John Milton, English History, and Paradise Lost

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John Milton, English History, and Paradise Lost
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James I dates

• 1603 Death of Elizabeth
• And ascension of James I (James VI of Scotland),
  son of Mary Queen of Scots, father of Henry (who
  died before his father) and Charles I
• 1605 Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament (Guy
  Fawkes) led to reprisals against Catholics
• 1611 King James Bible
• Shakespeare part of Kings Men (patronized by
  James I), retires by 1613, dies in 1616

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Jacobean Drama

•     The plays of the Jacobean period become even
  more complex, even more passionate and violent
  than the plays of the Elizabethan age, as they go
  more deeply into problems of corruption and human
  weakness. The masterpieces of Jacobean tragedy
  include the plays of John Webster, especially The
  White Devil (published in 1612), and The Duchess
  of Malfi, written about the same time. From The
  Penguin Guide to English Literature, London,
  1996.

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• 1620 The "Pilgrims," Puritan Separatists who had
  fled to the Netherlands, sail to America and
  found colony at Plymouth, Massachusetts
• 1625 Charles I becomes king
• 1628 Oliver Cromwell becomes Member of Parliament
• 1633 William Laud appointed Archbishop of
  Canterbury "Great Migration" of Puritans to New
  England
• 1641 The House of Commons presents Charles I with
  Grand Remonstrance
• 1642 English Civil War begins most Puritans side
  with Parliament against King Charles I

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The Long Parliament

• 1643 Parliament calls assembly of Puritan
  leaders, who produce Westminster Confession of
  Faith, Larger and Shorter Catechisms, and
  Directory of Worship
• 1645 Archbishop William Laud executed by
  Puritan-run Parliament
• 1645 Charles I defeated by Oliver Cromwell's
  Parliamentary army
• 1649 Charles I is beheaded by Parliament
  Commonwealth begins under Cromwell
• 1649 Cromwell massacres 3,500 Irishmen at
  Drogheda
• 1653 Cromwell becomes England's "Lord Protector,"
  dissolves Parliament, and advances Puritan
  objectives
• 1658 Death of Oliver Cromwell on September 3
• 1660 Parliament restores the monarchy Charles II
  becomes king
• All above from Christianity Today Christian
  History, 2011. Web.

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Archbishop Laud

• Archbishop Laud was attempting progressive
  reforms in the Anglican church (church of
  England), which was the establishment
• Laud would have succeeded in keeping Church and
  monarchy in order except that Charles I was
  exceptionally incompetent. He believed that the
  Monarch held absolute power.

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Difference between Puritans Anglicans (Church
of England)

• Anglicans used stained glass windows, statues,
  music, and incense as aids to worship
• Puritans did not hundreds and hundred of
  dissenters from the Church of England (Anglicans)
  were imprisoned for their beliefs
• Puritans were against usury (loaning money at
  interest), which was seen as related to the devil

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What was Milton really like?

• He agreed with ideas of Archbishop Laud
• John Milton was an Iconoclast who said that
  Monarchy was a civil kinde of Idolatry but this
  idea about the King did not make him a Puritan
• He rejected predestination (important to
  Puritans)
• He advocated self-esteem and a just pride in
  personal virtue
• His God was rational, and sometimes even
  identified with Reason itself
• He often invoked the Muses as inspiration
• He treated polytheistic mythology with the same
  respect as Christianity and often seems to
  prefer Orpheus to Jesus
• All from David Hawkes Signs of Grace TLS Sept.
  2011. 3. Print.

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Miltons Private Life

• Age of 18 he declared himself a lifelong devotee
  of Cupid
• Later declared that exposure to temptation was
  necessary in order to become virtuous
• He was temporarily expelled from university and
  went to the theater!!
• He conducted a passionately intimate friendship
  with a male schoolfriend
• In Italy, enjoyed homosocial life. One enemy
  accused him of getting money there by selling
  his buttocks for a few pence
• All from David Hawkes Signs of Grace TLS Sept.
  2011. 3. Print.

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What Miltons Friends said

• Sense of humor
• Loved to sing
• Cared about his appearance that he be
  fashionable
• Collars were frilly lace and his hair wavy and
  long
• Wore a sword

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Love and Marriage

• Fretted about sexual frustration
• Fathered 5 children by 2 of his three wives
• While separated from first wife, proposed
  bigamous marriage to another lady
• Believed in polygamy and was accused of founding
  a sect of sexual libertines The Divorcers
• One woman claimed he rotated his wives at four
  every two weeks
• All from David Hawkes Signs of Grace TLS Sept.
  2011. 3. Print.

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Paradise Lost Intentional Epic

• Milton intentionally wrote in the centuries-old
  epic style The Reason of Church Government
  Milton declares his desire to write a great work
  that will serve to glorify England as earlier
  poets had glorified their native lands and
  cultures "what the greatest and choycest wits of
  Athens, Rome, or modern Italy, and those Hebrews
  of old did for their country, I in my proportion
  with this over and above of being a Christian,
  might doe for mine" (RCG 2).
• He declares his intention to write in English
  rather than another language such as Latin, and
  then ponders what genre to adopt epic, tragic,
  or lyric (RCG 2).

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Characteristics of Epic

• In deciding to write an epic, Milton consciously
  places himself in the tradition of prior epic
  writers, such as the ancients Homer and Virgil,
  and the Medieval and Renaissance poets Dante . .
  . and Spenser.
• By doing this, he raises specific sets of
  expectations both for himself and for readers.
• it begins in medias res
• it concerns heavenly and earthly beings and the
  interactions between them
• it uses conventions such as epic similes,
  catalogues of people and places,
• and invocations to a muse
• and it contains themes common to epics, such as
  war, nationalism, empire, and stories of origin.

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Who is the epic hero?

• What is Milton doing? Is Satan the hero?
• As Lewalski writes, "by measuring Satan against
  the heroic standards, we become conscious of the
  inadequacy and fragility of all the heroic
  virtues celebrated in literature, of the
  susceptibility of them all to demonic perversion"
  (78).

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Other Genres in PL

• there are elements of lyric poetry, including the
  pastoral mode, as in the descriptions of
  Paradise, the conversations between the unfallen
  Adam and Eve, and their joyful prayers to God in
  the Garden (PL 4.589-735).
• There is an aubade (PL 5.136-208),
• There are also elements of tragedy, as in Book 9
  when Milton, preparing his readers for the fall,
  writes, "I now must change / Those Notes to
  Tragic," and continues throughout the book to
  employ tragic conventions, as when he
  apostrophizes Eve (PL 9.404-411) and describes
  the earth's response to the eating of the fruit
  (PL 9.782-4 and 9.1000-4).
• Throughout the poem Milton makes use of
  soliloquy, another tragic convention.

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Satan Exalted sat

• "High on a throne of royal state, which
  farOutshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,Or
  where the gorgeous East with richest handShowers
  on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,Satan
  exalted sat, by merit rais'dTo that bad
  eminence." John MiltonParadise Lost

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Angels gone wrong
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Eve
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Satan rouses Beelzebub (Dore)
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Fallen Angels Roused
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Pandemonium
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Satan Hurled from Heaven
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Temptation
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Creation
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Expulsion from Paradise
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Another Expulsion