam is wrong, no, he's right, but then of course, he is wrong, and so am I" (Fish, Surpris’d by Sin, 38-43). My intent in compiling this matrix of self-referential, allusive, and inverted lines and images in Paradise Lost is to demonstrate by means of tabulated comparison and contrast both the mechanics of the rhetorical and semiotic entrapment that I believe Milton is striving throughout the epic to teach us to avoid (demonstrating by object lesson how easy it is to fall victim to "words cloth’d in reason’s garb"), and to illuminate the tacit warnings he so subtly imbeds within the body of the epic itself, alerting those readers who are members of his "fit audience though few" to the fact that all is not as or what it seems, nor is it what it should be, no matter how often or how gloriously it may seduce us at first glance.

This matrix is the product of twenty five years of reading and re-reading Paradise Lost, a work that continues to awe me not only in terms of the magnitude and depth of its self-referentiality, but also by virtue of the skillfully subtle manner in which Milton purposefully subverts and deconstructs his own text to teach his readers how to perform such analytical tasks on their own. The richness of Milton’s self-allusion will not be surprising to the any of the scholars intimately familiar with the poem, though the variety of its subtleties may be, and these in turn may suggest other connections not dealt with here. As a reference tool to supplement other critical readings, the matrix should also prove valuable to any new reader struggling to comprehend the mechanism whereby the poet reassures us that Satan is not the hero of Paradise Lost, and attempts to justify the ways of God to men in an endeavor to teach himself and us what Christian heroism ought to be.

Satan’s Rhetoric and Protestantism

Satan mixes elements of each of these theories of the relation of subject to ruler into his rhetoric. In justifying his, and his faction's, rebellion against heaven's king, Satan portrays himself as a prince entitledand even required to resist an unjust monarch who is grasping for absolute power and thereby attempting to usurp that portion of the "higher power" or "governing authority" that belongs to the lower magistrates: "A third part of the Gods [again, read "Gods" as elohim in Calvin's sense of gods, magistrates, or judges], in Synod met / Thir Deities to assert, who while they feel / Vigor Divine within them, can allow / Omnipotence to none" (VI. 156-159).

The picture of heaven's king as a grasper, a usurper of powers not rightfully his own, is common to those who follow Satan's lead. Nisroch, "of Principalities the prime," addresses Satan as "Deliverer from new Lords, leader to free / Enjoyment of our right as Gods" (VI. 451, 452). Satan himself characterizes the pronouncement of the Son as the great Vice-gerent as a usurpation of power rightfully belonging to others: "Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers, / If these magnific Titles yet remain / Not merely titular, since by Decree / Another now hath to himself ingross't / All Power, and us eclipst under the name / Of King annointed . . . "(P.L. V. 772-777). Satan goes on to characterize this shift in heavenly politics as a demand for "Knee-tribute yet unpaid, prostration vile, / too much to one, but double how endur'd, / To one and to his image now proclaim'd?" (V. 782-784).

The political balance of Stephen Marshall's "Letter" is at work here in two ways: Satan is characterizing the heavenly system as having been one in which (until the usurpation) the threefold power of enacting laws, making wars, and judging "causes and crimes" had been shared by the king and parliament, the heavenly king and his heavenly princes and magistrates; the "Father infinite" of V. 596 is characterizing the heavenly system as one in which the threefold power is contained in one ruler, the heavenly king. By claiming to defend their right to rule, to defend "those Imperial Titles which assert / Our being ordain'd to govern, not to serve" (V. 801, 802), Satan and his followers are claiming their rights under a system of government which holds that it is the duty of lesser magistrates to hold the king in check. This fits quite nicely with Calvin's insistence that the only lawful political resistance to a tyrannous king could come from lower magistrates acting in concert with one another. It is, in fact, the sacred duty of such magistrates to resist tyranny, as is spelled out quite clearly in the following passage:

I am so far from forbidding them to withstand, in accordance with their duty, the fierce licentiousness of kings, that, if they wink at kings who violently fall upon and assault the lowly common folk, I declare that their dissimulation involves nefarious perfidy, because they dishonestly betray the freedom of the people, of which they know that they have been appointed protectors by God's ordinance. (Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV. xx. 31, p. 1519)

That Satan claims to be fighting against tyranny is made clear by his numerous references to the Father as a tyrant: Hell is the "Prison of his Tyranny who Reigns / By our delay"; the Father is "our grand Foe, / Who now triumphs, and in th' excess of joy / Sole reigning holds the Tyranny of Heav'n" (I. 122-124). The key here is the phrase "Sole reigning." In a system in which lesser magistrates or princes had real power, the monarch would not be in a position of exclusive and absolute reign. This makes sense of Satan's famous "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n" in a way that does not require that Satan be pictured as being himself an absolute ruler, a tyrant who rails against tyranny. Despite the "Oriental" descriptions of Satan given by the narrator at the beginning of book II, the "Throne of Royal State," the "Barbaric Pearl and Gold" that the "gorgeous East with richest hand / Show'rs on her Kings," Satan justifies, and maintains, his power by appeal to what he and his followers represent as the king-in-parliament model of heavenly government: the system of "Orders and Degrees" that "Jar not with liberty" (V. 792, 793) to which Satan refers when he tells his fellow fallen angels that the "just right and the fixt Laws of Heav'n / Did first create your Leader" (II. 18, 19). As we will see later, however, Satan appeals to this system precisely in order that he may establish a tyrannical rule over his fallen compatriots, imposing a top-down system in Hell after having explicitly rejected and rebelled against such a system in Heaven.

What is distinctly missing from Satan's political rhetoric is any mention of those who are ruled. Over whom, after all, do all of these "Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, [and] Powers" reign? If "those Imperial Titles" indicate that the angels were "ordain'd to govern, not to serve" (V. 801, 802), whom are the angels governing? Each other? William Empson somewhat whimsically suggests a solution to this problem by postulating the existence of what he calls "the vast dim class of proletarian angels who are needed so that angels with titles may issue orders" (Milton's God 60). Before the creation of Adam and Eve on a new-made Earth, one might ask the same question about the reign of the Father. Over whom, besides these "Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, [and] Powers" does the Father reign?Does the Father reign if there are no subjects but angelic princes and magistrates?

Protestant political theory, at least as it appears in Calvin, Luther, Mh ntzer, and Marshall, assumes as a given that magistracy and the power thereof is designed for the good of those who are ruled, basing this claim on Romans 13:4, where the magistrate is described as "the minister of God to thee for good." Marshall describes a proper Magistracy as one set up "with a sufficiencie of power and authority to rule for the publicke good" (3). However, in Paradise Lost, there appears to be no public, much less a public good, until the rebellion by Satan, and the subsequent creation of Adam and Eve on Earth. Until this radical break, heaven appears to have been little more than a gigantic May Day parade with only Party members in attendance. There is only dictatorship, no proletariat in Milton's prelapsarian heaven.

Milton's Critique

All of this, of course, is from Satan's point of view, and Satan is mouthing the very Protestant political cliches that Milton tears down in Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, his justification of the ways of the regicides to men. Why? Why does Milton have his Satan sound so much like Calvin, so much like Stephen Marshall, in his descriptions of the roles of princes and magistrates in relation to a king? Because Milton wants to ground his theory of political power in the very private persons whom Calvin and Luther so despise, the ruled (who do not themselves rule) that are conspicuously absent from pre-rebellion heaven. For Milton, it is "all men" who are "born to command, and not to obey" (TKM 754), not merely those who possess "Imperial Titles" as it is for Satan, or special "magistrates of the people, appointed to restrain the willfulness of kings" as it is for Calvin, or the "representative body of a State" as it is for Marshall. Milton casts the people in the role of Mh ntzer’s "elect," those "true friends of God" who take seriously their duty to God's church, and themselves have the power to oppose those "godless rulers who should be killed."

Milton is far more radical than his own Satan. Next to Satan's relatively mainstream rhetoric of "justified" rebellion against a tyrant, Milton's arguments glow white-hot by comparison. Where Satan grouses in reference to heaven's king, "Whom reason hath equall'd, force hath made supreme / Above his equals" (PL I. 248, 249), Milton brooks no use of the word equals. Much less than being the equal of the people, the king or magistrate is the servant of the people:

since the king or magistrate holds his authority of the people, both originally and naturally for their good in the first place, and not his own, then may the people, as oft as they shall judge it for the best, either choose him or reject him, retain him or depose him, though no tyrant, merely by the liberty and right of freeborn men to be governed as seems to them best. (TKM 757)

Milton holds on to God's role in this cycle of power by arguing that "the right of choosing, yea of changing their own government, is by the grant of God himself in the people" (TKM 757), which differs from Satan's claim to be "self-begot, self-rais'd (V. 860). Even more interestingly, Milton's claim differs from the political structure of pre-rebellion heaven as described in Book I of Paradise Lost. The angels who "sat as Princes, whom the supreme King / Exalted to such power, and gave to rule, / Each in his hierarchy, the Orders bright" (I. 733-737), receive their power from their ruler. The kings and magistrates of Milton's theory of power in TKM receive their power from the ruled. Of the Protestant theorists dealt with here, only Stephen Marshall allows for the possibility that the "supreme authority" mayever lie with the people: when the three branches of power (legislative, judicial, and executive) meet "in the body of the people, as in the ancient Roman Government, there is the highest power which every soule is forbidden to resist" (14).

Ultimately, Milton's attempt to ground the source of political power in the people (with God retained merely as the granter or giver of such power) in TKM threatens to undermine the entire top-down structure of political power relied upon not only by Luther, Calvin, Mh ntzer, and Marshall, but by Satan and even God himself in Paradise Lost. If the people may choose or reject, retain or depose a ruler, "though no tyrant, merely by the liberty and right of freeborn men to be governed as seems to them best," why may not, by the same logic, the people choose or reject, retain or depose a God, whether or not that God is conceived of as a tyrant? Why may not Satan and his followers choose or reject, retain or depose a God?

Milton seems aware of, and anxious about, this possibility. In his Defense of the People of England, Milton makes a rather curious non-response to the insinuation by Salmasius that in defending the execution of Charles I, Milton has become caught up in a logic that implies that "God himself would have had to be called king of tyrants, and indeed would be the greatest tyrant himself":

On your second conclusion I spit, and wish that blasphemous mouth of yours might be closed up, as you are asserting that God is the greatest tyrant. (99)

Angrily throwing Salmasius’ charge back at him is not an argument. Milton seems to wish to rest on an a priori notion of God’s goodness as a given, but when the charge is made that he undermines that given through his defense of the regicide, more is required than bluster and charges of blasphemy.

Furthermore, what is to prevent Hell's legions from choosing or rejecting, retaining or deposing Satan himself? Satan seems to realize that this possibility has now been made available since the rebellion in heaven, which is why he appeals immediately to the system of "Orders and Degrees" that "Jar not with liberty" (V. 792, 793) when he tells his fellow fallen angels that the "just right and the fixt Laws of Heav'n / Did first create [me] your Leader" (II. 18, 19). This may also explain the speed with which Satan moves to cut off the opportunity for any of the other fallen angels to step forth as his rival in the debate in Book II, as he "prevented all reply, / Prudent, lest from his resolution rais'd / Others among the chief might offer now / (Certain to be refus'd) what erst they fear'd; / And so refus'd might in opinion stand / His Rivals, winning cheap the high repute / Which he through hazard huge must earn" (II. 467-473). The reference to "opinion" is crucial: in a truly top-down system of political power, a system in which magistratical power was truly from God (God taken here in the sense of an unquestioned and unchallenged power, neither of which the God of PL has proven to be), "opinion" would be irrelevant. So also would be any question of earning "high repute." In a sense, Satan is trying, through appeals to the pre-rebellion system of an unquestioned top-down distribution of power, and through quick action to prevent anyone else from taking advantage of what Satan realizes is the new bottom-up political order, to stuff the genie that he let loose through rebellion in heaven back into a hopelessly smashed bottle. Satan's Protestantism and its concomitant political rhetoric is an attempt to preserve a system of power that, in truth, no longer exists, and merely serves as a justification for tyranny.

The view that would have this debate in Hell "cooked" by Satan and Beelzebub, seems to me to be overly invested in the game that William Empson describes as "the modern duty of catching Satan out wherever possible" (Milton's God 74). Sharon Achinstein describes this scene in what seems the typical manner: "In Paradise Lost, Satan's tyranny consists partly in not allowing free debate. [Where, then is the "free debate" in Heaven?] For the debate in hell is not really a free exchange of ideas; Satan wrote a script in which Beelzebub would propose his plan, and then Satan himself 'prevented all reply'" (Milton and the Revolutionary Reader 203). I tend to agree with Empson that for Satan "to arrange with his known friend to propose his plan, and then speak for it himself at once, is not underhand behavior" (56). It seems rather a strain to get the idea of "writing a script" from these lines: "Thus Beelzebub / Pleaded his devilish Counsel, first devis'd / By Satan, and in part propos'd: for whence, / But from the Author of all ill could Spring / So deep a malice . . . "(PL II. 378-382).

Milton uses Satan to critique tyranny. That much is commonplace. It is the way in which Milton uses Satan that is the interesting point. The Romantics were right, to a point. Satan's critiques of the "Tyranny of Heav’n" are stirring, even devastating criticisms, which no amount of Arminian apologism will fully deflect. However, Satan himself is a tyrant, perhaps doubly so, because in establishing his Infernal monarchy, he appeals to the very system of power that he once rejected. He appeals to this system of power in the language of 16th- and 17th-century Protestant political theories, theories that emphasize the political rights of princes while denying such rights to "private persons." Satan fits in quite nicely with those "dancing divines" Milton criticizes so harshly in TKM, hypocrites who use "the same quotations to charge others, which in the same case they made serve to justify themselves" (753). However, it is not Satan that Milton is holding up for criticism. Why bother with such an easy target? It is the "dancing divines" and the tradition out of which they have sprung and from which they argue that Milton is attacking by allying them with Satan. Luther’s call in Wider die räuberischen und mörderischen Rotten der andern Bauern ("Against the Thieving and Murdering Hordes of Peasants") to "cut, stab, choke, and strike the . . . peasants" is Satanic. Calvin's denial of the rights of the people to "undertake anything at all politically" is Satanic. Mh ntzer’s formulation of political power in which only the princes may be counted among the "elect," or among the "true friends of God" is Satanic. Even the theory of Milton's former teacher, Stephen Marshall, to the extent that it denies the people as the origin of political power is Satanic.

Satan is Milton's indictment of the failures of Protestant thought up to his day. Satan’s infamous "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n," and his subsequent rise to monarchy and tyranny form a curious and compelling metaphor for the Protestant Reformation, a rejection of Papacy that set up Prelates and Presbyters in the places of Bishops, Cardinals, and Popes. Milton puts Protestant rhetoric into Satan’s mouth as an indictment of everything that had, in his view, gone wrong with the attempt to reform the Church. Milton’s darkest implication is that both Catholics and Protestants serve the same Lord. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

Before and After the fall

In Paradise Lost, Milton treats sensuality as an inherent part of human nature, celebrating the "wedded Love" of Adam and Eve (IV, 750). There are two scenes in Paradise Lost that describe Adam and Eve making love and falling asleep. The first passage describes the prelapserian bliss of Adam and Eve and their "Nuptial Bed" (IV, 710). The second describes the lustful hunger of the pair immediately following the eating of the "fallacious Fruit" (IX, 1046). These seemingly similar passages contain subtle differences that contribute to a difference in tone which best illustrates the shift in perception due to the Fall in all of Paradise Lost. 

          The first passage is characterized by a tone of holiness, solemnity, and spirituality. Before retiring to their bower Adam and Eve give praise and thanks to God, creator of all. When Eve decorates their bed, "heavenly Choirs" sing the hymenæan, celebrating the sanctity of marriage (IV, 711). The poet emphatically affirms the sanctity of "connubial Love" (IV, 743) by saying "God declares [it] / Pure" (IV, 746-7), and by calling it "mysterious Law" (IV, 750). His word choices, "undefil'd and chaste" (IV, 761), "true" (IV, 750), and "blest" (IV, 774) lend further support to the claim. It is also of note that Milton chose to use the word "pure" four times in a space of less than twenty lines (IV, 737, 745, 747, 755). This is love founded "in Reason, Loyal, Just, and Pure" (IV, 755). It stands in contrast to "adulterous lust" (IV, 753) and "loveless, joyless, unindear'd, / Casual fruition" (IV, 766-7).

          The contrasts to the second passage are staggering. Adam and Eve do not pray to God before retiring. They are misdirecting devotion to other things. The Adam and Eve who before displayed humility, now display arrogance and egotism in what they perceive their newfound superiority. Adam wishes there were ten more forbidden trees, should they all bear fruit as pleasurable; how blithely he admits he would transgress against God tenfold should the opportunity for pleasure present itself! One must also not disregard the fact that Eve paid worshipful homage to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil before approaching Adam, bowing to it as to a deity. Adam, conversely, is later admonished by God: "Was shee thy God, that her thou didst obey" (X, 145). Lovemaking in the first instance is sanctioned by God, even endorsed by him: "God declares/ [it] pure…./ Our Maker bids encrease" (IV, 746-8). "Saints and Patriarchs" (IV, 762) are used as evidence, as is Love, personified as an angel with purple wings. There is no such sanction in the second passage; there is indeed no divinity present. There are only the "fallacious Fruit" (IX, 1046) and the ravenous pair. The tone is one of transgression, magnified by the greedy speech of Adam about the fruit, and the two references to the "forbidden" in consecutive lines (IX, 1025-6).

          The lovemaking in the second passage is not a consummation of the pair's "mutual love" (IV, 728), but "of thir mutual guilt the Seal" (IX, 1043). The "mutual guilt" is, of course, the transgression of eating from the forbidden Tree. The second sin that "seals" the first (that is, reaffirms it; solidifies it) is the sin of lust, one of the seven cardinal sins. One must realize that Milton is not damning sensuality in its physical expression of mutual, spiritual love. What is opposed here is the carnality of desire; sex that is an expression of lust, not of love. The love in the first passage is the familial love of "Father, Son, and Brother" (IV, 757). It is caritas, a holy love inherently "godly," as the love of Father and Son (God and Jesus) suggests. The second passage illustrates concupiscence, the "adulterous lust…driven from men/ Among the bestial herds to range" (IV, 753-4). "[M]utual love" (IV, 728) has turned into mutual lust: 

|Carnal desire inflaming; hee on Eve |

|Began to cast lascivious Eyes; she him |

|As wantonly repaid; in Lust they burn. |

| |

|(IX, 1013-15) |

The terms emphasizing purity are here exchanged for ones evoking the idea of sin, such as "lascivious" (IX, 1014) and "wantonly" (IX, 1015). These are underscored by imagery of fire and burning, at once evoking images both of lust, and consequently of hell: "inflaming" (IX, 1013), "burn" (IX, 1015), "inflame" (IX, 1031), "Fire" (IX, 1036). 

          This "Carnal desire" (IX, 1013) is also described by Milton in terms of hunger. The passage is not only preceded by the eating of the fruit, but images of consuming and eating pervade the passage in terms like "taste" (IX, 1017), "savor" (IX, 1019), "Palate" (IX, 1020), "relish, tasting" (IX, 1024), etc. The two in a sense gorge on each other until they have "thir fill of Love" (IX, 1042). This motif is not evident in the first passage—it is as if the spiritual "delicious place" (the idea of Paradise) of the first passage (IV, 729) has been made physical or carnal in the second: "delicious Fare" (a tangible part of Paradise) (IX, 1028). It must also be noted that where the first passage is situated in a divine Paradise, the second passage mentions "Earth's softest lap" (IX, 1041)—the Fall has already debased and transformed the divine into mortal. It is fascinating how Milton describes the pair as though they were intoxicated by the "fallacious Fruit" (IX, 1046). The Fruit has filled them with "exhilarating vapor bland" (IX, 1047), and "unkindly fumes" (IX, 1050) which "[a]bout thir spirits had play'd" (IX, 1048). One cannot help but feel that Milton's choice, also, of the terms "blissful bower" (IV, 690), and "inmost bower" (IV, 738) in the first passage and the corresponding "imbowr'd" in the second passage (IX, 1038), is significant. It is befitting Milton's sense of irony that the "blissful bower" (IV, 690), the "holiest place" (IV, 759), has turned into "The Bower of Bliss." 

          The first passage casts lovemaking in a solemn light referring twice to "Rites" (IV, 736, 742), bringing to mind holy rites and services. Lovemaking is preceded by the decorating of the marriage bed by Eve, the singing of the hymenæan, and the prayer to God. These are followed finally by the "Rites/ Mysterious of connubial Love" (IV, 742-3). A second occurrence of the word "mysterious" (IV, 750) supports the lovemaking as almost a divine mystery or sacrament. The second passage is devoid of such solemnities, instead sporting words connotative of games, plays, and frivolities: "dalliance" (IX, 1016), "let us play" (IX, 1027), "toy" (IX, 1034), "disport" (IX, 1042), "amorous play" (IX, 1045), "play'd" (IX, 1048). This kind of "Casual fruition" (IV, 767), admonished against in the first passage, is treated as "common," whereas the love in the first passage is holy love, love that only occurs in Paradise:

|Hail, wedded Love, mysterious Law, true source |

|Of human offspring, sole propriety |

|In Paradise of all things common else. |

| |

|(IV, 750-2) |

The "commonness" is accentuated when one remembers that in the first bed the pair were showered in Roses, the precious flowers symbolic of love—in the second bed they lie on a "couch" of "Pansies, and Violets, and Asphodel,/ And Hyacinth," common flowers all (IX, 1040-1). Their cheapened love is befittingly consummated on a cheaper bed.

          The tone difference is most plain following consummation of the physical act. Following lovemaking in the first passage, Adam and Eve:

|[L]ull'd by Nightingales imbracing slept,  |

|And on thir naked limbs the flow'ry roof |

|Show'r'd Roses, which the Morn repair'd. |

| |

|(IV, 771-3) |

Already blissful, their lovemaking has affirmed and created more joy—lovemaking is really "the Crown of all [their] bliss" (IV, 728). They fall easily into sleep, a sleep they share naked, embracing. This sleep is innocent and restful, a gift from God (IV, 736). 

          Here lies the greatest difference between the two passages: the joy is absent in the second passage. The lovemaking has been "loveless, joyless, unindear'd" (IV, 766), nor is the sleep that follows restful. Lovemaking before the Fall was equivalent to heaping bliss upon bliss—after the Fall it is only solace, to make one, temporarily, almost forget the guilt and shame of sin. It is but little comfort when followed by "dewy sleep" (IX, 1044) "grosser sleep/… with conscious dreams" (IX 1049-50), from which they rise "[a]s from unrest" (IX, 1052). The sins and the Fruit have opened Adam and Eve's eyes, and darkened their minds: in the harsh light of the dawn of knowledge, how clear and unsparing is the truth they must face (IX, 1053-5). Mystery, the veiled innocence, has been taken away leaving the pair naked to the unrelenting reality of their transgression (IX, 1054-5). 

          In the first passage the two are united, almost like one mind and one body. Many are the references to "both" (IV, 720, 721), "mutual" (IV, 727, 728), and "unanimous" (IV, 736). Of lovely, tender detail, Milton describes how the pair lay side by side, and slept embracing. This prelapserian pair holds hands (IV, 739) on numerous occasions, signifying unity. It is a significant fact when one considers that the pair let go of each other's hand for the first time right before the fall when Eve decides to go alone. The love shared by the prelapserian Adam and Eve is founded "in Reason, Loyal, Just, and Pure." They are reason and sense united. After the Fall, they are in discord (as events after the second passage prove), that is, sense and reason are unbalanced. The knowledge gained is too potent for the two who do not know how to reconcile it, or mend the unity. That the post-lapserian Adam must seize Eve's hand to lead her to bed is most illuminating. Whereas in the first passage the couple is naturally united, in the second they must consciously decide to attach to each other. It is a grim, infinitely sad picture Milton paints of two people, now separated by a gulf, who desperately attempt to cling together against all odds. Yet perhaps the most important point is that they do attempt to unite again, that they do hold on. It is due to this that the image of Adam and Eve leaving Paradise is so moving and so hopeful:

|They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow, |

|Through Eden took their solitary way. |

| |

|(XII, 648-9) |

          The two passages are undeniably similar—it is not rash to assume that they did not come to existence by accident, but were part of Milton's plan. It is precisely the similarity of the passages that makes the differences so clear and meaningful. Yet it is not the numerous details of the passages, which could only entertain interest for a moment, but the tone created by those selfsame details. It is the subtext, the "in-between-the-lines," that is fascinating. It is in these two passages that Milton, through the treatment of sensuality before and after the Fall, uncovers the heart and consequences of the Fall. He describes the joy once experienced in Paradise: a joy man no longer knows how to find or enjoy, having lost his innocence in search for other, perhaps less important knowledge. Paradise Lost offers sentence in the form of moral teaching, and solas in its hopeful end. Still, it cannot but leave a note of sadness in the knowledge that all earthly pleasure is but meager solace compared to the bliss we have lost. Paradise Lost, itself, though impressive in multiple ways, has maintained and will maintain its fascination for readers exactly for that subtext—the author's voice painting a masterpiece on a canvas of human emotion.

The Acoustics of Hell

What does Hell sound like?  As a rule, modern fictional depictions of Hell imagine it as unbearably, chaotically, and incessantly noisy.  In this, they are in accordance both with Biblical and classical sources, as well as with almost all the medieval and Renaissance beliefs about Hell. There is, however, one striking exception to this general rule - Paradise Lost. Milton's epic has a hell in which sound works in quite different, quite unexpected ways: and while the poem's hell has been studied extensively in terms of its visual and iconographic significances, and while individual sounds there have been considered in detail, the home of Milton's Satan has not often been thought of in terms of a complete acoustic environment. This article will explore the soundscapes of Hell in the hope of establishing that they are almost unique in Renaissance literature; of relating them to the more widely studied sounds of the rest of the poem’s universe; and of suggesting a new approach to the difficult question of how far Paradise Lost can be considered as an acoustic artefact.[2]

Hell, whether classical or Christian, has always been perceived as an exceptionally loud place.  St. Matthew's allusions to an "outer darkness", where "there shall be weeping [or 'wailing'] and gnashing of teeth" are among the most useful Biblical quotations in developing an idea of Hell, and this acoustic image was given a prominent position in many Renaissance discussions of the place, including the probably Miltonic De Doctrina Christiana.[3]  In the classical tradition, similarly, Aeneas' first perception of Hell is an aural one: "From here are to be heard sighs, and savage blows resound: then the scrape of iron, and dragged chains. Aeneas stopped, terrified, and drank in the din."[4]  Later Christian epics followed the lead of Virgil and St. Matthew, as in Dante's first experience of Hell:

Here sighs and cries and shrieks of lamentation

         echoed through the starless air of Hell;

         at first these sounds resounding made me weep:

tongues confused, a language strained in anguish

         with cadences of anger, shrill outcries

         and raucous groans that joined with sounds of hands,

raising a whirling storm that turns itself

         forever through that air of endless black, 

         like grains of sand swirling when a whirlwind blows.[5]

What is interesting about Dante's hell is the endlessness of the sound: it contains human voices and human non-vocal sounds blended together and made so continuous as to become almost an atmospheric condition. For Dante, as for Aeneas, the sheer level of sound is physically shocking. In this, Dante was in accordance with popular medieval belief, since as Eileen Gardner notes, medieval dream-visions of Hell generally mention the "horrendous noise" there as one of its most prominent features.[6] 

Nor was this exclusively a medieval phenomenon, since Renaissance discussions of Hell also stressed the acoustic aspects in the context of a belief that all senses would be perpetually tortured there. For instance, William Sharrock dwells on "the variety of noises that shall be found in the howlings and drummings of Tophet", while Christopher Love states that "the ear shall be tormented with the yellings and hideous outcries of the damned", and John Bunyan predicts that the devils themselves will be "howling and roaring, screeching and yelling in such a hideous manner, that thou wilt be even at thy wits' end".[7]  Similarly, Renaissance literary treatments of Hell almost always consider Hell's incessant, multifarious noisiness part of its horror. This tradition is very widespread: to pick a few representative examples, poets including Ariosto, Tasso, Marini, Spenser, Phineas Fletcher, and Joseph Beaumont included noisiness as part of the terror of hell or hell's gate.[8]  The same motif can be found in Elizabethan drama (Kyd), Caroline poetry (Thomas Heywood), and Restoration prose allegory (Bunyan).[9]  In short, descriptions of Hell before and indeed after Paradise Lost tend to stress the intensity, variety, and continuousness of background noise going on there. So well established is this trope, indeed, that Abraham Cowley'sDavideis, a comparatively close relative of Paradise Lost, seeks to make poetic capital out of the absurd idea that the noise in Hell could ever be interrupted.  When Satan finds out about David, he gnashes his iron teeth, and howls in fury:

A dreadful Silence filled the hollow place, 

       Doubling the native terror of Hell's face;

       Rivers of flaming brimstone, which before

       So loudly rag'd, crept softly by the shore;

       No hiss of Snakes, no clanck of Chaines was known;

       The Souls amidst their Tortures durst not groan.[10]

This is characteristic of Renaissance presentations of Hell in the variety of the noise, which includes not just products of the vocal cords - howling and groaning - but a range of other more environmental noises, such as the continuous, non-linguistic raging of rivers of brimstone.  Cowley's paradoxical presentation of a moment of silence in Hell neatly reveals the assumption about the 'normal' acoustic of hell.

Milton, however, has other ideas.  The narration proper of Paradise Lost opens on a lake of fire, covered with the forms of fallen angels 'rolling in the fiery gulf' of "ever-burning sulphur" (1.55, 69).  Thus, the first auditory indication of the poem might seem a little surprising: Satan "with bold words / Breaking the horrid silence thus began." (1.82-3). There are two effects here. One is the small surprise involved in adjusting our mental model of this scene - no groaning from the devils or crackling from the flames.  On the other hand, "horrid silence" is an oxymoron, and a bold one, to judge from the derision suffered by John Dryden after his use in 1660 of the phrase "horrid stillness".[11]  How can the mere absence of noise be considered horrid? Clearly the phrase is in some sense analogous to "darkness visible", but the true force of Milton's use of it here takes a long time to emerge through the poem.

As for silence, a prominent motif in A Masque, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, it has been the subject of a good deal of recent Milton criticism.  By and large, these articles are concerned with the semiotics of silence: silence as a conscious decision not to speak, or silence as an element within or marking the edge of a linguistic system.  Jean E. Graham, and Fran Sendbuehler, have examined how silence for Milton is inflected in terms of gender: Ken Simpson has considered problems of ineffability in Paradise Regained relative to Quaker ideas of silence.[12]  Shirley Sharon-Zisser argues that in Paradise Lost an Augustinian model applies: language is the province of humans, and that silence is therefore either a "suprahuman form of nonverbal signification" or "the signification of entities at the other end of the Great Chain of Being". Thus silence is not in itself morally evil, unless it is the result of humans failing to fulfil their duty to praise God in speech, and silence can represent the ineffably divine as well as the subhumanly inarticulate.[13]  These approaches work very well as commentaries on language, but they all depend to some extent on the axiom articulated by Derrida that all speech is a subset of writing and "writing in general covers the entire domain of linguistic signs".[14]  As a result, they run the risk of implying that all sound that matters is language and that all silence should be considered as an opposite of language. An "acoustic" approach offers greater conceptual freedom because it can offer a broader, less prescriptive definition of what the silence is not.

Throughout the rest of Book I, for instance, the devils set about making a huge variety of noises, sounds, and music. They talk, shout, create "the warlike sound / Of trumpets loud and clarions... Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds" (1.531-2, 540). They then march in silence "To the Dorian mood / Of flutes and soft recorders: such as raised / To height of noblest temper heroes old" (1.550-2). They even create sounds using less conventional instruments: they "fierce with graspèd arms / Clashed on their sounding shields the din of war, / Hurling defiance toward the vault of heaven." (1.667-9). They build Pandemonium, famously, to the accompaniment of "sound / of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet" (1.711-2), and the reader hears their "hiss of rustling wings" (1.768) as they squeeze inside it.  Book I closes with a moment of what it began with - silence: "After short silence then / And summons read, the great consult began" (1.797-8). A reader (or hearer) of Book I, struck by the devils' liking for sounds of all sorts, might well further be struck by other references to this liking contained in the catalogue of devils, and one in particular placed prominently at the start:

First Moloch, horrid king besmeared with blood

       Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears, 

       Though for the noise of drums and timbrels loud

       Their children's cries unheard...[15] 

This misuse of one sound to drown out another invites application back to the devils in the main narrative. What, exactly, is it that they are trying so hard not to hear?

Book 2 provides more clues to answer this question as the devils continue this intense auditory activity with applause (2.290), with rising to their feet en masse ("their rising all at once was as the sound / Of thunder heard remote", 2.476-7), and with "trumpets' regal sound":

Toward the four winds four speedy cherubim

       Put to their mouths the sounding alchemy

       By herald's voice explained: the hollow abyss

       Heard far and wide, and all the host of hell

       With deafening shout returned them loud acclaim. (2.515, 516-20)

While Satan is away, some of the devils vandalize mountains: "Hell scarce holds the wild uproar" (2.541). But others even play music - though the terms in which this activity is phrased repay attention:

Others more mild, 

Retreated in a silent valley, sing 

With notes angelical to many a harp 

Their own heroic deeds... 

Their song was partial, but the harmony 

(What could it less when spirits immortal sing?) 

Suspended hell...       (2.547-554)

 

The question of the devils' music has received much critical attention, since Milton has always and rightly been considered a poet obsessed with music.[16]  Throughout Milton's career, but especially in Paradise Lost, he uses music as a synecdoche for the divine in all its forms, and thus the appearance of music in hell is particularly disturbing. The technical musical pun on "suspended" has been widely discussed, as has the question of in what sense the devils' song is "partial": possible overtones of the word include "biased", "incomplete", or, intriguingly, "polyphonic".[17]  But what has escaped notice is the fact that the valley in question is not merely quiet but actually "silent". 'Quiet' would suggest a pleasant pastoral retreat, and while 'silent' appears at first to offer merely a clumsy variation on that, it actually reminds the attentive reader that the underlying condition of hell is not bucolic peacefulness but blank silence.

On the basis of these episodes, and Satan's adventures as he makes his way past Sin and Death, certain generalizations can be made about the acoustic properties of Hell.  Firstly, the background condition of Hell is silence: "horrid silence", containing "silent" locations, run through by the "slow and silent stream" of Lethe.[18]  Secondly, what sound there is is created by the damned. Hell itself, when personified as a geographical location, is actually rather frightened by noise, and its fabric is figured as vulnerable to and threatened by it, as the following catalogue of examples shows:

At which the universal host upsent 

       A shout that tore hell's concave, and beyond 

       Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. (1.541-3)

Hell trembled as he strode. (2. 676)

I fled, and cried out Death: 

       Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed 

       Through all her caves, and back resounded Death. (2.788-9)

Hell heard the unsufferable noise, hell saw

       Heav'n ruining from Heav'n and would have fled

       Affrighted. (6.867-9).

Thirdly, Hell is a very echoing space: as we have seen, it reflects the word 'Death' back to Sin, while Satan makes it echo: "He called so loud, that all the hollow deep / Of hell resounded" (1.315). "All hell had rung", at least hypothetically, of the projected fight between Satan and Death (2. 723), and Hell shakes at the opening its gate.

On a sudden open fly 

       With impetuous recoil and jarring sound

       The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate

       Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook 

       Of Erebus.      (2.880)

While Earth (4.681, 10.861), Heaven (3.347), and indeed the whole universe (7.257, 562) are also resonant, none of them responds to sound as often or with quite the same intensity. The echoes in Hell are unusually prominent, and what they bring back to the damned is only the sound of their own activity.[19]  Fourthly, and in distinct contradiction of the third property, the illusion of a single acoustic community is just that - an illusion. The "cry" of Sin's hellhounds, although appalling to her, appears not to be audible to Satan at any distance (2.654). In Book 10, "dreadful... din" inside the council chamber goes unnoticed by those outside (10.537). Impossibly, the "wild uproar" threatening the whole fabric of hell is simultaneous with the "silent valley" and with the music that "suspends" hell.

But even after Satan leaves hell - starting, indeed, immediately as he does so - the poem continues to feed us acoustic information that changes our interpretation of the Hell episode.  The loud noises in hell have seemed extremely loud by local standards ("deafening", indeed) but as Satan leaves into Chaos, we learn what real noisiness is.  Immediately Satan is discomfited by the "noise / Of endless wars" (2.896-7):

Nor was his ear less pealed 

       With noises loud and ruinous (To compare 

       Great things with small) than when Bellona storms... 2.920-3

A universal hubbub wild 

       Of stunning sounds and voices all confused 

       Borne through the hollow dark assaults his ear 

       With loudest vehemence. 2.951-4

This is much more the contemporary interpretation of what Hell ought to sound like, a continuous acoustic assault: and indeed, when Satan has fought his way through Chaos, one of the signs that he has reached the edge of Chaos is the "less hostile din" (2.1040). Milton has displaced onto Chaos the sort of acoustic effect normally associated with hell. On the one hand the stress on this intimidating wall of noise informs us about Chaos, on the other it sets up a noticeable contrast with the acoustically disappointing Hell he has just left - the Devils may think the sounds of hell are loud, but they are as nothing to the noise outside.[20]  Indeed, as we shall see, both Earth and Heaven are always accompanied by sounds of some description, which though less overpowering than those of chaos, are equally continuous and ever-present.  It is worth discussing the sounds of Earth and Heaven here, because they strengthen our impression of the acoustic barrenness of hell.

An interesting thing about Eden is that there is a constant low-intensity background noise.  In Truax's terms (cited Smith, 51), Eden offers a much richer acoustic ecology than hell - a larger number of co-existing, quiet sounds, set against Hell's few but 'deafening' ones. Adam and Eve both independently claim that sounds have been part of their consciousness since their very first moments:  for Eve, a "murmuring sound / Of waters" (4.453-4), for Adam, the sound of waters and the "warbling" (8.265) of birds.  The birds and the waters are also mentioned together with the noises made by vegetation in the opening description of Eden: "vernal airs... attune / The trembling leaves" (4.263-66): a further programmatic description of Eden again mentions the trio of sounds (5.5-8). As well as the natural sounds which occur round the clock, Adam notes the songs sung apparently by patrolling angels at night (4.682-687). On top of this background, Adam and Eve pray in a spontaneous register between prose and song (5.150) which includes a promise never to be silent in God's praise (5.202).  Each of the numerous times complete silence seems about to occur, we are told, belatedly, of something breaking it: "Silence... all but the waking nightingale; / She all night long her amorous descant sung".[21]  Pre-lapsarian Eden is never empty of sounds, and repeatedly our expectation that it might ever be silent is raised only to be denied. If we restrict ourselves to the question of environmental sounds, it remains true to say that there is no such thing as a moment in Eden when nothing can be heard.

As for Heaven, it, of course, is never silent. Or rather, on its very first appearance in the poem, "silence was in heaven" (3.218), as the Son volunteers to die for Mankind, a moment the uniqueness of which only becomes apparent as we learn more about Heaven in the rest of the poem.  From that moment on, Heaven is always full of noise, starting with a "shout/Loud": "Heaven rung / With jubilee, and loud hosannas filled/ The eternal regions" as the angels "Their happy hours in joy and hymning spent" (3.345-9, 417).  Music in Heaven continues throughout the Sabbath as well (7.595), sung and played on a wide variety of instrumentation (7.594-600), and even if Heaven's night is "friendliest to sleep and silence", the singing does not stop (6.657, 668).  During the war in heaven, that remarkably noisy contest settled (according to Satan) by a sonic superweapon, normal rules seem suspended and less stress is placed on the idea of continuous noise.[22] But otherwise, it is emphatically Heaven, and not Hell, that we find filled with continuous sound.

The implications of this music in heaven have again received critical attention, and again, the tendency has been to think in "logocentric" terms, as if there were language, and then as a separate and unrelated category, non-linguistic sound: using, for instance, Milan Kundera's formulation that music is the anti-Word.[23]  What an "acoustic approach" can bring to this discussion, though, is the observation that Paradise Lost confounds language and music with all other sorts of noise into a continuum of just the sort theorized by Bruce Smith elsewhere in this issue: a continuing round from sound to music to speech to sound.[24]  In Paradise Lost, imagery blurs the line between sound and music. The gates of Heaven move with "harmonious sound" (7.206): even the singing of birds is a "charm" (4.651): even leaves have been attuned: there is a continual pun between the musical and atmospheric senses of "air" (4.263: 8.515).[25]  Adam and Eve's prayer is both music and speech (5.150), and there is no clear dividing line between the two before the Fall. And speech is confounded with the most ambient of ambient sounds within that very prayer: the three main noises of Eden, the birdsong, the noise of running water, and the sound of the wind, are reconstituted as language, "praise" of God by the winds and the rivers and the birds (5.193-9). Paradise Lost blurs harmonious sound and music and speech together, and they are all a synecdoche for the divine.

By corollary, then, separation from the divine is figured as a lack of harmony, or, even worse, as silence.  We may note in passing that the Fall affects Eden's soundscape in interesting ways, "muttering thunder" (9.1002, 10.666) and loud new winds (10.699, 705) changing the nature of the background noise while Adam and Eve are "strucken mute" (9.1064), but the more interesting use of sound comes on Satan’s return to a Hell defamiliarised by the events and the soundscapes of Books 3-9. Once again, Hell fails to fulfil the acoustic expectations raised by almost all other Renaissance depictions of it. Once again, Satan enters not a noisy environment but a deserted, empty hell much quieter than the chaos he has come through: even the acoustic inventiveness of the singers and rioters seems to have run out.  While Chaos at least was exclaiming and surging, Hell is "desert... many a dark league" (10.416-7, 437-8: Satan in his oration again remarks on this difference in levels of sound, 10.479). When he gets to the council chamber, where the devils are consulting, he provokes "loud... acclaim" (455), commands silence (459), and gives his speech.  

A while he stood, expecting

       Their universal shout and high applause

       To fill his ear... (10.505-6)

But this silence is not broken by shouting, clapping, speech, or music - indeed, within the poem's hell, it is never broken by any of these things, since the devils in Paradise Lost make no more acoustic interventions apart from one.  Instead, there is only one sound left that the devils can make: a mere "dismal universal hiss" (10.508) and "spattering noise" (10.567). "Dreadful was the din / Of hissing..." (521-2), and the last presentation of the devils within Paradise Lost sees them restricted to a "dire hiss" (543), a "long and ceaseless hiss" (573). Just as the moral horizons of Satan and of the devils seem to shrink in the course of the poem, so the rich range of acoustic activities seen in Books 1 and 2 narrows down in Book 10 to hardly more than a single monotonous state, what a twenty-first century reader might describe as nothing more than a background hiss. Milton's hell is unlike almost all other representations of the place in that it is not, as one might expect, noisy - it is, in a literal sense, deathly quiet - and the full implications of this echoing, ambienceless chamber only become apparent on our second visit to it. Such silence, one might argue, has an allegorical significance, reflecting the poena damni, the pain of being separated from God.[26]  In Milton's Hell, the poena sensus  - the cramming of every sense with agonizing stimuli  - is suspended as far as hearing goes, in order to create a continuing and elegant reminder of the poena damni. In a variant of Moloch's predicted later behaviour, the devils at this stage are only using sound to cover up what otherwise might be terrifyingly inaudible. In this connection, the force of the original "horrid silence" becomes more evident, as does the effect of Milton's almost unique presentation of hell in terms of an absence rather than an excess of ambient sound. Raphael's prophecy of the devils' long-term fate applies not merely to their fame, but to their acoustic environment: "Eternal silence be their doom" (6.385).[27]

--

Thus, an acoustic approach does open up interesting perspectives on the fictional world of Paradise Lost.  But a true “historical phenomenology” of sound – the challenge outlined by Bruce Smith elsewhere in this issue – would invite us to consider the question more widely and to look at Paradise Lost itself as an acoustic artefact, and consider how it relates to the historicized human body. In some ways, this is a much more difficult proposition, and I would like briefly to outline some possible ways forward.

The first such historicized body, then, is that of John Milton himself. It has kinetic memory of how to play the organ and the "Bas-Viol".[28]  The bass viol, in particular, is more than just a matter of the fingers, but rather of cradling the instrument with the whole body. Harmony for Milton is not merely an intellectual idea, or even just a matter of the ears, but something that resonates up and down the entire bodily frame.  Milton's body is also, of course, famous for its damaged eyes: the eyes which are directly described in the poem at 3.23-6.  According to one early biographer, "his Ears now were eyes to him".[29]  Thus all the use of aural indications to establish place are open to reading in perhaps simplistic biographical terms. In this condition, "horrid silence" does have a particular importance: it becomes, even more precisely, an analogue of darkness visible, reason shut out at another entrance. Another consequence of the damage to Milton's eyes is that the poem leaves his body not through his hands onto paper, but through his mouth to an amanuensis.  In an important sense, Paradise Lost is an oral artefact. Of course, Milton is eager to stress just how oral his project is: he is singing (1.21, 3.18); accompanying himself on the harp (3.414); behaving like a nightingale (3.39); not "hoarse" (7.24); making musical "notes" as much as words (9.6); wishing to possess the "warning voice" heard by St. John (4.1); reporting the Muse's song (1.6) or her voice (7.2) or her dictation (9.23), at any rate something which he perceives through his ears (9.47); in opposition to the "barbarous dissonance" of Bacchanals (7.32).  These tropes are to some extent conventional and by no means unique to Milton, but his forceful repetition of them establishes the poem as very obviously and literally a matter of hearing.[30]

Paradise Lost is also, of course, filled with mimetic sound effects, onomatopoeia and mimetic syntax, which only work if the poem is sounded.  As such, it needs a second body to sound it and read it out aloud. And the poem is very interested in the processes of voicing, of what it means to voice someone else's words (Milton reports the Muse: anyone reading the poem aloud reports Milton: when the speaker asks to borrow the voice heard by John, it is momentarily unclear whether the person doing the wishing is Milton or the person reading the poem aloud). Hence, perhaps, Milton's interest in Babel, and the thin line separating speech as a vehicle for language from speech as as "jangling noise" and "hideous gabble" (12.55-6): and in the contemporary debate about exactly how Satan created his speech when tempting Eve, "with serpent tongue / Organic, or impulse of vocal air" (9.529-30) - did he directly commandeer the snake's larynx to create speech, or did he use some more magical power? Paradise Lost is interested in this problem of physics because it bears on the exact interfaces between the mind and sound waves and the mind again, and because it thus replicates the conditions under which the poem itself is transmitted.

17. Some of the terms of this debate, though, are strangely familiar. T.S. Eliot, whose essay on Milton gave this article its epigraph, characterized Milton’s work, together with Joyce, in convenient, perhaps over-convenient, biographical terms: love of music and defective vision. His account of Milton’s "auditory imagination" (263), while persuasive, clearly also invites neglect of Milton’s rigorous approach to literal meanings. In undertaking an acoustic approach, one must be careful not to be drawn into merely making appreciative remarks about melodiousness. However, it is clear that an approach that privileges sound offers great possibilities for investigation, not only of texts with a very obvious relation to performance and acoustics, but even for an apparently strongly 'literary' text like Paradise Lost.  Paradise Lost is indeed a read-aloud acoustic artefact, a set of noises.  Itself a "speech act" (Sharon-Zisser 209) - could we coin the phrase "sound act"? - it is intended as a contribution to the cosmic symphony (3.413-5). But it is also an invitation to listen differently, to listen to the sounds that compose that symphony: and it starts this by exploring the nightmarish possibilities of Hell, a place where all you can hear is yourself.

Major Themes

Modern criticism of Paradise Lost has taken many different views of Milton’s ideas in the poem. One problem is that Paradise Lost is almost militantly Christian in an age that now seeks out diverse viewpoints and admires the man who stands forth against the accepted view. Milton’s religious views reflect the time in which he lived and the church to which he belonged. He was not always completely orthodox in his ideas, but he was devout. His purpose or theme inParadise Lost is relatively easy to see, if not to accept.

Milton begins Paradise Lost by saying that he will sing, “Of Man’s First Disobedience” (I, 1) so that he can “assert Eternal Providence, / And justify the ways of God to men” (I, 25–26). The purpose or theme of Paradise Lost then is religious and has three parts: 1) disobedience, 2) Eternal Providence, and 3) justification of God to men. Frequently, discussions of Paradise Lostcenter on the latter of these three to the exclusion of the first two. And, just as frequently, readers and those casually acquainted with Paradise Lost misunderstand what Milton means by the word justify, assuming that Milton is rather arrogantly asserting that God’s actions and motives seem so arbitrary that they require vindication and explanation.

However, Milton’s idea of justification is not as arrogant as many readers think. Milton does not use the word justification in its modern sense of proving that an action is or was proper. Such a reading of justify would mean that Milton is taking it upon himself to explain the propriety of God’s actions—a presumptuous undertaking when one is dealing with any deity. Rather, Milton uses justify in the sense of showing the justice that underlies an action. Milton wishes to show that the fall, death, and salvation are all acts of a just God. To understand the theme ofParadise Lost then, a reader does not have to accept Milton’s ideas as a vindication of God’s actions; rather the reader needs to understand the idea of justice that lies behind the actions.

Disobedience

The first part of Milton’s argument hinges on the word disobedience and its opposite, obedience. The universe that Milton imagined with Heaven at the top, Hell at the bottom, and Earth in between is a hierarchical place. God literally sits on a throne at the top of Heaven. Angels are arranged in groups according to their proximity to God. On Earth, Adam is superior to Eve; humans rule over animals. Even in Hell, Satan sits on a throne, higher than the other demons.

This hierarchical arrangement by Milton is not simply happenstance. The worldview of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Restoration was that all of creation was arranged in various hierarchies. The proper way of the world was for inferiors to obey superiors because superiors were, well, superior. A king was king not because he was chosen but because he was superior to his subjects. It was, therefore, not just proper to obey the king; it was morally required. Conversely, if the king proved unfit or not superior to his subjects, it was morally improper to obey him and revolution could be justified.

God, being God, was by definition superior to every other thing in the universe and should always be obeyed. In Paradise Lost, God places one prohibition on Adam and Eve—not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. The prohibition is not so much a matter of the fruit of the tree as it is obeying God’s ordinance. The proper running of the universe requires the obedience of inferiors to their superiors. By not obeying God’s rule, Adam and Eve bring calamity into their lives and the lives of all mankind.

The significance of obedience to superiors is not just a matter of Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge; it is a major subject throughout the poem. Satan’s rebellion because of jealousy is the first great act of disobedience and commences all that happens in the epic. When Abdiel stands up to Satan in Book V, Abdiel says that God created the angels “in their bright degrees” (838) and adds “His laws our laws” (844). Abdiel’s point is that Satan’s rebellion because of the Son is wrong because Satan is disobeying a decree of his obvious superior. Satan has no answer to this point except sophistic rigmarole.

Further instances of the crucial importance of both hierarchy and obedience occur in both large and small matters. The deference with which Adam greets Raphael shows the human accepting his position in regard to the angel. The image is one of the proper manners between inferior and superior. Eve’s normal attitude toward Adam reflects the same relationship.

The crucial moment in the poem results from disobedience and a breakdown of hierarchy. Eve argues with Adam about whether they should work together or apart, and Adam gives in to her. The problem here lies with both humans. Eve should not argue with her superior, Adam, but likewise, Adam, should not yield his authority to his inferior, Eve.

When Eve eats the fruit, one of her first thoughts is that the fruit “may render me more equal” (IX, 823) to which she quickly adds, “for inferior who is free?” (IX, 826). Her reasoning, from Milton’s point of view, is incorrect. Freedom comes precisely from recognizing one’s place in the grand scheme and obeying the dictates of that position. By disobeying God, Eve has gained neither equality nor freedom; she has instead lost Paradise and brought sin and death into the world.

Likewise, when Adam also eats the fruit, he disobeys God. Further, he disobeys by knowinglyputting Eve ahead of God. Disobedience and disruption of the correct order result in sin and death.

Finally, in the last two books of the epic, Milton shows example after example of people who ignore the responsibilities they have and try to either raise themselves above God or disobey God’s commands. The result is always the same—destruction.

The first part of Milton’s purpose in Paradise Lost then is to show that disobedience leads to a breakdown of hierarchical or social order with disastrous consequences. Some have argued that Milton puts himself in a contradictory position in Paradise Lost, since he supported the overthrow of Charles I. In his political writings, Milton makes it clear that obeying an inferior is equally as bad as disobeying a superior. In the case of a king, the people must determine if the king is truly their superior or not. Thus, Milton justifies his position toward Charles and toward God.

Eternal Providence

Milton’s theme in Paradise Lost, however, does not end with the idea of disobedience. Milton says that he will also “assert Eternal Providence.” If Man had never disobeyed God, death would never have entered the world and Man would have become a kind of lesser angel. Because Adam and Eve gave in to temptation and disobeyed God, they provided the opportunity for God to show love, mercy, and grace so that ultimately the fall produces a greater good than would have happened otherwise. This is the argument about the fall calledfelix culpa or “happy fault.”

The general reasoning is that God created Man after the rebellion of Satan. His stated purpose is to show Satan that the rebellious angels will not be missed, that God can create new beings as he sees fit. God gives Man a free will, but at the same time, God being God, knows what Man will do because of free will. Over and over in Paradise Lost, God says that Man has free will, that God knows Man will yield to Satan’s temptation, but that he (God) is not the cause of that yielding; He simply knows that it will occur.

This point is theologically tricky. In many ways, it makes God seem like a cosmic prig. He knows what Man will do, but he does nothing to stop him because somehow that would be against the rules. He could send Raphael with a more explicit warning; he could tell Gabriel and the other guards where Satan will enter Eden; he could seal Satan up in Hell immediately. He could do a number of things to prevent the fall, but he does nothing.

From the standpoint of fictional drama, a reader may be correct in faulting God for the fall of Adam and Eve. From a theological / philosophical standpoint, God must not act. If Man truly has free will, he must be allowed to exercise it. Because of free will then, Adam and Eve disobey God and pervert the natural hierarchy. Death is the result, and Death could be the end of the story if Paradise Lost were a tragedy.

Justification of God’s Ways

Eternal Providence moves the story to a different level. Death must come into the world, but the Son steps forward with the offer to sacrifice himself to Death in order to defeat Death. Through the Son, God is able to temper divine justice with mercy, grace, and salvation. Without the fall, this divine love would never have been demonstrated. Because Adam and Eve disobeyed God, mercy, grace, and salvation occur through God’s love, and all Mankind, by obeying God, can achieve salvation. The fall actually produces a new and higher love from God to Man.

This idea then is the final point of Milton’s theme—the sacrifice of the Son which overcomes Death gives Man the chance to achieve salvation even though, through the sin of Adam and Eve, all men are sinful. As Adam says, “O goodness infinite, goodness immense! / That all this good of evil shall produce, / And evil turn to good” (XII, 469–471). The fall of Man, then, turns evil into good, and that fact shows the justice of God’s actions, or in Milton’s terms, “justifies the ways of God to men.”

Paradise Lost Quotations

Self-reference, Allusion, and Inversion

• X - (282-5) "Then Both from out Hell Gates into the waste / Wide Anarchy of Chaos damp and dark / Flew diverse, and with Power (thir Power was great) / Hovering upon the Waters . . ."

• IX - (455-70) "That space the Evil one abstracted stood / From his own evil, and for the time remain’d / Stupidly good, of enmity disarm’d, / Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge; / But the hot Hell that always in him burns”

• IX - (120-2) ". . . so much more I feel / Torment within me, as from the hateful siege of contraries; all good to me becomes bane"

• IX - (214) "Let us divide our labors . . . "

• IX - (779-81) ". . . 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 pluck’d, she eat . . ."

• IX - (779-81) ". . . 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 pluck’d, she eat . . ."

• IX - (1000-4) "Earth trembl’d from her entrails, as again / In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan, / Sky low’r’d, and muttering Thunder, some sad drops / Wept at completing of the mortal Sin / Original . . ."

• X - (178) "And dust shalt eat all the days of thy Life."

• X - (560-7) ". . . greedily they pluck’d / The Fruitage fair to sight, . . / [of which] not the touch, but taste / Deceiv’d; they fondly thinking to allay / Thir appetite with gust, instead of Fruit / Chew’d bitter ashes . . ."

• X - (634-7) ". . . at one sling/ Of thy victorious Arm, well-pleasing Son, / Both Sin, andDeath, and yawning Grave at last / Through Chaos hurl’d, obstruct the mouth of Hell / For ever, and seal up his ravenous Jaws . . ."

Satan

• (460-6) "Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers, / For in possession such, not only of right / I call ye and declare ye now, return’d / Successful beyond hope, to lead ye forth / Triumphant out of this infernal Pit”

• (163-170) "O foul descent! that I who erst contended / With Gods to sit the highest, am now constrain’d / Into a Beast, and mixt with bestial slime . . . that to the highth of Deity aspir’d . . ."

Adam

Eve

The Fall

Temptation

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download