John Milton

Unit eight ended on a century of divine right, civil war and Commonwealth. This unit gives a whole lecture to the poet who served that Commonwealth and published his epic after it fell. Its governing idea is that Milton stands between two periods, and that the key to any passage of his epic is its speaker: a defiant speech in Hell is not the poem's verdict. We move in two steps: first the early poems and the public prose, from the matched pair of days to Lycidas, the sonnet on his blindness and Areopagitica; then Paradise Lost, its subject, its Satan, its Fall, its grand style and its conventions, with the later works, a reading procedure and the critics' quarrel over Satan.

We begin with the young scholar who prepared to be a poet, and the public man the war made of him.

First, a life in three roles.

ENL 0801 Milton's Life, Politics and Blindness

John Milton, born in London in sixteen-oh-eight, studied at Cambridge and prepared himself deliberately to be a poet. He wrote pamphlets for the Commonwealth, defended the execution of Charles the First, and served as Latin Secretary. He was totally blind by sixteen fifty-two and dictated his later work. Scholar, republican, blind poet. Paradise Lost was dictated by a blind man.

His early poems come in a pair.

ENL 0802 "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso"

Milton's paired pastoral poems, published in his Poems of sixteen forty-five, describe two ideal days. "L'Allegro," the happy man, banishes "loathed Melancholy" and invokes Mirth for a cheerful, active country day. "Il Penseroso," the thinker, dismisses "vain deluding Joys" and invokes "divinest Melancholy" for contemplation. Mirth by day, Melancholy by night. Read them as a matched pair.

Next, an elegy for a drowned friend.

ENL 0803 "Lycidas"

"Lycidas," of sixteen thirty-seven, is a pastoral elegy for Edward King, Milton's Cambridge friend, drowned in the Irish Sea. Under shepherd names it questions poetic ambition, "Fame is the spur," and attacks the corrupt clergy, then ends, "To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new." A drowned friend mourned as a shepherd. The pastoral is a mask for larger questions.

A sonnet asks what a blind man owes.

ENL 0804 The Sonnets: "When I Consider"

Milton's sonnet "When I Consider How My Light Is Spent" laments a talent made useless by blindness. Patience answers that God needs no man's work, and the sonnet ends, "They also serve who only stand and wait." The title "On His Blindness" came from a later editor. A blind poet's question, Patience's answer. Most scholars date it to sixteen fifty-five.

Milton argued against censorship.

ENL 0805 Areopagitica

Areopagitica, published in sixteen forty-four during the Civil War, argued against Parliament's order requiring books to be licensed before printing. Milton, himself censored over his divorce tracts, wrote, "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue," that never meets its adversary. Against pre-publication censorship. It was itself printed unlicensed.

Now Paradise Lost, the epic Milton dictated after the Restoration, in blindness.

First, what the poem announces.

ENL 0806 Paradise Lost: Subject, Form and Invocation

Paradise Lost, published in sixteen sixty-seven in ten books and in twelve in sixteen seventy-four, tells the Fall. Its blank verse opens, "Of Man's first disobedience," invokes the "Heavenly Muse," and states its purpose: to "justify the ways of God to men." Blank verse, the Fall, God's justice. The poem announces itself as a theodicy.

The poem opens in Hell.

ENL 0807 Paradise Lost: Satan

Satan, fallen from Heaven, wakes in Hell and rallies his angels with defiant speeches: "The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven," and "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." Then he flies to Eden. Defiance in Hell, then Eden. Satan's eloquence is the poem's danger.

Then the human story.

ENL 0808 Paradise Lost: Adam, Eve and the Fall

In Book Nine, Satan, disguised as a serpent, tempts Eve with flattery and rhetoric, and she eats. Adam eats "not deceav'd," overcome by her charm, choosing to share her fate. After judgment they leave Eden hand in hand, with Providence their guide. Eve deceived, Adam choosing, Eden left. Adam falls knowingly; Eve is deceived.

The poem has its own style.

ENL 0809 Milton's Grand Style

Milton's grand style is elevated and Latinate: long, suspended sentences, inverted word order, learned allusion and words coined from Latin and Greek, in unrhymed blank verse that was later taken as a model. His second edition explained "why the poem rhymes not." Long sentences, Latin diction, no rhyme. Rhyme was the norm Milton rejected.

Two more works followed the epic.

ENL 0810 Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes

In sixteen seventy-one Milton published Paradise Regained, a short epic on Christ resisting Satan's temptations in the wilderness, with Samson Agonistes, a closet tragedy on the Greek model. Samson, blinded and captive among the Philistines, may mirror Milton's own blindness. Christ's temptation, Samson's captivity. Samson Agonistes was not written for the stage.

Milton adapts the old epic's machinery.

ENL 0811 The Epic Conventions in Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost uses the classical epic conventions: an invocation of the Muse, a beginning in medias res, in the middle of things, with the angels already fallen, an epic catalogue of devils, long epic similes, and a descent into Hell. The anchor notes Milton turns each to moral commentary. Invocation, mid-action, catalogue, simile, Hell. Milton adapts the conventions, not copies them.

Here is the method for any passage of the epic.

ENL 0812 Reading a Passage of Paradise Lost

A passage of Paradise Lost rewards a slow, ordered reading. Find the grammatical core, because Milton suspends his main verb; the opening sentence holds back "Sing" until the sixth line. Identify the speaker, since the narrator, Satan, the angels and God speak differently, and Satan persuades by design. Notice any convention: simile, catalogue, invocation. Read a simile to its end; the critic Stanley Fish argued that the simile of Satan's spear makes the reader feel the limits of understanding. Then weigh the passage against the stated purpose, to justify the ways of God to men. Satan's voice is not the narrator's.

Readers have quarrelled over Satan.

ENL 0813 Satan's Readers: The Romantic Reading and Its Critics

Romantic critics, among them Blake, Byron, Shelley and Hazlitt, read Satan as the poem's hero; Blake wrote that Milton was "of the Devil's party without knowing it." Christian critics such as C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams argued against reading Satan as heroic. Hero or villain: two critical camps. Attribute each reading to its critics.

The capstone places Milton between two periods.

ENL 0814 Why Milton Stands Between Two Periods

Milton belongs to two periods, and the exam may place him in either. He was formed in the early seventeenth century, a Cambridge scholar preparing for the poet's vocation, who wrote L'Allegro and Il Penseroso as a matched pair of mirth and melancholy, and Lycidas, a pastoral elegy that asks what fame is worth, attacks a corrupt clergy and ends on fresh woods and pastures new. Through the Civil War he was a public man, arguing in Areopagitica against licensing books, defending the king's execution and serving as Latin Secretary, until he was blind by sixteen fifty-two, the loss behind "They also serve who only stand and wait." Yet his great works came after the Restoration: Paradise Lost in sixteen sixty-seven, then Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes in sixteen seventy-one. Paradise Lost tells the Fall in blank verse and the grand style, Eve deceived and Adam falling knowingly. Its Satan divided readers: the Romantics saw a hero, and Christian critics such as C. S. Lewis disagreed. Date questions turn on the gap between the Commonwealth man and the Restoration publication.

This unit read Milton for the speaker. We traced the life from scholar to republican to blind poet, and the sonnet in which Patience answers. We read the matched pair of days, and Lycidas as a pastoral mask for larger questions. We stated Areopagitica's case against licensing books before printing. We described Paradise Lost: a theodicy in blank verse, Satan's eloquence, Eve deceived and Adam choosing, the grand style and adapted conventions. And we read a passage for its speaker and purpose, attributing the hero reading to the Romantics and its rejection to critics such as C. S. Lewis. Unit ten, The Restoration, opens the age in which the epic was published.