John Milton Is considered as first national poet and first national poet was written by adding he has the

same stature in English digital as woman word you'll have you know the classical literature is not reading
let us go when he wrote this about his last he was partially blind and he went he went completely blind
when he was writing this poem this epic so he there are certain mistakes in the in the scheme of the things
here in Paradise Lost but they can be more easily considering the greatness of the design of the poem I'll
be discussing yesterday that Milton had this application and his poetic location told him the purpose of his
poetic vocation was to bring together the poet and the political and religious element together and this he
did so finally in the purpose the purpose of paradise actually in the beginning of the poem me and the
reason God trying to predicate the ways of God to man and telling of the first disobedience here but he's
also a commenting on whatever happened in England during the puritan time period when the
Commonwealth was formed under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell he's not only trying to tell you but
he's also trying to explain to people of England at that time that it is not God who's unfair but it is the IT
is the old fashioned wrong fashions it's their own lack of faith its own it's their own greed and it's their
own dust for sale which have given them this instability which have made them unfit to rule t....s
banished from England the people of.
Second the people of England government to themselves but these this time starting from 1640 to 1660
with the chance for the people of England for themselves civil liberty.
The charge of civil liberty they give them the chance to choose for themselves but the people are the
masses they just wasted their chance also if we considered a little deeper keep in mind the historical
background and the way we find out that balance loss is not only a you know a religious poem a religious
epic and not only biblical story that has been directed to you but this is an effort to explain to people what
happened to them and why does it happen to it because you know he has related this story because people
can relate to this even in the present because this is what happened some people are on the side of the
good and some are on the side of the evil one of the good people they just come to the meat place and
they fall the same thing that the struggle that Adam and Eve had to do the struggle that Adam and Eve
had to undergo the way they had to resist the temptation and finally they give in to the temptation the
same struggle we face every day all the human beings starting from Adam and Eve to the present day so
he's trying to explain to us that the same thing goes and stuff from the starting of time to build in the
present time and it's our own weakness that has caused this damage to us 18 the present state the story of
Paradise Lost starts with this description of hell where there is a Saturn and Saturn because I prefer to call
him Satan but they do pronunciations for it so Satan to hear he was bound by chains on a lake and lake of
fire in hell so he was such a powerful Angel that he broke those solid ground
They decided to they are going to fight they are not going to embrace the punishment and settle down.
Beelzebub said the best way to revenge God would be to corrupt his creation. For whose love God has
throw us all here. Two children of Satan sin and death made a bridge from hell to heaven. When he
entered the heaven, he was amazed by the beauty of paradise; he had no regrets but he felt deep terrible
pain that he has lost all this then be became bitter; because all weak characters won’t realize their own
fault and he tried a plot to take the revenge. They will not understand their own mistakes so Satan is weak
character as well. According to many critics Satan is the hero of this epic. If we analyze what Satan was
doing; he was not stopping himself he was continuing a spiraling down in this pit of disobedience; then
we will see he is a weak character, whose is not ready to accept his faults. After entering the paradise, he
took the form of serpent. He approached eve and encourage her to eat the fruit of knowledge. God
realized what was happening so He sent angel Gabriel came there and asked Satan to leave; Satan was not
in intention to leave unless he saw signs in the sky and realized there is no way he can defeat angels. He
went back but he was not defeated. God knew the danger Adam and Eve were in this and sent angel
Rafael to them; who told them different stories what had happened between God and rebelled angels.
Adam kept on asking different question about universe and other things. Adam told angel about the
feelings when he was created and he also told angel that he has physical feelings for Eve. At this time,
Angel told him to stay away from Eve and to keep the love for Eve pure and spiritual and then he left.
Satan was not defeated as soon as angel left the paradise he came back with the shape of serpent. Adam
and Eve decided to work separately, so that they can do much work. When serpent approached the eve
and told her that she is beautiful, she was astonished by knowing serpent can speak and ask the serpent
how could you speak? He said I have eaten the fruit of knowledge; he insisted eve to eat it too, she said
that she was forbidden by God not to eat this fruit.
He told her this is the test of your courage and she ate the fruit. Then she went in search of Adam and he
was making wreath of flowers for her. When he saw her and knew of the fall. So, he decides it’s better to
fall with her instead of losing her altogether so he ate the fruit. The first punishment was given to serpent
that it would lie. It would crawl on its belly throughout ages till eternity. Adam was told that he has to
work to get things and eve was told that she will give birth to child. After this they were so disturbed so
they decided that instead plotting a revenge against Satan we should ask God for forgiveness. They were
expelled from paradise and now death was their destiny. One thing became very clear from whole this
exercise that Adam and Eve made mistakes; they realized their mistakes and asked for forgiveness; one
part also showing how merciful God is and other is Human will fall and rise again if he repents, they have
two choices either to choose the path of Adam or Satan. When Satan disobeyed, he kept on falling, he
kept on disobeying again and again however Adam and Eve did the opposite.

Samuel Johnson
A greater work calls for greater care
A poem which considered with respect to design may claim the first place and with respect to
performance may claim the second among the productions of human mind.

Epic Poetry
Writing epic poem requires the assemblage of all the powers which are singly sufficient for other
compositions.
Epic poetry teaches the most important truths by most pleasing precepts and therefore relate some great
truth in the most affecting manner.
History, virtue, dramatic nature discriminations of the characters tendency of passion illustrations and
images.
To put all these together an imagination capable of painting nature and realizing fiction is required.
Epic is teaching with entertainment.

Poet’s first duty: convey a moral

The poet’s first duty is to find a moral which has fable will illustrate later on.
This holds true for Milton. The morals of other poems are incidental consequent in Milton’s only it is
intrinsic.
His purpose was most useful most arduous
To vindicate the ways of God to man.
To show the reasonableness of religion.
Necessity of obedience to divine Law.

Fable to convey the Moral

To convey the moral there must be fable which should be constructed so as to excite curiosity and
surprise expectation.
Milton has done very well in this regard.
He has involved in his account of “fall of the man” the events which preceded it and the events that will
follow it.
He has woven the entire system of theology that every pair seems necessary.
And we don’t wish for any recital to be shorter for the sake of quickening the progress to main action.

Subject of an Epic
Subject of an epic has to be an event of fundamental importance and for Milton it was not destruction of a
city or the foundation of an empire.
He was focused on
Fate of words
Revolutions of heaven and earth
Rebellion against the supreme king by the highest order of the beings.
The punishment of their crime
The creation of new race
Its fall and restoration to hope peace.

Greatness in paradise Lost

Before the greatness displayed in Milton’s poem all greatness shrinks away.
The weakest of his agents are the highest and noblest of human beings whose actions effect the fates of
the worlds.
Other agents in the poem are so high and lofty that we cannot take their name lightly and the lower
powers those which are restrained by God or they will destroy everything and cause chaos everywhere
Such might task this might poet has undertaken and performed.

Characters of paradise lost

Character which admits of examination are those of angles and of man of angels good and evil of man in
his innocent and sinful state.
Good angels
Raphael who is mild and placid
Michael who is regal and lofty
Abide solitary Fidelity.
The Bad Angels
Characters are most diversified.
Satan given such sentiments which suit the most exalted and most depraved being.
Milton had to be very cautious about Satan’s speeches. It was difficult task to make a rebel speak without
offending the sensibilities of the pious.
The language of rebellion cannot be same as that of the obedience.
So, his language has haughtiness obstinacy expressions are general otherwise
Offensive than as they are wicked.

Adam and Eve (state of innocence)

During their innocence sentiments are such as innocence can generate and utter,
Their voice is pure based on mutual respect.
Their repasts are without luxury.
Their diligence without toil.
Their addresses to their maker have little more than admiration and gratitude.
Fruition left them nothing to ask and innocence left them nothing to fear.

ADAM & Eve (state of sin)

With guilt enter
Distrust
Discord
Mutual accusation
Stubborn self defense
They regard each other with alienated minds and dread their creator as avenger of their transgression.
At last, they seek shelter in his mercy.
Before and after the fall Adam’s superiority is diligently sustained
Probable And marvelous
In this case the probable is marvelous and marvelous is probable.
The subject matter absolute truth.
The main fabric is supported
Its subject is universally and perpetually interesting.
All mankind has the same relation to Adam and eve and all are involved in this battle of good and evil.
Machinery
Here is no room to speak because everything is done under immediate and visible direction of heaven.
However, no part of action could have been accomplished by any other means.
Episode
There are two, one was used as warning and the other as a consolation.
Integrity
It cannot be objected
It has a proper beginning middle and the end
Nothing is superfluous
The short digression of 3, 7, 9 are super flows but they are so well written that no one would want to take
them away.
Purpose of poetry is pleasure.
Important question.
Unity of action
Who is hero
Is it heroic.
Milton’s imagination
Milton’s imagination is of highest degree of fervid and is very active and the thoughts that are brought
forward during the progress of the poem can be produced only by such an imagination. The heat of
Milton’s may be said to sublimate his learning. The material was supplied by his incessant study and
unlimited curiosity.
His imagination and sublimity of his learning threw in his work the spirit of science.
Milton’s Power
Sublimity
Description is learned
Imagination accustomed to unrestrained indulgence.
Conceptions are extensive.
Gigantic loftiness instead of grace.
Can provide pleasure when it is needed but his particular power is to astonish.
The power of displaying the vast splendid darkening the gloomy aggravating the dreadful.
Nature and life did not satiate his appetite of greatness.
Reality was a scene too narrow for his mind.
He sent his faculties to discover the worlds where only imagination travel.
He furnished sentiment and actions to superior beings.
When he can not raise wonder by the sublimity of his mind, he gives delight by its fertility.
Milton’s images descriptions and scenes or operation of nature do not seem to be always copied nor do
they have the energy of immediate observation.
Milton’s similes are numerous.
However, he does not confine himself with in the rigors of comparison.
His great excellence is amplitude.
He expands the adventitious image beyond the dimensions which the occasion required.

Defects in paradise lost.

The plan of Paradise Lost has this inconvenience that it comprises neither human action nor human
manners.
The man and woman who suffer are in such a state that no man and woman would ever be in that state so
have little natural curiosity or sympathy.
We do feel what Adam felt after he disobeyed, we have our enemies among the fallen angels and we have
allies among the blesses spirits. We want to be redeemed and we are interested in the description of
Heaven and Hell.
But these truths are too important to be new we have been taught since our infancy. They have mingled
with our solitary thoughts and familiar conversation.
Being therefore not new they raise no unaccustomed emotion in the mind what we know before we
cannot learn, what is not unexpected cannot surprise.
From the ideas suggested by some of these awful scenes from some we recede with reverence and from
others we shrink with horror.
We admit some of them as unpleasant impositions or as counterpoises of our interest and passions.
Pleasure and terror are genuine source of poetry, but the pleasure should be so that human mind and
conceive and poetical terror such which human passion can combat
The good and evil of eternity are too heavy a subject for the wings of wit. So, we feel humble adoration,
calm belief and passive helplessness.
So, these known truths are conveyed by a new train of images. There is very little given to us by the
scriptures but Milton has expanded it to such an extent and branched it of so variedly that it seems like a
miracle that he managed to save the reverence of his subject from the lewdness of fiction.
Paradise Lost is a display of study and genius. He took from nature, from story from fable from modern
science. Whatever could adorn his thoughts. An accumulation of knowledge impregnated his mind,
fermented by study and exalted by imagination. That is why it is said that in reading "Paradise Lost" we
read a book of universal knowledge.
But the original deficiency cannot be overlooked. We admire it and all but we lay it down and then do not
feel the urge to pick it up again. No one ever wanted it to be longer than it is. It seems like a pursuit of
duty rather than that of pleasure. We read Milton for instruction; we look elsewhere for recreation. We
desert our master and seek companions.
Another inconvenience in Milton's design is that it requires a description of something that cannot be
described.
He had to show Angels as material kings. This he could defend. But he is unhappily perplexed his poetry
with philosophy. His infernal and celestial powers are sometimes pure spirit and sometimes animated
body
When Satan walks upon "burning mark with a lance he has a body.
On his journey between Hell and Earth he has a body.
When he animates the toad, he is more spirit.
When he is ready to fight Gabriel, he has a spear and a shield.
Number of the inhabitants of Pandemonium but when they were overwhelmed by the mountains their
armors crushed them.
It has always been the right of poetry to invest abstract ideas with form, and animate them with activity
has always been the right of poetry.
But for the most part they only do their active part and retire. To give them any real employment is to
make them not allegorical but to shock the mind by ascribing effects to nonentity. This has been done
before but no precedents can justify absurdity.
Milton's allegory of sin and death is undoubtedly faulty.
Sin is indeed the mother of death and may be allowed to be portress of hell, but when they stop Satan’s
journey and when death offers him battle the allegory is broken.
Nothing speaks for this allegory but the author's thought of its beauty.
Some objections can be made about the narration.
Like Satan is brought before Gabriel with great expectation and is suffered to go away unmolested.
Some objections can be made about the narration.
Like Satan is brought before Gabriel with great expectation and is suffered to go away unmolested.
Sentiments of innocence must have been difficult to find.
When Adam was reproached for his curiosity his answer lacks propriety
it it's the speech of a man acquainted with many other men.
Some philosophical notions especially when the philosophy is false might have better been omitted. The
angel in comparison speaks of a "timorous deer" before deer were yet timorous and before Adam could
understand the comparison.
Dryden remarks that Milton has some flats. This is only to say that parts are not equal.
In every work every part must be for the sake of others. Milton when he has expatiated in the sky may be
allowed sometimes to visit the Earth.
His play on words, his equivocations his unnecessary and ungraceful use of term of art can be ignored as
they are little in number, they scarcely deserve the attention of critic.