PARADISE LOST ~ A BRIEF OVERVIEW

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In the mid-seventeenth century, 1ohn Milton was a successful poet and
political activist. He wrote scathing pamphlets against corruption in the
Anglican Church and its ties to King Charles. In Milton`s day Puritanism
meant having politically radical views. And at one point Milton was actually
jailed for recording them on paper. Paradise Lost, as much as anything, is a
series of arguments put forth by the characters, which in turn ultimately
expresses Milton`s personal truth. It is, in that sense, a Puritanical work.
Milton had contemplated the composition of an epic poem for many years.
For his subject matter he chose the fundamentals of Christian theology. By
the time he began writing Paradise Lost in the late 1650`s, Milton had
become blind. He dictated the entire work to secretaries.
Paradise Lost has many of the elements that define epic form. It is a long,
narrative poem; it follows the exploits of a hero (or anti-hero); it involves
warfare and the supernatural; it begins in the midst of the action, with
earlier crises in the story brought in later by flashback; and it expresses the
ideals and traditions of a people. It has these elements in common with the
Aeneid, the Iliad, and the Odyssey.
The poem is in blank verse, that is, non-rhyming verse. In a note he added to
the second printing, Milton expresses contempt for rhyming poetry.
Paradise Lost is composed in the verse form of iambic pentameter-the
same used by Shakespeare. In this style, a line is composed of five long,
unaccented syllables, each followed by a short, accented one.
The first edition of Paradise Lost was published in 1667, in ten chapters or
books. In 1674 Milton reorganized the poem into twelve books, by dividing
two of the longer books into four. He also added an introductory prose
~argument summarizing the plot of each book, to prepare readers for the
complex poetry that was to follow. Part of that complexity is due to the many
analogies and digressions into ancient history and mythology throughout the
poem.
The central story line is built around a few paragraphs in the beginning of
Genesis-the story of Adam and Eve. The epic also uses elements from many
other parts of the Bible, particularly involving Satan`s role. Focusing his
poem on the events surrounding the fall of Adam and Eve, Milton intended,
in his words, to ~justify the ways of God to men, by tracing the cause and
result for all involved.
In the last two books of the epic, Milton includes almost a complete
summary of Genesis. This lengthy section may seem anti-climactic, but
Milton's mission was to show not only what caused man's fall, but also the
consequences upon the world, both bad and good. A concept central to this
tale is that of the ~felix culpa or fortunate fall. This is the philosophy that
the good which ultimately evolves as a result of the fall-God's mercy, the
coming of Christ, redemption and salvation-leaves us in a better place,
with opportunity for greater good than would have been possible without the
fall.
For centuries critics have both praised and derided Paradise Lost. A
common observation is that, in his portrayal of the thoughts and motivations
of Satan, Milton seems to unwittingly cast him as the hero. Nevertheless, the
general consensus holds that Paradise Lost remains the greatest epic poem
in the English language.
In 1671, Milton published Paradise Regained. The title suggests some sort of
sequel, but, although a great work in its own right, Paradise Regained is a
very different kind of poem, shorter and more contemplative than action
oriented, and therefore less popular than the earlier work. It centers around
the confrontation between 1esus and Satan in the wilderness.
"Answerable Style": The Genre of Paradise Lost
In his Preface to Paradise Lost, C. S. Lewis wrote, "Every poem can be considered in two
ways - as what the poet has to say, and as a thing which he makes. From the one point of
view it is an expression of opinions and emotions; from the other, it is an organization of
words which exists to produce a particular kind of patterned experience in the readers"
(2). Genre, therefore, is important not only as a mode of framing a story, but also as a
model that produces expectations in readers. In Book 2 of 1he Reason of Church
Covernment, 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" (RCC 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 (RCC 2). These
three genres of poetry have existed since ancient Greece, and by Milton's time they carried
with them a set of connotations and expectations that most educated people recognized.
Milton's concern about which genre to choose, therefore, was not simply a matter of
seeking the perfect medium for his story, but the anxiety of a writer seeking to place
himself within a centuries-old poetic tradition.
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, Tasso, Ariosto, and Spenser. By doing this, he raises specific sets of expectations
both for himself and for readers. Formally, Paradise Lost contains many classical and
Renaissance epic conceits: 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.
Milton's range of variations on epic conventions contribute to Paradise Lost's stunning
effects. Unlike classics such as the Iliad and the Aeneid, Paradise Lost has no easily
identified hero. The most Achilles-like character in the poem is Satan, whom Milton
surrounds with "epic matter and motivations, epic genre conventions, and constant
allusions to specific passages in famous heroic poems" (Barbara Lewalski, Paradise Lost
and the Rhetoric of Literary Forms 55). Critics and writers such as William Blake and
Percy Bysshe Shelley believed Satan to be the hero of Paradise Lost. Yet the problems
inherent in viewing Satan as a hero have led modern critics to reject this idea. 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).
Another possibility for the hero of Paradise Lost is the Son of God, but although he is an
important force in the poem, the story is not ultimately about him. The most likely
possibility, therefore, is Adam. Adam resembles Aeneas in many respects: he is the father
of a new race, responsible for founding civilization on earth. But unlike Aeneas, Adam's
primary heroic act is not heroic at all: it is the first act of disobedience. The heroism
celebrated in Book 9 as "Patience and Heroic Martyrdom" stands in stark contrast to
traditional epic heroism (PL 31-2). Is Adam's disobedience an indictment of traditional
heroism? If the quiet Adam is the true hero of Paradise Lost, and Satan with all his heroic
oratory is not, then Milton is simultaneously entering into a dialogue with previous works
about the nature of heroism, reconfiguring the old model, and effectively redefining notions
of heroism for his seventeenth-century English Protestant audience.
The hero is not the only epic tradition to be reconfigured in Paradise Lost; the poem also
plays on readers' expectations about epic form. Although it most resembles an epic,
Paradise Lost contains elements of many other genres: 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), a type of symposium (Raphael's visit, PL 5-8), and
examples of georgic verse (PL 4.618-33, 5.209-19, 9.205-225). 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. And even the ten-book structure of the
1667 edition, according to 1ohn Leonard, "might owe something to English tragedy,
forming five dramatic acts of two books each" (Introduction to PL xi). In fact, Milton's
first attempts to write the story of man's fall took the form of a tragedy that he later
rejected in favor of epic. Scott Elledge writes that Milton favored tragedy because of its
"affective and curative powers," which are no less present in Paradise Lost than in his more
formal tragedy, Samson Agonistes (Introduction to PL xxvi). As Barbara Lewalski writes,
the incorporation of multiple genres into the poem invites us "to identify certain patterns
and certain poems as subtexts for portions of Milton's poem, and then to attend to the
completion or transformation of those allusive patterns as the poem proceeds" (20).
Cordelia Zukerman and 1homas H. Luxon

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Unlike the gods and goddesses of classical epics, whose desires and disagreements often
mirror those of humans, Milton's God is invisible and omnipresent, a being who cannot be
considered an individual so much as an existence. Milton's underlying claim in Paradise
Lost is that he has been inspired by his heavenly muse with knowledge of things
unknowable to fallen humans. His dilemma of how to describe God to the reader resembles
the archangel Raphael's dilemma of how to "relate / To human sense th'invisible exploits"
of the angels in Heaven (PL 5.564-5). Like Raphael, Milton solves the problem by
expressing the infinite in terms of the tangible by portraying God as if he were an
individual, when he is really something much greater. Therefore, although Milton credits
God with speech and with enough form that the Son can sit "on his right," everything
relating to God in Paradise Lost should be understood as a kind of metaphor, a device used
to place the divine in human terms (PL 3.62).
"Things invisible to mortal sight": Milton's God
Perhaps because of the contradictions inherent in the attribution of human characteristics
to a divine being, Milton's portrayal of God has been a frequent subject of debate among
scholars and critics. Milton presents God as a harsh and uncompromising judge over his
subjects, hardly the figure one would expect a poet to present whose goal is to "justifie the
wayes of God to men" (PL 1.26). C. S. Lewis explains the aversion that readers often feel
towards Milton's God by blaming the modern reader: "Many of those who say they dislike
Milton's God only mean that they dislike God: infinite sovereignty, by its very nature,
includes wrath also" (126). But Milton seems to be doing more than merely portraying the
Christian God; he is, according to William Empson, "struggling to make his God appear
less wicked than the traditional Christian one" (Milton's Cod 11). Perhaps this is why
Milton's God often appears on the defensive, explaining again and again that his
foreknowledge of the fall has nothing to do with fate: Adam and Eve fall of their own free
will, not because God in any way decreed it (see Argument to Book 3, 3.80-210, and 10.1-
62). This defensive tone is hardly becoming in an omnipotent deity, yet Milton needs to use
it in order to justify God; hence the endless potential for contradiction in Milton's
presentation of God (and those of many seventeenth-century writers as well).
Empson and other critics also bring into question God's justice. The Romantic poet Percy
Bysshe Shelley writes that Milton "alleged no superiority of moral virtue to his God over
his Devil" (A Defense of Poetry 527). Empson agrees, writing that God's "apparently
arbitrary harshness is intended to test us with baffling moral problems" (Empson 103),
such as why a hierarchy is necessary in Heaven at all, or why God would establish a
complex arrangement of demonic and angelic guards to prevent an adversary from
traveling from Hell to Eden, only to call them off "as soon as they] look like succeeding"
(112). One can explain these problems by recalling that God does not simply want absolute
obedience in his subjects, he wants the obedience of free beings. In his own words, "Not
free, what proof could they have givn sincere / Of true allegiance, constant Faith or Love."
(PL 3.103-4). Yet at times, God's complexities do make him difficult to find trustworthy,
while Satan's seemingly logical challenges to his authority are quite appealing.
William Blake found Milton's depiction of God so far inferior to his depiction of Satan that
he considered Milton to be an unwitting Satanist (Flannagan, 1he Riverside Milton 322).
There seems to be good evidence for it: God's language is "flat, uncolored,
unmetaphorical," compared with Satan's vivid and inspiring rhetoric (321). But Stanley
Fish presents a different theory: his thesis is that Milton deliberately lets Satan seduce not
only Adam and Eve, but the reader as well. Fish writes, "The reading experience becomes
the felt measure of man's loss" as the reader is first seduced by Satan's powerful and
impressive logic, then slowly realizes that the logic is in fact twisted and nonsensical
(Surprised by Sin 39). The reader emerges from the experience renewed with a greater
sense of faith, which is the ultimate goal of the poem.
If we are not to trust Satan at all, however, then what should we make of Satan's
enlightened questioning of God's authority? When contemplating the ascendancy of the
Son, Satan says, "Who can in reason then or right assume / Monarchie over such as live by
right / His equals, if in power and splendor less / In freedome equal?" (PL 5.794-7). This
argument in favor of equality and against monarchy would strike a familiar note among
seventeenth-century readers who had so recently experienced the English Civil War.
Milton had been a supporter of Cromwell and had strongly advocated the execution of
Charles I in 1649 (see the Open University's site on the English Civil War 1625-1649).
Satan's doubts about God's authority seem based in republican values - values that
Milton believed in and promoted through his writing - yet Milton consciously undermines
those values by placing them in Satan's mouth. Paraphrasing Blair Worden, Lewalski
writes that perhaps "Satan's rhetoric of republicanism signals Milton's profound
disillusion with his own party and with political discourse generally" (466). But Lewalski
herself thinks differently, pointing out the great difference between God's natural eminence
and the "Stuart ideology of divine kingship" that created idols out of monarchs in the
seventeenth century (469). She writes, "By demonstrating that there can be no possible
parallel between earthly kings and divine kingship Milton] flatly denies the familiar
royalist analogies: God and King Charles, Satan and the Puritan rebels" (466). Satan's
doubts about God are unfounded and sinful, not because they are inherently evil, but
because God is a true monarch whose authority should never be questioned.
Cordelia Zukerman and 1homas H. Luxon

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"Haile wedded Love": Milton's Redefinition of Marriage
1ohn Milton's epic of theology and politics, heaven, hell, creation, free will, and redemption
features a human relationship at its center. Paradise is lost after Adam chooses to disobey
God, choosing, in Milton's imagination, Eve instead. Milton's Adam exclaims to Eve: "How
can I live without thee, how forgoe / Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly joyn'd" (PL
9.908-9). In response to this choice, the Son demands: "Was shee thy God" (PL 10.145)?
Why and how Milton chose to tell this story of human love challenging God's claim to
unquestioning human obedience reveals the domestic sphere's emerging centrality to
seventeenth century society and the extent to which theology mapped the course of its
development.
In Genesis, the story of Adam and Eve's fall is told in a single line: "she took of the fruit
thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat" (Genesis
3:6). In Paradise Lost, Adam eats the fruit of knowledge two hundred fourteen lines after
Eve. Milton imagines an intervening mental strife unequalled in the history of the world as
Adam comes to choose love and death over rational knowledge of God. The story is no
longer one of disobedience, but man's disobedience of God in favor of a human
relationship. Critics argue that Milton struggles to define the ideal human relationship
even as he views such bonds as inherently human flaws that distance the individual from
God. The Adam of Genesis sins against God after Eve gives him the apple; the Adam of
Paradise Lost sins against God not because of what Eve gives him, but because of what he
needs of her.
The passages depicting Adam and Eve's marriage have long been used as "the key to
unlocking Milton's attitudes toward gender and sexuality" (One Flesh, One Heart 266), but
recent critical analysis suggests a greater "complexity of these issues in Milton's works"
(One Flesh, One Heart 266). Gregory Chaplin argues that Paradise Lost is remarkable as a
"stage where Milton] has the opportunity to depict his ideal union" (One Flesh, One Heart
291), which is "a merger of Neoplatonic friendship and Christian marriage" (One Flesh,
One Heart 291). Thomas Luxon elaborates on this theme when he states in Single
Imperfection that Milton's "project" is "to redefine heteroerotic marriage using the terms
and principles of classical friendship, and then to promote this newly dignified version of
marriage as the originary human relation and, therefore, the bedrock of social and political
culture in Protestant Christendom" (Single Imperfection 1-2). Both critics view Milton's
theology as inseparable from his understanding of human relationships.
Milton began theorizing in print about marriage with the publication of 1he Doctrine and
Discipline of Divorce (DDD) in 1643 (see introduction to 1he Milton Reading Room text).
His argument was inspired both by personal experience and by extensive reading. His wife,
Mary Powell, had returned to her father's household after less than two months of
marriage in 1642; Milton was left alone with neither a spouse nor any prospect of
remarriage. In addressing his loneliness, Milton argued "that the chief end God intended in
marriage fwas the cheerfull conversation of man with woman'" (Single Imperfection 20,
DDD 1). Luxon argues that Milton tried to " redefine marriage as principally a
conversation" (Single Imperfection 149) in order to diminish the division between marriage
and friendship. With this new emphasis, Milton illustrates a shift of focus from marriage
for procreation and physical necessity and toward relationships that satisfy the desire for
classical friendship and intellectual fulfillment.
Critics map these intermingled themes of marriage and friendship further in Paradise Lost
and use them to follow Adam's development of human understanding culminating in the
Fall. The newly created Adam desires any fit companion and laments "In solitude / What
happiness, who can enjoy alonef?" (PL8.364-5). Thomas Luxon observes that Adam,
unlike God, is incomplete without companionship, and this "single imperfection, unless it is
overcome, will occasion mankind's downfall (Single Imperfection 107), as the need for
companionship will obstruct the rational choice to prefer obedience to God above other
necessities. However, Luxon objects such a "fusion never succeeded and that Milton's
attempt to reimagine marriage as a heteroerotic version of the classical homoerotic ideal
resulted instead in a very uneasy and temporizing supersession of friendship by marriage"
(Single Imperfection 8). Luxon explains this conclusion by asserting: "Milton withholds
from his marriage theories the linchpin of classical and humanist friendship doctrine -
equality" (Single Imperfection 2).
Adam's progression from loneliness, to inseparable devotion to a single partner, to his
choice of Eve over God, is a theme that Milton develops throughout his major poetic works.
In Samson Agonistes, Milton's Samson "divorces his wife and resumes an intimacy,
however vague, with God" (Single Imperfection 2). In Paradise Regain'd, the Son develops
theory into praxis as he "draws strength from solitude and emerges alone but not lonely, a
man who has transformed the fsingle imperfection' of loneliness into the site of recovered
manliness, liberty and godliness" (Single Imperfection 2). As Luxon traces man's flaw
through this series, he finds: "the Milton who desired citizenship in the kingdom of heaven
wound up imagining his perfect man as solitary" (Single Imperfection 192).
Milton considers absence of carnal lust as one of the special attributes of prelapsarian
marriage, but friendship alone cannot satisfy all of man's desires, despite the necessity of
conversation. 1ames Grantham Turner offers another explanation of this relationship in
One Flesh: Paradisal Marriage and Sexual Relations in the Age of Milton: "Milton's ideal of
married love should not therefore be thought of as a social drive or as a higher form of
friendship, but as a private bonding of male and female suffused with erotic energy" (One
Flesh 207). Although Chaplin and Luxon argue that Milton will not "leave marriage as one
sort of relationship (for utility and perhaps pleasure) and friendship another. Milton wants
marriage itself to be redefined as a friendship of virtue" (Single Imperfection 99, original
emphasis), Milton also suggests that the ideal relationship requires the special bond offered
by marriage: one person existing solely for another. Thus, while Adam condemns Eve's
actions, he seeks no other companion: "Should God create another Eve, and I/ Another Rib
afford yet loss of thee / Would never from my heartf and from thy State / Mine never
shall be parted, bliss or woe" (PL 9.911-16). After the fall, however, lust quickly perverts
the pure assertion of devotion and the wish for satisfying and instructive conversation: as
"that false Fruit/9f Carnal desire enflaming" (PL 9.1011-13). The fatal flaw left an
opening for the more dangerous human carnal desires that would distort human
relationships. In emphasizing the value of conversation, and other examples drawn from
classical friendship, Milton suggests a way to recreate the purity and fulfillment of the
original marriage in a postlapsarian world.


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"Radiant image of his Glory": The Son
In some respects the Son of God more closely resembles a classical epic hero than any other
figure in Paradise Lost: like many classical heroes he is a king, a great statesman, and a
military champion. Also like those figures he is at once both glorious and vulnerable,
glorious in his godliness, goodness, and military prowess, and vulnerable in the promise of
his future humanity and suffering as the incarnate Christ. Roy Flannagan writes that the
Son "does do things that epic heroes do, as when He volunteers for the most dangerous of
duties (confronting Satan and, later, sacrificing Himself for the sin of humankind)" (322).
But Milton's goal in Paradise Lost is not simply to create a classical epic with a traditional
hero: as Lewalski writes, "the fundamental concern" of Paradise Lost is not heroism in the
classical sense, but "a poem-long exploration and redefinition of heroes and heroism"
(464). Fish agrees, writing, "In effect, the reader comes to understand heroism by
repeatedly adjusting his idea of what makes one hero heroic" (184). Milton himself writes
that Paradise Lost is about something different than "fabl'd Knights / In Battels feign'd,"
but rather, "Patience and Heroic Martyrdom," or quiet persistence in the face of adversity
(PL 9.31-2). Milton meant his epic poem to celebrate what he considered to be Christian
heroism, even more specifically, reformed Christian heroism.
The Son in Paradise Lost is called the Son because he is not the historical figure 1esus, nor
is he the risen Christ: he is the Son of God - a God-figure who sits at the right hand of the
Father. Milton distinguishes between God the Father and God the Son by implying that the
Father is invisible and ineffable, while Son is the Father "Substantially express'd" (PL
3.140). While the Father exists in the "pure Empyrean" throughout the epic, the Son as his
substantial expression descends to Earth to judge Adam and Eve after the fall, and it is of
course the Son who eventually will take human form in order to redeem mankind (PL
3.57). But the Son is not only an expression of the Father: Milton creates an identity for
him that is far more complex than that when he addresses the issues of the Son's begetting
and status in Heaven, issues that were controversial in Milton's time and have led many
critics to speculate about Milton's own personal theology.
Chronologically, the very first scene that Milton describes in Paradise Lost occurs when
"As yet this world was not," when God announces to the angels that he has begotten the
Son (PL 5.577). God says, "This day have I begot whom I declare / My onely Son your
Head I him appoint" (PL 5.603-4, 606). This declaration is the occasion of Satan's rebellion
and the start of the War in Heaven, the result of which is the expulsion of one third of the
angels from Heaven, and, ultimately, God's creation of Eden. But what has God really done
in this scene? 1he Aicene Creed states that the Son was "born of the Father before all ages."
(See the Aew Catholic Encyclopedia's site on the Aicene Creed.) Milton, however, echoing
Psalm 2:7, uses the phrase "this day," as if Cod had begotten the Son in actual time. 1his idea
threatens the Christian belief in the holy trinity: how can the Son be a begotten being -
begotten in time after the angels - and yet be Cod? Moreover, why, if the Son is of the same
essence as the Father (as Christian orthodoxy proclaims), does he obey him as if the Father
were a superior being? Like Adam and Eve, the Son has his own free will, choosing freely to
obey the Father: he says, "Father Eternal, thine is to decree, / Mine both in Heav'n and
Earth to do thy will / Supream" (PL 10.68-70). These are not the words of an equal. And is
the Son even of the same essence as the Father? At one point the Father tells the Son, "Into
thee such Vertue and Grace / Immense I have transfus'd, that all may know / In Heav'n
and Hell thy Power above compare" . If the Son were of the same essence as the Father,
why would the Father need to transfuse virtue and grace into him? The Son seems to have
his own being separate from the Father, as in Book 3 when he "takes the part of Mercy
more than 1ustice in that he appeals to his father's sense of compassion," and finally, when
he volunteers freely to die for man's sins . Is Milton, then, describing a trinity in which the
Father and Son are not of the same essence and not equal?
One way to explain the begetting of the Son in Book 5 is by "distinguishing between the
existence of the divine Logos or Word, which had been in existence "in the beginning" and
which had created everything, including the angels, and the recognition of the Word as Son
at this later point in time". When God is saying that he has "begotten" the Son, therefore,
he is not saying that he has created him, because the Son already existed as the Word; he is
instead acknowledging the Son as the "Messiah King anointed" . But this still does not
explain the way that the Son can be read as a lower being than the Father.
During the seventeenth century in England there was much discussion about aspects of
Protestant theology, in which debates about the doctrine of the trinity "rapidly took the
religious centre stage". According to 1ohn P. Rumrich, "at least eight antitrinitarian
heretics were burned at the stake from 1548 to . One of the most prominent antitrinitarian
sects was Arianism, named after the fourth-century Bishop Arius, who preached against
the trinity. Rumrich discusses why disbelief in the trinity "provoked authorities as no other
heresy could," and explains, "Perhaps the impulse toward demystification expressed in
Arianism was dimly perceived as a threat to the ideological basis of monarchical power"
(87). Many intellectuals, including Isaac Newton and 1ohn Locke, believed in Arianism,
and now scholars are generally agreed that Milton did as well. Much of the basis for this
belief is derived from Milton's theological treatise On Christian Doctrine, in which Milton
relied solely on the text of the Bible to formulate his ideas, even at the risk of denying
commonly accepted Church doctrine. He discusses the trinity at length, using biblical
quotations to demonstrate that "the Father and the Son are certainly not one in essence,"
and that "the Father is greater than the Son in all things" (Flannagan 1172-1174). Milton's
beliefs about the relationship between the Father and Son, therefore, may have led him to
describe in Paradise Lost a Son who is neither of the Father's essence nor equal in status to
the Father.
Do Milton's beliefs about the nature of the trinity, then, affect his literary work even to the
extent of molding the literary character of the Son to fit his beliefs? As W. B. Hunter
writes, Milton's "central purpose in writing the poem was this justification of God] with
its concomitant theology. His means were literary, indeed, but his artistry was handmaiden
to his theology, not the other way around" (117). Recent doubts regarding the authorship
of On Christian Doctrine, however, have necessitated a reconsideration of Milton's
theology and the relationship between it and Paradise Lost. In the introduction to their
book Bright Essence, Hunter, C. A. Patrides, and 1. H. Adamson go so far as to reject
Milton's Arianism completely and reconsider the role of the Son in Paradise Lost. They
write, "we have discovered a new Milton for whom the Son is of fundamental importance
in the act of creation, the revelation of the Godhead within history, and the salvation of
man" (vii). Perhaps the Son is a hero after all.
Cordelia Zukerman and 1homas H. Luxon

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"Contemplation of Created Things": Knowledge in Paradise Lost
In his treatise Of Education Milton writes, "The end then of Learning is to repair the
ruines of our first Parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to
love him" (Of Education). Themes of knowledge and education play important roles in
Paradise Lost, which, according to Lewalski, is "preeminently a poem about knowing and
choosing" (460). The dominance of these themes comes from the fact that Milton is writing
about the first humans on earth, humans who have no history and no way of knowing the
world except through God's inspiration.
When Raphael comes to earth in Book 5, he explains to Adam the difference between
human knowledge, which is attained through discourse, and angelic knowledge, which is
attained through intuition. He says that the two types of knowledge differ "but in degree, of
kind the same," suggesting that if humans remain obedient they will eventually attain
intuitive knowledge (PL 5.490). He is eager to explain to Adam the story of the war in
Heaven and the creation of earth, but he stops when Adam asks about the nature of the
universe. He tells Adam, "Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid, / Leave them to God
above, him serve and feare" (PL 8.167-8). At this point Milton is suggesting that the goal of
knowledge is not to know everything in the universe, but to increase our "appreciation of
God's goodness" and ultimately increase our faith (Marshall Grossman, "Milton's
Dialectical Visions" 32). Interestingly, Eve - perhaps demonstrating intuitive knowledge
of the kind Adam has yet to attain - chooses the moment directly preceding Raphael's
comment to move out of hearing of the conversation. This act "represents in dramatic
terms the same lesson Raphael has tried to make clear: Creation is to be both enjoyed and
understood as a sign of God; to examine it critically is to forget man's place in it" (Robert
L. Entzminger, "Epistemology and the Tutelary Word in Paradise Lost" 103). Similarly,
Milton has Raphael say, "Knowledge is as food, and "needs no less / Her Temperance over
Appetite" (PL 7.126-7). 1ust as we should be temperate with food, we must discriminate
between different kinds of knowledge, avoiding that which will move us away from God.
This brings us to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Milton emphasizes that the
importance of the Tree lies less in the knowledge it brings than in its function as "The only
sign of our obedience" (PL 4.428). Nevertheless, the Tree raises questions about the
different types of knowledge that exist before and after the fall. When Adam and Eve eat
the fruit, they lose the capacity to attain intuitive knowledge. Instead, according to
Leonard, they "gain knowledge of the darkness into which creation falls when it is
deprived of God's goodness" (xxxiii). Because they are more removed from God, they
cannot learn in the same way they once did. When the angel Michael comes to earth to tell
Adam about the future, he begins by giving him visions, but eventually must stop and
narrate the rest because he perceives Adam's "mortal sight to faile" (PL 12.9). The fallen
Adam has less access to an understanding of God and Heaven than the unfallen one, and
Michael must be more careful than Raphael to relate his tale in an understandable way.
Ira Clark writes, "Repeatedly, Paradise Lost's narrators declare their problems of telling
caused by problems of knowing" ("A Problem of Knowing Paradise in Paradise Lost" 183).
These problems exist between God and the angels, between angels and humans, between
Adam and Eve, and finally, between the poem and the reader. As Clark explains, the fallen
reader has no way to understand Paradise, let alone Heaven and Hell, and Milton's method
of describing them involve metaphors, similes, and negatives. But if the fallen reader
cannot know Paradise, does it then follow that the unfallen Adam and Eve cannot know
evil? Many critics, including Michael Lieb, argue that the significance of God's command
not to eat the fruit lies in its very ambiguity: if Adam and Eve do not understand evil or
death, the consequences of eating the fruit, their only reason to obey God is their faith,
which should be reason enough ("Paradise Lost and the Myth of Prohibition"). But Clark
disagrees, writing that the climax of the work "depends on Eve and Adam's having a
competent sense of knowledge" (201). These opposing views are wrapped up in Milton's
depiction of a Paradise in which Adam and Eve have instant knowledge of everything they
can name, and are simultaneously too pure to know unhappiness or recognize evil when
they see it.
Cordelia Zukerman and 1homas H. Luxon

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"What if the Sun / Be Centre to the World": Cosmology in Paradise Lost
Nothing less than the creation and ordering of the universe defines the scope of Paradise
Lost. The epic explores its cosmological theme in theoretical discussions between Adam and
Raphael and in the narrator's descriptions and metaphors. Further, Milton imagines Satan
surveying the universe in an expedition of discovery through a new world in his fall from
Heaven and his passage through Chaos to Earth. Adam tries to understand the earth's
physical place in the universe and its associated ontological and theological value as the
home of man. He wonders aloud about "this Earth a spot, a grain,/ An Atom, with the
Firmament compar'd/ And all her numbered Starrs, that seem to rowl /Spaces
incomprehensible" (PL 8.17-21). Milton asks us to imagine the first man struggling with
many of the same questions a Renaissance thinker, contemplating new models of the
universe, must have considered. In response to the theory that everything revolves around
the sun and not the earth, philosophers were forced to question the importance of man's
role in the universal order. Raphael, responding to Adam's concerns, suggests there is no
reason "bodies bright and greater should not serve / The less not bright, nor Heav'n such
journies run / Earth sitting still" (PL 8.87-9). Yet, the poem does not answer all such
questions directly, and scholars often find it difficult to determine Milton's attitude toward
science. In these debates, it is helpful to remember that Milton was not a scientist but a
theorist. He did not contribute to scientific knowledge so much as to an understanding of
what new scientific ideas might mean to traditional Christian cosmology. He meditates on
this in a conditional modes, as does Raphael in his description of the universe: "What if the
Sun/ Be Centre to the World" (PL 8.122-3).
In the mid-sixteenth century, Nicolaus Copernicus and his followers, most notably
1ohannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei, disturbed the entire Christian world by proposing a
heliocentric model of the universe that displaced the earth, and by extension humanity,
from the center. As the Reformation progressed, resulting theological debates acquired
political importance and Milton, as a politically conscious theologian, addressed these
issues in Paradise Lost. Critics debate the extent of Milton's interest in the advancement of
science. Catherine Gimelli Martin notes that many find "his cosmology stands on the
wrong side of the great scientific revolution initiated by Copernicus, furthered by Galileo,
and completed by Newton" ("What If the Sun Be Centre" 233). However, Martin argues
that classifying Milton as scientifically backward is a mistake resulting from our modern
society: "we too easily forget that during this formative period, no fadvancement of
learning,' scientific or otherwise, could yet be conceived as succeeding apart from the
requisite disclaimers about the folly of seeking superhuman knowledge and the proper
assurances of humility before heights of Divine Wisdom" (Martin 231-2).
Modern readers tend to treat scientific knowledge as inevitably progressive and therefore
expect in Milton an appreciation of our modern scientific values and knowledge. As a
rationalist, Milton must have admired the new sciences but, as a classicist and a Christian
theologian, he had not yet placed scientific knowledge ahead of piety or biblical knowledge.
William Poole notes the danger of seeing in Milton an advanced scientific philosopher and
warns: "we should be extremely wary forcing Milton into clothes he does not fit" ("Milton
and Science: A Caveat" 18). However, within the middle ground, scholars agree with
Martin that Milton appreciated the value of scientific thought and development, although
he may have doubted the reach of this branch of human knowledge.
Cosmology appears in Paradise Lost through direct scientific references, incorporation of
new scientific theories into various characters' worldviews, and warnings against seeking
beyond the limits of human knowledge. Martin observes: "Galileo or his telescope is
approvingly cited on five separate occasions in Milton's epic (the only contemporary
reference to appear at all)" (Martin 238). These instances illustrate that such scientific
discovery can be a means of comprehending God's glory and "Almightie works" (PL
7.112), as Raphael says to Adam: "what thou canst attain, which best may serve / To
glorifie the Maker, and inferr / Thee also happier, shall not be withheld" (PL 7.115-7).
Other scholars note that Milton's theories of social order in Paradise Lost echo scientific
thought. In 1he Matter of Revolution, 1ohn Rogers contends that Milton's work explores
the extent of the vitalist scientific movement that argued for "the infusion of all material
substance with the power of reason" (1he Matter of Revolution 1). Rogers finds this theory
at work in Milton's understanding of creation and his ordering of the universe, as well as in
human systems of society and government. Rather than relegating humanity to the
periphery with the earth in the heliocentric model, Rogers suggests "Milton decentralizes
divinity, representing an action logically prior to the decentralizations of the state" (1he
Matter of Revolution 113). Thus, Milton uses new scientific theories of order to inform his
consideration of issues such as politics and free will in his epic poem.
While scientific arguments, such as a heliocentric universe, offer positive contributions to
his revolutionary political theory, Milton hesitates before the theological ramifications. A
decentralized universefor one centered on something other than man, created in God's
imagefrequires each object to behave predictably and suitably within the larger scheme,
"each in thir several active Sphears assign'd" (PL 5.478). If this pattern fails, chaos will
result. As Rogers notes: "Satan, in Book Two, promises Chaos that he will work to return
to its original chaotic state the belated imposition of creationf The possibility of a chaotic
resurgence has no meaningful role in the poem's cosmology, but its expression voices
Milton's fear, perhaps not so unsound, of an ever-encroaching political chaos" (1he Matter
of Revolution 142). In the wake of the English Civil War, anarchy was too tangibly the
political counterpart of this return to chaos.
Thus, Milton depicts the anxiety resulting from new and often unwelcome discoveries and
theories, as Raphael cautions: "God to remove his wayes from human sense,/ Plac'd Heav'n
from Earth so farr, that earthly sight, / If it presume, might err in things too high,/ and no
advantage gain" (PL 8.119-22). Scholars currently seem to be in agreement that Milton was
aware of scientific developments and their implications. Whether we can understand
Milton's philosophy in terms of scientific theory, or even know Milton's conception of the
extent of appropriate human knowledge, has yet to be determined. Although Adam may be
"led on, yet sinless, with desire to know/ What neerer might concern him" (PL 7.61-2),
Raphael's warning to him concludes: "Sollicit not thy thoughts with matters hid, / Leave
them to God above, him serve and feare . . . Heav'n is for thee too high / To know what
passes there; be lowlie wise" (PL 8.167-173). What knowledge glorifies God and what
knowledgeftoo great for human understandingfthreatens the very systems it seeks to
explain? Milton was likely still uncertain about this issue as he sent Adam and Eve forth
from Eden: "High in Front advanc't,/ The brandisht Sword of God before them blaz'd/
Fierce as a Comet" (PL 12.632-4).
Sara Silverstein and 1homas H. Luxon

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Publication History of Paradise Lost
One can learn a great deal from the gap between when Milton wrote Paradise Lost and
when it finally went to press. As David Kastan notes in his helpful introduction, "it had
been finished at least two years" before Samuel Simmons finally published it in 1667.
Between completion and publication, the political instability of the period conspired to
delay the release of Paradise Lost. In a practical sense, the second Anglo-Dutch war of 1665
caused a paper shortage. The confusion and fear after the plague and fire of London added
to the turbulence of the period. Altogether, this created an unfavorable environment for
controversial literature (see Nicholas von Maltzahn's article, "The First Reception of
Paradise Lost").
Eventually, of course, Milton did seek a printer. It is uncertain why he chose Samuel
Simmons, an obscure stationer, to print Paradise Lost. Kastan speculates that the
stationer's proximity to Milton's home was a factor, especially since Simmons's presses
were among the few unharmed by the Great Fire. He also speculates that "perhaps it was
family loyalty," as Simmons's father had printed several of Milton's prose works. Kastan
notes that Simmons had a reputation for printing "seditious books;" this may have drawn
Milton to Simmons. Their business relationship was remarkable, as Kastan details it, in
that "the surviving contract is the earliest between a writer and publisher that has come to
light, and Simmons, at least to later generations, has been often criticized for taking
advantage of the blind and disgraced Milton." However, their agreement was likely typical
for the period (for details as to their contract, see Kastan).
In order to protect his copyright to Paradise Lost, Milton had to apply to have the poem
licensed. "That Milton or his bookseller even sought the license," writes von Maltzahn,
"shows the gravity of the poet's situation in the Restoration" (von Maltzahn 482). Both von
Maltzahn and Kastan detail the objections of Thomas Tomkins, the licenser and chaplain
to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Milton's anti-monarchist themes, combined with his
reputation as a proponent of regicide, made Tomkins seek to deny the poem license.
But in 1667 with the government in retreat, and licensers under pressure, the focus in
controlling the press needed narrowing to those who raised more present fears and
encouraged sedition. If Milton by reputation might be expected to "make the people] to
fear," it was at the same time plain that Paradise Lost was of a different order from the
licensers' usual fare. (Maltzahn 486)
Thus, despite his issues with the subversive nature of the poem, and lines 1.594-99 in
particular, Tomkins licensed the poem.
The first edition of Paradise Lost was published in 1667. "What has long been recognized is
that the poem sold slowly and that different title pages were issued both to reflect changes
in bookselling arrangements and to encourage new sales" (Kastan). Major changes to the
first edition, however, did not occur until the 1668 printing, which added fourteen pages. In
this printing, Milton added the introductory "arguments" for each book; these were
compiled at the beginning of the poem, since the type was not re-set. This printing also
included a letter from Simmons to the "Courteous Reader;" in fact, this printing is the first
in which Simmons' name appears. At last, in 1669, Milton's contract was fulfilled when the
first 1,300 copies were sold.
In 1674, Simmons printed the second edition of Paradise Lost, which featured significant
changes. Books seven and ten were each divided into two books, moving the total number
of books from ten to twelve. This may have been because books seven and ten were
exceptionally long, but twelve books also suggests a half-epic. Whereas the first edition was
a quarto, the second is an octavo. It is not ruled, and does not feature line numbers.
However, the arguments appear before their respective books, and the printing includes
two poems and a portrait of the poet. Kastan remarks that "in general, the edition is less
welcoming than the first. It is, however, better printed than 1667, probably from the fact
that it is set seemingly from a corrected copy of the first edition rather than from a
manuscript." What is remarkable here, as Kastan claims, is that Milton, due to his
relationship with Simmons, seems to have had a hand in the publication process:
"Sometime in the summer of 1674, Milton's Paradise Lost appeared in print essentially in
the form the poet had come to imagine it." 1ust how much aesthetic control a blind poet
could exercise over the printing of his poem is a topic for speculation.
Alison C. Moe and 1homas H. Luxon

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The Tyranny of Heav'n: Milton, Magistrates, and the
Rhetoric of Satan's Protestantism in Paradise Lost
. . . 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. (1ohn Milton, 1enure of Kings and Magistrates, 757)
. . . the rulers` power is from God . . . . The magistrate cannot be resisted without God being resisted at the
same time . . . . private citizens . . . may not deliberately intrude in public affairs . . . or undertake anything at
all politically. If anything in a public ordinance requires amendment . . . let them commit the matter to the
judgment of the magistrate, whose hand alone here is free" (1ohn Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion,
1510, 1511).
1ohn Milton defended not only the overthrow, but also the execution of Charles I in his
1enure of Kings and Magistrates. In the second edition of 1KM, Milton marshals a variety
of oddly misrepresented Protestant authorities to bolster his case. Protestant Christians--
from Luther, to Calvin, to Anabaptist figures such as Thomas Mh ntzer, to such
contemporary English Presbyterian figures as Stephen Marshall--had long argued over
what rights magistrates (but not the common people) had to take up arms against a king.
The crux of the argument is this: ho may resist a king, and under what circumstances? In
summary terms, the conclusions of the above-mentioned figures are these: so-called
"private-persons" may themselves take no action whatsoever against either a king, a
prince, or an inferior magistrate; these magistrates and/or princes may resist, and may
even depose, a king or other superior ruler, if that ruler is behaving in a grossly unjust and
violent way toward his subjects.
Milton puts many of these very same arguments in the mouth of his Satan. Satan uses the
Protestant rhetoric of legitimate rebellion by "princes" or "inferior magistrates" against a
king and transforms it into a rallying cry for the overthrow of God himself. Satan
continually refers to his compatriots as "Princes," as "Powers," as "Potentates." Even the
poem's narrator gets in on the act: in referring to Mammon in his pre-fall role as Heaven's
architect, the narrator gives readers an image of "Scepter'd Angels" who viewed "many a
Tow'red structure high," 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). The
political structure of Heaven itself is drawn on a model of a King and his princely
magistrates, the very magistrates by whom, according to the above-mentioned Protestant
thinkers, resistance, rebellion, and overthrow could be carried out under the right
circumstances.
In making Satan the mouthpiece for Protestant theories of rebellion that spell out the
"proper" relation of the individual Christian to secular authority, Milton critiques not only
the theories themselves (which tended to uphold secular tyranny so long as it was decent
enough to refrain from intruding into the realm of Christian religion), but also the notions
of magistracy and kingship contained therein. Milton wants to take the arguments of
Luther, Calvin, Mh ntzer, and Marshall into much more radical territory than those men
were willing to enter. According to these men, the power of princes is from God. Satan goes
even further, implying that the power of (heavenly) princes is "self-begot, self-rais'd,"
before he finally claims, of himself and his fellow princes, that "Our puissance is our own"
(V. 860, 864). Milton come dangerously close to making the same claim for the people. For
Milton, the people, in the sense of "private persons," do not need a representative body of
magistrates to rid them of a tyrannical king. The people may rid themselves of such a king
directly, because, according to Milton in 1KM, "the power of kings and magistrates is
nothing else but what is . . . committed to them in trust from the people" (755). In his
Defense of the People of England, Milton writes that "kings . . . receive their kingship from
the people alone, to whom they are bound to be accountable" (93). True, Milton is careful
to include God in this theory of power, writing that "all human power . . . be of God"
(1KM 754), and that the "right of the people . . . is from God" (Defense 94), but this making
of the vox populi into an image of, or conduit for, the vox dei, tends, paradoxically, to
threaten God with erasure. If the people may with this power appoint and depose kings
and princes on earth, why may they not also turn this power against heaven? In arguing
that the power of a king or a magistrate comes from, and may be revoked by, the people
ruled by that same king or magistrate, while consistently portraying God himself as a king,
Milton stakes out a position that not only disavows the political "Protestantism" of his
Satan, but also threatens to undermine the authority of his God.
Calvin on Magistrates in Institutes of the Christian Religion
God ordains magistracy. Calvin is clear and insistent on this point. "Those who serve as
magistrates are called gods`" (1489). The scriptural passages he cites in support of this
point (Exodus 22:8, and Psalm 82:1,6) use the word elohim, which may be translated
variously as God, gods, and even magistrates or judges. Calvin takes full advantage of this
word and its possible translations to suggest that magistrates are not merely appointed by
God, but are in some way divine themselves due to the divine nature of their positions.
"Authority over all things on earth is in the hands of kings and other rulers . . . by divine
providence and holy ordinance" (1489). Civil authority is "the most sacred and by far the
most honorable of all callings in the whole life of mortal men" (1490).
Magistrates do not simply get a free ride. There are requirements they must live up to in
order to fulfill their sacred responsibilities. They should "remember that they are vicars of
God, and] they should watch with all care, earnestness, and diligence, to represent in
themselves to men some image of divine providence, protection, goodness, benevolence, and
justice" (1491). In other words, kings and magistrates are under obligation to stand in, in a
way, for God, represent God to the people. If they fail to live up to these weighty
responsibilities, then they have not only done wrong to men, but they are "insulting toward
God himself, whose most holy judgments they defile" (1491,1492).
When the magistrate administers punishments, he "carries out the very judgments of God"
(1497). Even though the pious are not to "afflict and hurt," in carrying out the judgments
of God, the civil ruler is free from guilt: "all things are done on the authority of God who
commands it" (1497).
Calvin is most emphatic in his insistence on the obedience due to civil authority. Subjects
should always remember that in obeying the magistrate, they are obeying God, "since the
rulers` power is from God" (1510). "The magistrate cannot be resisted without God being
resisted at the same time" (1511). Private citizens, moreover, are to have no voice in
governmental affairs; their duty is simply to obey: "private citizens . . . may not
deliberately intrude in public affairs . . . or undertake anything at all politically. If anything
in a public ordinance requires amendment . . . let them commit the matter to the judgment
of the magistrate, whose hand alone here is free" (1511).
Obedience is due even to unjust rulers. Calvin insists that absolute obedience is due not
only to the benevolent ruler, but also to the tyrant. A wicked ruler can, in fact, be the
judgment of God:
We are not only subject to the authority of princes who perform their office
toward us uprightly and faithfully as they ought, but also to the authority of
all who, by whatever means, have got control of their affairs . . . whoever
they may be, they have their authority solely from him." (1512)
Calvin allows only one exception to this absolute obedience. Obedience to man must not be
allowed to interfere with obedience to God:
such obedience is never to lead us away from obedience to him, to whose will
the desires of all kings ought to be subject, to whose decrees all their
commands ought to yield, to whose majesty their sceptres ought to be
submitted . . .The Lord . . . is the King of Kings, who, when he has opened his
sacred mouth, must alone be heard, before and above all men." (1520)
Calvin uses Nebuchadnezzar (the Babylonian king who crushed 1erusalem c. 587/586 BCE,
then dragged the 1udean population into captivity, cutting off "the heads of the high priest
and of the rulers" according to 1osephus Antiquities X.viii.5, p.220]) as an example of a
wicked ruler to whom obedience is nevertheless owed.
Calvin does appear to open a loophole, however. Sometimes God "raises up open avengers
from among his servants, and arms them with his command to punish the wicked from
miserable calamity" (1517). This appears to open the door to a possibility of justified
overthrow of a wicked ruler. This kind of "avenger" is "armed from heaven" and subdues
"the lesser power the unjust ruler] with the greater the power and justice of God], just as
it is lawful for kings to punish their subordinates" (1517). Even though Calvin`s intention
in this passage seems clearly antithetical to revolutions by the people (using as he does, a
parallel between the relationship of God to King, and King to Subject), some kind of genie
has been let out of the bottle here. Who is to verify what is, and what is not, a legitimate
sending by God? Calvin tries to stuff the genie back in by saying that "unbridled despotism
is the Lord`s to avenge" and that we "private individuals" should not "at once think that it
is entrusted to us, to whom no command has been given except to obey and suffer" (1518).
Only "magistrates of the people, appointed to restrain the willfulness of kings" (1519), such
as the ephors of Sparta, the tribunes of Rome, and the demarchs of Athens, are to take up
this call from God to subdue the lesser power with the greater. This notion of
"constitutional" resistance will gain tremendous currency in the later 16
th
and throughout
the 17
th
and 18
th
centuries. Many will claim, as did the Puritan preachers and pamphleteers
of the mid-17
th
century in England (among them one 1ohn Milton, whose 1enure of Kings
and Magistrates takes Calvin`s argument and runs with it to justify the recent beheading of
Charles I), that they have (or that they represent a group that has) just such a mandate
from God.
Luther on Magistrates in 1emporal Authority: 1o hat Extent it Should be Obeyed
On the question of any kind of active resistance to a ruler, Luther is clear: "For the
governing authority must not be resisted by force, but only by confession of the truth"
(698). Should this be taken to mean that Luther would forbid popular revolution,
revolution even against the most horrible of secular tyrants? His later response to the
Peasants` Revolt of 1524-1526 seems to indicate an answer of "Yes."
On the question of the absolute limits of the obedience of subjects to their prince, Luther is
slightly less clear. If a prince is definitely in the wrong, subjects are absolved of obedience:
"It is no one`s duty to do wrong; we must obey God (who deserves the right) rather than
men" (699). Luther further argues that if the subjects do not know whether or not the
prince is in the wrong, they should obey: "So long as they do not know, and cannot with all
possible diligence find out, they may obey him without peril to their souls" (700).
According to Luther, Paul tells Christians "Let all souls be subject to the governing
authority" (Romans 13:1), and Peter says "Be subject to every human ordinance" (1 Peter
2:13), because a true Christian lives and works on this earth not for self but for others.
Since Christians live among non-Christians, and those non-Christians have need of the
temporal law, Christians willingly submit to and assist the governing authority even if it is
tyrannical "for the sake of others, that they may be protected and that the wicked may not
become worse" (668). These two cases of the limits of obedience, when combined with
injunctions to resist evil only through the auspices of temporal authority, considering not
one`s self but one`s "neighbor and what is his" (670), seem to leave Christians entirely
vulnerable to any secular tyranny, just so long as it stops short of demanding that
Christians give up their beliefs.
Thomas Mh ntzer`s Sermon Before the Princes
In Mh ntzer`s formulation, the power of rulers, both superior and inferior, is the power to
"wipe out the godless" through the "power of God" (68). The princes, the civil magistrates,
rather than those whom Mh ntzer sneeringly refers to as "false clerics" (65), and "learned
divines" (67), are to eliminate "the wicked who hinder the gospel" (65). If they do not do
so, "the sword will be taken from them," as "the godless have no right to live except as the
elect wish to grant it to them" (68, 69). Though Mh ntzer outlines the possibility of
rebellion against a prince who fails in his duty, those empowered to overthrow such a ruler
are not "private persons," but the "elect," specifically, and only, those who qualify as "true
friends of God" (69). Who are the "true friends of God"? For Mh ntzer, they are the very
princes who take seriously their duty to God's church, as opposed to those "godless rulers
who should be killed, especially the priests and monks who revile the gospel as heresy for us
and wish to be considered at the same time as the best Christians" (69 emphasis added).
Those empowered to rebel, those empowered to overthrow and even kill a "godless ruler"
are other rulers, not the people themselves.
Stephen Marshall's Letter . . . of the Parliament's taking up Defensive Arms
For Marshall, the power to rebel against a king lies, not with the people themselves, but
with their representatives, the "representative body of a State" (3). This representative
body may only rebel against the king when the question is one of "defence against
unlawfull violence" (6). While Marshall does not contest the Royalist assertions that the
power of Magistrates is from God, he does assert that Magistrates may be resisted if they
are unjust:
. . . although they may not take from the Magistrate that power which God
hath given him; yet may they defend themselves against such unjust
violences, as God never gave the magistrate power to commit . . . . Where did
any of the Fathers ever oppose this opinion, and condemn this practice, that
is, declaring it unlawful especially for a representative body to defend
themselves against the unjust violence of their misled Princes? ("A Letter . .
.of the Parliament's taking up Defensive Arms," 1643, pp. 17, 20)
The question that remains is, who comprises the "they" who may not take from the
Magistrate that power that is from God, yet may defend themselves against unjust
violence? Private persons? No. The "they" referred to here is that "representative body of
a State" that Marshall identifies with the Parliament of England. Inferior Magistrates may
take up defensive arms against an unjust and violent king because they are, according to
Marshall's interpretation of Romans 13, the "higher power" or "governing authority"
whose power is from God. Marshall writes that "By the Supreme power must be meant,
that power . . . that] hath authoritie to make Lawes which shall bind the whole Nation . . .
and] to judge every person and persons in the Nation" (14). Marshall then outlines a
tripartite system of power, a system consisting of 1) "The power of making and repealing
Lawes," 2) "The power of making Warre and Peace," and 3) "The power of judging
Causes and Crimes." It is this system that represents that power which may not be
resisted:
Where these three meet, and make their residence, whether in one person, as
in absolute Monarchs; or in many, as in mixed Monarchies or Aristocracies;
or 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)
Marshall goes on to define this power as, in England, the King and Parliament together.
Thus, the taking up of defensive arms by Parliament against Charles I is not an example of
the kind of rebellion of private persons against a legal monarch to which both Luther and
Calvin are so adamantly opposed, but an example of one part of the "higher power" trying
to subdue another part of that same power to its proper role and function.
Satan's Protestantism in Paradise Lost
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 entitled and 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 "1ar 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 Cod 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 1enure 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" (1KM 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. (1KM 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" (1KM
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 1KM receive their power from the ruled. Of the Protestant theorists
dealt with here, only Stephen Marshall allows for the possibility that the "supreme
authority" may ever 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 1KM 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 Cod 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 "1ar 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 Cod 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 16
th
- and 17
th
-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 1KM, 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 ider die ruberischen und mrderischen 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.
Works Cited
Achinstein, Sharon. Milton and the Revolutionary Reader. Princeton: Princeton UP,
1994.
Calvin, 1ohn. Institutes of the Christian Religion. 2 vols. Trans. Ford Lewis Battles,
Ed. 1ohn T. McNeill. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960
Empson, William. Milton's Cod. Norfolk, Connecticut: New Directions, 1961.
1osephus. Antiquities of the 1ews. Complete orks of 1osephus. William Whiston,
trans. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1977.
Luther, Martin. "Secular Authority: To What Extent it Should be Obeyed." Martin
Luther's Basic 1heological ritings. Timothy F. Lull, ed. Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1989.
Marshall, Stephen. "A Letter Written by Mr. Stephen Marshall . . . of the
Parliament's taking up Defensive Arms." Printed for 1ohn Rothwell, 1643.
Milton, 1ohn. A Defence of the People of England. Martin Dzelzainis, ed. 1ohn
Milton: Political ritings. Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1991.
Milton, 1ohn. Paradise Lost. Merritt Hughes, ed. 1ohn Milton: Complete Pomes and
Major Prose. New York: Macmillan, 1957.
Milton, 1ohn. 1enure of Kings and Magistrates. Merritt Hughes, ed. 1ohn Milton:
Complete Pomes and Major Prose. New York: Macmillan, 1957.
Muntzer, Thomas. "Sermon Before the Princes." Spiritual and Anabaptist riters:
Documents Illustrative of the Radical Reformation. George Huntston William, ed.
1he Library of Christian Classics; v. 25. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1957.

The Tyranny of Heaven
Milton's Rejection of God as King

Michael Bryson
(U. Delaware Press, 2004)

Read a sampIe of
this book here.
1he 1yranny of Heaven argues for a new way of reading the
figure of Milton's God, contending that Milton rejects kings on
earth and in heaven. Though Milton portrays God as a king in
Paradise Lost, he does this neither to endorse kingship nor to
recommend a monarchical model of deity. Instead, he
recommends the Son, who in Paradise Regained rejects
external rule as the model of politics and theology for Milton's
"fit audience though few." The portrait of God in Paradise
Lost serves as a scathing critique of the English people and its
slow but steady backsliding into the political habits of a nation
long used to living under the yoke of kingship, a nation that
maintained throughout its brief period of liberty the image of
God as a heavenly king, and finally welcomed with open arms
the return of a human king.

Review of 1yranny of Heaven

Mourning Eve, Mourning Milton in Paradise Lost
Elizabeth M. A. Hodgson
University of British Columbia
ehodgsoninterchange.ubc.ca
Hodgson, Elizabeth M.A. "Mourning Eve, Mourning Milton in Paradise Lost". Early Modern Literary Studies
11.1 (May, 2005) 6.1-32 <URL: http://purl.oclc.org/emls/11-1/hodgmilt.htm>.
I
1. Hamlet`s mourning black seems to be a form of armour which Milton`s poetic
personae prefer to wear. In works from ~Lycidas to Samson Agonistes, the potency
of grief, disillusionment, and loss is fundamental to Milton`s literary self-
fashionings. In his prose texts and his poetry, the Miltonic speaker is often isolated,
deprived, sorrowful, in mourning over the slaughter of the Waldensians, the loss of
England`s religious supremacy, the death of a college friend, the surrender of the
people to wantonness, the betrayal of divine principles, or the failure of the
Revolution (1). This literary mourner, gathering up the parts of Truth or
questioning the water-nymphs or recounting the death of ~mother with infant,
creates for himself the righteousness of grief and the right to protest, and these two
~rights are Milton`s primary goal. What is both fascinating and culturally
ambiguous about this pattern of turning grief into judgement is how clearly the
Miltonic text also responds to the gendered ideology of grief in post-Reformation
England. This is manifest in the many moments in which his self-authorizing
sorrow shifts from resisting to invoking tears as ~women`s weapons as he
associates or distances his own grief with or from prophetic, deified, or prescient
women-mourners. This particular nexus of grief, women, and the poetic prophet is
a tool with cultural connections which explain the double-edged ambivalences of
Miltonic self-fashioning in Paradise Lost.

2. The trope of gendered mourning forms one of the epic`s responses to the central,
well-studied problem facing the Miltonic narrator in Paradise Lost: the audacity of
his claim to present divine mysteries and to ~justify the ways of God to man. As
1ohn Guillory argues, ~the intersection of epic invocation with biblical inspiration
is], in its origin, an ambivalence of identity (2). William Kerrigan`s 1he Prophetic
Milton examines the many configurations of divine or prophetic receivership which
the Miltonic narrator employs in Paradise Lost. What Kerrigan does not explore,
however, is the epic`s particularly potent juxtaposition of the figure of the prophet
with the conventions of grief. The powerful, ambiguous mourner stands alongside
and infiltrates the exculpatory devices of muse, dream, rational discovery and divine
indwelling which Milton`s prophetic narrator invokes. The Miltonic speaker,
strongly influenced and influencing the cultural discourses on grief, invests
considerable energy in the strategic cross-gendering potential of this sacred but
problematic social role.

3. Paradise Lost is of course in its largest sense a lament for the loss of human
innocence. And there are several moments where characters grieve thoughout the
poem: Eve, Adam, Satan, the fallen angels. But a small number of passages in
Paradise Lost reveal with particular clarity the authorizing functions of gendered
grief in the poem. These displays of authorizing grief occur most frequently in the
invocations, where sorrow is ambivalently presented as both a strength and a
danger to the poetic narrator. In the invocations the Miltonic speaker configures
himself as the suffering mourner, a strategy which, alongside his appropriation of
the muses, enables and defends his prophetic identity. In far less obvious ways in
the invocations the muses also function as proleptic mourners, shadows of disabling
maternal grief against which the Miltonic speaker positions himself. Epitomizing
the strengths and the dangers of such mourning are the central images in Book 5
and Book 10 in which Eve becomes the most prominent woman-mourner in the
epic. Her tears, also in proleptic fashion, mimic and invoke both the enabling and
the disabling sorrow of the Miltonic narrator. In these different ways, then, the
invocations and Eve`s mourning-narratives figure forth in Paradise Lost the
relationships between gendered grief and the prophetic imagination. The
correlatives between narrator and muse, narrator and Eve both resonate
throughout the poem and quickly dislimn, which perhaps reflects Milton`s
ambivalence over this category of gendered grief-one both useful and problematic
in his grander project of lamenting the loss of paradise (3).


II Cultural History and Women`s Mourning (4)
4. If Paradise Lost in these ways imitates elegy, it is hardly alone in doing so. The
elegiac mode`s ubiquitousness in European literature springs from its particular
capacity to enable prophecy, patronage, self-empowerment and advancement, as it
invites the valorization of the poet and the poet`s work as literary monuments to the
absent subject (5). As ~the right to inherit was traditionally linked to the right to
mourn, in taking on such a role mourning poets can also symbolically claim status
as inheritors (6). (The power granted to the elegist is certainly clear in the
aggressive appropriations of Milton`s narrator in ~Lycidas.(7))

5. But the cultural value of grief in this period often plays a complex and troubled role
in literary texts expressing grief and mourning. The value of sorrow in post-
Reformation England was often a highly vexed question, constrained by
ecclesiastical battles over the meaning of death and purgatory, medical and
philosophical theories of the passions, shifting spiritual ideologies of consolation and
submission to divine will, and political analogies of exile and loss. Scriptural and
ecclesiastical edicts, sermons, pamphlets, and parliamentary legislation all testify to
the significance of mourning as a cultural question in post-Henrician England (8).
6. Despite the problematic ideologies attached to mourning for English reformers,
historians agree that there was certainly no wide-spread Protestant attempt to
suppress grief or its expression. Sermons on the subject quote Paul`s explanation
that mourning is a righteous act and cite Ecclesiastes 7:7: ~it is better to go to the
mourning-house, than to the house of banqueting. 1ohn 1ewel explains that 1esus
healed ~sometimes by mourning and sorrowing (9). As Robert Burton asserts, in
less theological language, ~`tis a naturall passion to weep for our friends, an
irresistible passion to lament, and grieve (10). The social role of official or chief
mourner was understood likewise as a mark of prestige; Milton and many others
note ~the honour to be admitted a] mourner (11). The political analogy of the
protestant movement as the woman in the wilderness, a Una figure who ~laments
and mourns, was also a powerful trope among English polemicists (12). The special
visionary power of grief (womanly grief in this case) is evident in Mary
Rowlandson`s narratives: ~Oh! The wonderful power of God that mine eyes have
seen, affording matter enough for my thoughts to run, that when others are sleeping
mine are weeping (13). Proper grief, penitential sorrow, lamentations, were seen as
biblically authorized, spiritually necessary, signs of proper affection and correct
self-understanding. Women`s tears were often seen to exemplify these virtues, and
they were cited, in the repentant sorrow of Mary Magdalene, the Virgin Mary`s
pain, the lamentations of Rachel, the sufferings of the early women-martyrs, as
particularly important analogues for Protestant piety.

7. But, as Burton`s somewhat ambiguous defense of ~natural passion suggests, the
ancient anxieties over the medical, spiritual and social hazards of grief resurfaced
with new energy in this period. The ~passion of sorrow, either as excessive grief or
as formal mourning, as signs of either a lack of faith or of the wrong kind of faith,
became a site of considerable concern. As a reaction against ~Romish rituals
surrounding deathbeds and funerals, in campaigns against the perceived emotional
immoderation which fed the doctrine of purgatory, or as part of the renewed
emphasis on individual faith in election, many English authorities challenged the
appropriateness of overt grief and mourning. 1ames Pilkington, the bishop of
Durham in the mid-sixteenth century decreed that ~not superstition should be
committed in funerals], wherein the papists infinitely offend, as in masses,dirges,
trentals, singing.crosses, pardon letters to be buried with them, mourners, de
profundis by every lad that could say it (14). Some reformers in the late sixteenth
century decried those wailing the dead with more than heathenish outcries (15).
1ohn 1ewel dismissively recounts St. Hilary`s invocation of ~the sacrament of
weeping (16). Calvin in his commentaries on the gospels says that ~this is a
common disease, that they] .eagerly increase their grief by every possible means
(17). In a long tradition of consolation, but also in the fight against the Roman
power of purgatory, appeared tracts with titles like 1he Meane in Mourning
(Thomas Playfere, 1597) and An Antidote Against Immoderate Mourning (Samuel
Clarke, 1659). Burton`s Anatomy of Melancholy exhorts his readers to defend
against excessive passion: ~howsoever this passion of sorrow be violent, bitter, and
seizeth familiarly on wise, valiant, discreet men, yet it may surely be withstood..we
should not dwell too long upon our passions, to be desperately sad, immoderate
greivers, to let them tyrannize (18). Burton argues out of a long-standing belief in
the importance of the will in moderating feeling, but Calvin sees this as a specifically
Protestant issue of faith: he says that ~Paul does not demand of us a stony
numbness, but tells us to grieve in moderation, and not abandon ourselves to grief
like unbelievers who have no hope (19); by ~unbelievers he clearly means (among
other things) papists. He explains the temptation of grief for Protestants: ~the
vanity of our mind makes us sorrow or grieve over trifles, or for no reason at all,
because we are too much devoted to the world..our feelings are sinful because they
rush on unrestrainedly and immoderately (20). Richard Hooker likewise explains,
~now though the cause of our heavinesse be just, yet may not our affections herein
bee yeelded unto with too much indulgencie and favour (21). Hugh Latimer
argues, as does William Perkins, that only a godly sorrow will be blessed, ~as the
wicked, when they weep, they are sorrowful..so we must learn to be content; to go
from weeping to laughing (22).
8. The ancient association of women with tears was often elided with this intensified
Reformed concern over excessive or improper mourning (23). Andreas Hyperius in
his influential work 1he Practice of Preaching instructs his readers that ~all that be
of a sound iudgement, doe thincke it very uncomly and womannishe to lament
without measure, and to take so impaciently the chaunce that happeneth; ~in
comfortinge,...so to increase sorrowe, as that a womannish kinde of wayling and
shricking should follow...doth] incurre reprehension (24). Calvin explains that
David`s ~continued crying in the psalms] did not proceed from the] softness or
effeminacy of spirit which he argues does infect the Romanists with their belief in
purgatory (25). Hyperius says that ~it becommeth men chiefely to imbrace all
manhood and prowesse when faced with death, lest effeminate weakness rob them
of ~constancye (26). In his discussion of Martha, Lazarus` sister, Calvin decries
those who ~nourish the excess of her grief (27). In King Lear ~women`s weapons,
water-drops are a sign not only of immoderate grief but also of ~the mother,
~hysterica passio" (28). Burton cites the shamefulness of ~grave staid men
otherwise lamenting like ~those Irish women, and Creeks at their graves, who]
commit many undecent actions, & almost goe besides themselves (29). Burton also
notes that Socrates called his companions women (~mulieres") for weeping at his
deathbed, at which ~they were abashed, and ceased from their tears (30). Womanly
grief is elided with a Romanist form of primitive idolatry, lending new potency to its
status as the emasculating culturally other, a sign of emotional or spiritual
pathology, an image of excess, appetite, and error.

9. A common element of this resistance to womanly tears appears in the argument that
feminine sorrow is a just and correct consequence of Eve`s transgression (31). A
1640 funeral-sermon entitled ~Death in Birth, or the Frute of Eves Transgression
rehearses the argument that ~there is a.punishment inflicted upon all women kind
in answer to the.sinnes committed by our Grandmother Eve.it was pronounced
presently upon her, that her sorrowes.should bee multiplied (32). Tears are thus
both effect and sign of woman`s originary trespass. Thomas Playfere, in his tract
1he Meane in Mourning, honours women`s tears, but also says this: ~Naturally
(saith S. Peter) the woman is the weaker vessel, soone moved to weepe, and subject
to many, either affectionate passions, or else passionate affections... the sinne of a
woman was the ruine of man. Therefore these women. wept the more (33).

10. The women to whom Playfere refers represent the inherited error which women`s
tears were seen to represent: a weaker capacity to judge correctly. This aspect of
blurred vision in women`s grief is a common concern for the guardians of
Protestant decorum and theology. Richard Hooker in a funeral sermon discusses the
proof-text on this, from the gospel-account of the women mourning 1esus on his way
to the crucifixion:
When Christ.was led unto cruell death, there followed a number of people and
women, which women bewailed much his heavie case. It was naturall compassion
which caused them, where they saw undeserved miseries, there to poure forth
unrestrained teares. nor was this reproved. But in such readines to lament wher
they lesse needed, their blindnes in not discerning that for which they ought much
rather to have mourned, this our Savior.putteth] them in minde that the teares
which were wasted for him might better have beene spent upon themselves (34).
Hooker makes it clear that he imagines women in particular to be more prone to
this ~natural compassion which can fall short of spiritual wisdom.

11. The cultural language of grief, then, often seems to have been a site of considerable
ambiguity in post-Reformation England. Grief itself was seen to have spiritual,
theological and political merit, for men and women alike; it was seen to be natural
and biblical, lending spiritual authority, affective weight and political or poetic
privilege to the participant in the lineage of sacred mourners (35). But grief also
seems to have been seen as a social, medical, spiritual danger, stigmatized by its
frequent association with Eve`s particularly womanly weakness, ignorance, or sin.
The conjunction of these discourses on grief with Paradise Lost`s major and minor
sorrow-tropes generates and contextualizes, then, the ambiguous mourning of the
epic.


III Paradise Lost
12. The Positive Power of Grief
The invocations to Books 3 and 9 make clearest the Miltonic narrator`s positive
ideology of authorizing sorrow. These passages connect, as authorizing strategies, a
contained expression of loss, the presence of the feminine muses, and the prophetic
emblems of inner vision. In the tradition of biblical prophets like 1eremiah or
Amos, the Miltonic narrator in these passages emphasizes his own sorrow in order
to lend ethical authority to his inspired message.

13. In Book 3, the address to ~Holy Light introduces the ~Heavenly Muse, (3.19), and
the ~Muses haunt /Clear Spring, or shady Grove, or Sunny Hill (3.27-8) where the
poet dallies, ~smit with the love of sacred Song (3.29). Whatever, or whomever, the
invocation begins by addressing, the Miltonic narrator sees as connected to his
feminine muse and her sacred precincts (36) to provide him with the prophetic
insight he requires and claims:
So much the rather thou Celestial Light
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight. (3.51-5)
Milton carefully collects these images of height, of secret, sacred space, of the
mysterious darkness through which his guides can lead him, to create the mystery of
prophecy around his literary work. The baptismal waters of the muses` sacred hill
he ~visits].Nightly (32); he describes his ~obscure sojourn (15) in Hell and his
return as a kind of trance-like vision; his thoughts ~voluntary move/ Harmonious
numbers; as the wakeful Bird/ Sings darkling, and in shadiest Covert hid/ Tunes her
nocturnal Note (3.37-40). The prophetic gift requires here the conventional
passive, trance-like state, a world of shade and darkness.
14. The most important element of this fairly conventional representation of
inspiration, though, lies in what seems to be for Milton a necessary correlative in his
own sorrow. Here the Miltonic speaker quite explicitly and deliberately encircles the
darkness of the prophetic dream with a lament for the physical darkness in which
he constantly lives:
thou
Revisitst not these eyes, that roll in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quencht thir Orbs,
pOr dim suffusion veil`d. (3.22-6)
.not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of Ev`n or Morn,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off, and for the Book of knowledge fair
Presented with a Universal blanc
Of Nature`s works to me expung`d and ras`d,
And Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. (3.41-9)
He consoles (and defends) himself by claiming the muse`s territory and the sacred
prophets` role, but grief here seems a necessary element of that prophetic power.
Milton quite deliberately casts his grief in pastoral terms, as an echo of Lycidas; in
images of Hell, to echo the profound grief of the fallen Angels; and in petrarchan
images of the unseen flower, to pre-figure Eve`s romantic laments. The final image
of ~Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out suggests the dream-gates in the Aeneid,
both the true and the false, as Milton`s prophetic dreams and the darkness of loss
cross paths. The prevalence of verbs of seeing in the following passage
(~th`Almighty Father.bent down his eye. (56-8)) only emphasizes, by contrast,
Milton`s sense of bereavement.
15. But the Miltonic narrator`s invocation of loss is as strategic as his conflation of
genders in his vision of his Muses. He indulges in persistent mourning here in order
to ally himself with the forms of subjectivity which Mary Rowlandson claims for
herself above. The mourning poetic prophet who is both supernaturally empowered
and uniquely suffering is a very powerful ideological figure with whom to ally
oneself, as the Miltonic narrator does here. The invocation claims, like Rowlandson,
that sorrow has lent him greater vision: ~so much the rather thou Celestial Light /
Shine inward,.that I may see and tell / Of things invisible to mortal sight (3,51-
2,54-5).
16. The invocation to Book 9 likewise frames mourning as empowering, in this instance
as a particularly strategic defense against the charge of agency. The intentional note
of grief, imagined, anticipatory, and incipient, is again an important element of that
defense. Milton's attempt to construct a poetic identity here locates itself in absences
and griefs which reveal both kenotic submission to Urania and negative poetic
mastery (37).
17. The Miltonic narrator`s central strategy here is to empty himself of poetic agency.
He is, he claims, ~nor skill'd nor studious (42) of other subjects, a blank slate (38).
He particularly casts himself as the object of the Muse's ~unimplored sleep-visions,
then, the vehicle only for ~unpremeditated verse. Milton`s lack of premeditation
matches (and implies) Urania's intentionality, her divine premeditation. And
Milton's use of a term with Calvinist resonance (~unpremeditated) suggests that
Urania has appointed and elected the human speaker for this literary task. Milton's
speech here is full of subjunctives and conditionals which reinforce the dream`s and
the muse`s role of masking the direct activity of the speaker.
18. Milton also attempts to temper, or resolve, the self-authorizing tone of this
invocation through suggestions of grief, especially his own over lost opportunities
(~an age too late, or cold/ Climate, or Years (44-5)); he feels his wings ~deprest
(46). The Miltonic narrator begins the preface with a lament: ~I now must change/
Those Notes to Tragic. a world of woe,/ Sin, and her shadow Death, and
Misery.sad task (5-13). He seems to lament his own subject, to make himself into
the official mourner of the fall to come, as a container for his own hubris in claiming
his subject. He also grants himself the unearned title of the only true elegist of
~Heroic Martyrdom (32). Milton`s capacity to be a mourner, for himself and
especially for others, frames the problem of creative identity for the miltonic son of
the Muse in Book 9. The kenotic sacrifice of the poetic son, the imminent fall of
man, and his own dreamlike allegiance to the gift of heavenly Wisdom all attempt to
buttress the Miltonic narrator`s authorial self-constructions. Mourning here
becomes the poet as he seeks to win ~the identity of the prophet in the renunciation
of the not sacred (39) and in his laments for the loss of the sacred as well.
19. The Temptation of Grief
However, just as grief was seen culturally as both affective virtue and emotional
weakness, Paradise Lost also hints at the dangers of disabling womanly sorrow.
The most shadowy woman-mourner in Paradise Lost, whose imagined weeping
represents for the Miltonic speaker the temptation rather than the protection of
grief, is Calliope, the mother of Orpheus. She appears as an echo of the narrator`s
own loss in Book 7, though here the Miltonic narrator also attempts to distance
himself from through the agency of his divinely inspired Muse. His visionary voice
is potentially stifled by sorrow and grief, and he attempts to contain that dangerous
erosion of his prophetic vision. This attempt to resist, while invoking, mourning is
clear:
But drive far off the barbarous dissonance
Of Bacchus and his Revellers, the Race
Of that wild Rout that tore the 1hracian Bard
In Rhodope, where Woods and Rocks had Ears
To rapture, till the savage clamor drown`d
Both Harp and Voice; nor could the Muse defend
Her Son. So fail not thou, who thee implores:
For thou art Heavn`ly, shee an empty dream. (7.30-39)
Milton imagines himself as a not-Orpheus with a not-mourning muse not present in
his own poetic work, a ghost of the denaturing sorrow he here seeks to resist and
contain (40). The difficulty is of course the absent presence of both Orpheus
(another poet) and Calliope (a mourning muse) in this invocation of his own muse.
Milton seems to declare himself to be the resurrected, redeemed (Christlike) version
of Orpheus, but he is simultaneously declaring that his own ~fit audience is rather
uncomfortably akin to the ~wild rout who destroyed Orpheus. As Patricia Vicari
explains, ~now, instead of being connected with ideal beauty and the art that
redeems from death, Orpheus represents to Milton the precarious situation of the
poet (41).
20. Reinforcing Milton`s uneasily kenotic connection to Christ/Orpheus is the figure of
the helplessly grieving mother, a mother who is simultaneously the Virgin Mary,
unable to ~defend / Her Son (38-9) and Calliope, the ineffectual maternal muse to
the dying sacred poet. It is this image, powerfully emphasized by a strong caesura
and the immediate comparison Milton makes to his own muse, which reinforces the
threat to Milton himself as a messenger of the Word. Calliope, as the ninth and
greatest muse, ~representing the harmony that the other eight produced, is here
powerless (42). The proem's reworking of Horace's ~Descende caelo can only
emphasize this, as in the original Horace claims that Calliope protected him as a
child (43). The mourning mother recirculates the lament of the earlier lines as
Orpheus and Calliope are themselves ~fall'n on evil days. Milton`s declaration
that Calliope is only an ~empty dream only reinforces the troubling resemblances
between her putative helpless grief and the speaker`s own dreams, presided over by
his muse, which are meant to console him. Orpheus, the sacred speaker, torn by the
~wild Rout (7.34) while his mother helplessly watched, invokes both the death of
Christ and the crucial problem of loss of voice suggested by, and expressed through,
the lament of the Miltonic speaker.

21. Sorrowing Eve
The Miltonic speaker in the invocations has an ambivalent relationship to the
prophetic medium of lamentation and mourning, then, sometimes adopting and
sometimes resisting the role of the mourner as he imagines himself inspired by his
heavenly muse. The question of Eve`s tears becomes a necessary correlative to this
dynamic, then, especially given the cultural meaning of her sorrow and especially as
in the poem her own weeping is so interestingly juxtaposed with reflections on and
of poetic imagination and divine knowledge. Though she is a character-function of
great complexity and with many different modalities throughout the poem, she more
than once seems to function like the muses in representing the authorial self-
fashioning of the Miltonic narrator. This is particularly true in Book 5, where the
narrator frames Eve`s innocent sorrow in terms which predict his own inspired
grief over both his personal losses and the grander loss of paradise itself (44).

22. Eve's sorrow opens Book 5, creating a structural parallel with the invocations which
open other odd-numbered books in the epic. The parallels between Eve`s inspired
dream and Milton`s imagined inspiration in Book 7 of the epic are of course
familiar. Eve in her dream is guided by ~one shap'd and wing'd like one of those
from Heav'n (5.55); he offers knowledge and the right to ~be henceforth among the
Gods (77), ~not to Earth confin'd (78). Eve eats the forbidden fruit, ascends ~up
to the Clouds (86) and then descends again to awaken. Milton's narrator is
likewise led by one who ~visit'st his] slumbers nightly (7.29). He is guided by a
~Heavenly born (7) muse who has access to ~Eternal Wisdom (9) and who leads
the speaker ~up... / into the Heav'n of Heav'ns (13). The narrator breathes
~Empyreal Air (14) like Eve. Milton's narrator returns to his ~Native Element
(16), the Earth, in an echo of the epic's narratives merging Eve with the maternal
earth of Eden (45). A vision of the fall guides the narrator as well: ~Lest...I
fall...Erroneous there to wander and forlorn (17-20), ~fall'n on evil days, / On evil
days though fall'n, and evil tongues, ~in darkness, and with dangers compast
round, / And solitude~ (25-30). Here the sorrowing Eve writes ~Milton in the
Mother of Mankind's re-configuration of the narrator`s authorizing laments (46).

23. Such evidence of similarities between Milton-the-poet and Eve has, of course, been
used primarily to defend Eve as a character whose poetic gifts match Milton`s own
(47). But in many ways this vector of meaning is double-ended; what Milton says
about Eve, Eve also says about Milton. Even if Eve were more than a literary
function in the poem, and even if she is a primary symbolic figure of womanhood, it
is dangerous to imply or assume that she is redeemed by being the "embodiment of
Milton's defense...of poesy" (48). Some of the same evidence which McColley and
others have used to prove Eve's authorial gifts: her imaginative powers, her naming
of the flowers, her spontaneous nocturnes and sonnets, her ability to mirror nature
- may instead, in the contexts Milton constructs, confirm that the narrator`s own
poetic persona has an uneasy relationship to gender and spiritual authority (49).
Certainly the corresponding griefs invoked by Eve's troubling dream in Book 5 and
Milton's in his invocations would suggest as much.

24. The differences between the two accounts are, of course, crucial to the narrator`s
point about his poetic endeavour. His guide is not Satan but Urania, a favoured
consort of "th'Almighty Father" (7.11). Satan offers knowledge, while Urania offers
wisdom. As Diane McColley notes, Satan in the dream can only parody Eve's
evening song, that sign of her poetic virtue (50). And the Miltonic "I" imagines the
Heavens not as part of Satan's temptation to be a god but as a mark of divine
approval of his "mortal voice" (7.24). He claims for himself Augustine's highest
prophetic achievement: "the minds of certain men themselves are raised to so lofty a
height by the Holy Spirit, as to perceive the immovable causes of future things...as
they are in themselves, in the very highest pinnacle of the universe" (51).

25. But in other respects this same argument betrays still further the similitude between
Eve's pre-vision of evil and Milton's doubtful poetic vision in Book 7. Milton may
be suggesting that Eve's passive innocence as dreamer is a model for his own
prophetic receivership. But achievement, rather than passivity, connects these two
sleepers. As William Kerrigan argues, "the third heaven of the visio dei requires the
absolute passivity of the rapt soul," but Milton is highly active in his vision,
choosing to advise, instruct, and assist his heavenly guide. Both Eve and Milton
have, in their fancy's work, "presum'd" (7.13) to see "The Earth outstretcht
immense" (5.87). If Eve's dream previsions the fall, Milton's sleeping fancies do
likewise, redolent as they are of the same ambition with which Satan tempts Eve.

26. Most interesting for this argument, though, is the relationship between Eve`s
response to her vision and the Miltonic narrator`s to his. The narrator expresses his
sense of loss over his present circumstances:
More safe I Sing with mortal voice, unchang`d
To hoarse or mute, though fall`n on evil days,
On evil days though fall`n, and evil tongues;
In darkness, and with dangers compast round,
And solitude (7:24-8)
The lamenting repetitions of the lines here are striking, as are the echoes of the
other grieving invocations; "in darkness, and with dangers compast round is
reminiscent of the openings to both Book 3 and Book 9. His ~fall into the present
world is felt to be literal, physical, and metaphorical, though he claims that his grief
is both expressed and contained by the inspiring presence of Urania. Eve`s fall in
her dream is likewise both real and not real. But though her fall is only prophesied,
Eve still feels "sweet remorse / and pious awe, that fear'd to have offended (5.135)":
silently a gentle tear she] let fall
From either eye, and wip'd them with her hair;
Two other precious drops that ready stood,
Each in thir crystal sluice, Adam] ere they fell
Kiss'd. (130-4)
Her decorous sorrow is far from the ~immoderate mourning so distrusted in the
homiletic and elegiac traditions, and her tears are precisely for her own potential
sin, as both a prophetic and a self-correcting sign of her lapsarian tendencies.
Unlike the women following 1esus, Eve here understands for whom she should
weep; like the women after her, Eve ~weeps the more in considering her own
potential and originary guilt. Eve is a cultural sign of her own legacy at this
moment, even while she mirrors the narrator`s mourning.

27. More interesting, though, is the other specific signifier of female sorrow which this
passage represents. The gesture of crying precious tears and drying them with hair
invoke the account in the gospel of Luke of Mary Magdalene, whose extravagant
washing of 1esus` feet with her tears was seen as a gesture both of feminine
repentance for sin and as a prophetic act of mourning for 1esus` upcoming death
(52). These cultural identifiers of Mary Magdalene--tears, hair, kiss, even the
precious container (the "crystal sluice")--suggest that Eve is also here
anachronistically adopting the role of Magdalene as "the weeper," the official
mourner for the fall of man and the death of Christ.

28. This Eve/Magadalene figure is clearly an initial step in Paradise Lost`s defense of
specifically reformed piety, an intermittent project of the poem which is often
buttressed by typological treatments of Eve and Adam as righteous mourners like
the Protestant exiles who ~lament and mourn/ in Germany and England] (53). In
this instance in Book 5, Adam and and the tearful Eve seek to worship as good
Protestants, with "fit strains... unmeditated" (148-9), surrounded by "the shrill
Matin Song/ of Birds" (7-8). Their unliturgical praise is clearly valorized in the
poem, and Milton's further critique of the Roman church is hinted at throughout
Eve`s dream, as in it she falsely rises to Heaven "by merit" (80) to become a kind of
saint or idol. Milton`s chaste appropriation of the Magdalene trope of eroticized
sorrow, so celebrated in the baroque sentimentality of the Catholic Counter-
Reformation, is a deliberately ironic undercutting of the values of the Roman
church.

29. But the specific point of this particular allegorization and appropriation is, in a kind
of recursive loop, to support the sacred poetics which the Miltonic narrator is
building for himself (54). Mary Magdalene's passive mode of prophecy, the witness
and servant rather than the publisher or defender of the resurrection, is clearly
ironically appropriate for Eve as well, who is here the unknowing messenger of the
fall-to-come. In Milton`s search for a prophetic position of unknowing knowledge,
then, this conflation of Eve and Mary Magdalene is a helpful tool. As Mary
Magdalene was also often portrayed as a reclining "reader" in paintings and
illustrations, and described repeatedly through her role as the first prophet-
messenger of the resurrection, this suggestion of the New Testament's chief woman-
mourner resonates with Milton`s image of Eve as the Old Testament's first woman-
mourner, and both together are a central image for the prophetic narrator (55).

30. This excessively controlled prophetic penitence of Eve is remarkably different from
the second Magdalene-moment in Paradise Lost, in which Eve serves as the tearful
suppliant to a temporarily Christlike Adam:
.Eve
Not so repulst, with Tears that ceas`d not flowing,
And tresses all disorder`d, at his feet
Fell humble, and imbracing them, besought
His peace, and thus proceeded in her plaint.
Forsake me not thus, Adam, witness Heav`n
What love sincere, and reverence in my heart
I bear thee, and unweeting have offended (10, 909-916)
Here Eve`s postlapsarian grief is at least potentially excessive and immoderate,
~with Tears that ceas`d not flowing, her spirits ~disorder`d. The striking
evocation of Magdalene`s eroticized sorrow (~imbracing Adam with ~love
sincere) reveals Milton`s ambivalent appropriation of the mourning-woman
figure; here her ~plaint is both appropriately spiritual and inappropriately
symbolic of feminine excess at the same time. Eve`s tears here are perfect in one
sense; by Hooker`s standards she weeps correctly for herself and her own
sinfulness. As a mourning prophet, however, she is imperfect; she believes that their
death will alone prevent the spread of evil, for instance, and she suggests a
revisionist history of the fall by implying that it is Adam she has most truly
~offended and that her offense was ~unweeting (916). She also misperceives her
own linguistic power, saying that she ~knows] / how little weight her] words with
Adam] can find, (967-8) while her words have, until almost the end of Book 9,
been entirely influential for Adam. This combination of right sorrow, disorderly
excessive weeping, and misdirected historicizing reinforces the extent to which Eve
is here figured as the absolute archetype of the woman-mourner: her tears are
indeed ~the frute of Eves transgression, and they point backward and forward to
the ~death in birth which she both fears and exemplifies.

31. The problematic utility of Eve`s typological mourning is only the most obvious
indicator of this figure in Paradise Lost, though. Since Eve`s actions were held to be
cause and sign of improper womanly sorrow, she cannot help functioning in
Milton`s epic as an avatar of mourning. And since mourning was understood to be
both authorizing and disabling, Eve`s grief, perhaps not surprisingly, has an
ambiguous value in the web of referents to the narrator himself. But her status in
the composite laments of Paradise Lost is precisely like, in its ambiguity, the
gendered grief in the invocations as well.

32. Conclusion
In all of these attempts to construct a prophetic authorship, then, Paradise Lost
employs a nexus of empowerment and grief which springs from an affiliation
between the narrator and a woman-figure. The feminine-mourner trope, from
classical times on, had several obvious uses: it not only enabled various kinds of
divine patronage, but it also supported the artlessness or speechlessness-defense for
truth-claims; it valorized authoritative empathy; it granted privileged spiritual
virtues; it allowed for models of correction and consolation; it fueled a prophetic
voice. This particularly labile gendering of the authorial voice in Paradise Lost
bears along with it, though, the particular freight of post-Reformation England`s
unease over female sorrow, its excess, error, and danger. In Books 3, 7, and 9 of the
epic, the Miltonic narrator invokes a muse who will provide the necessary calling
and creative empowerment for the grieving poet, and he creates images which imply
filial obedience to that Mother-figure through a Christlike or Orphic kenosis. The
parallel dream in Book 5 suggests, through Eve and her association with Mary
Magdalene, a model of poetic/prophetic utterance implying passive containment of
the sacred imagination. In each case, the required prophetic unnaming, passivity
and tranquility proves transitory; Milton's narrator invokes gender and authorizing
sorrow in an effort to contain and defend the sacred filial authority which he fears is
both necessary and indefensible. Paradise Lost thus reveals the difficulties and
possibilities inherent in creating a position from which to utter forth a biblical
lament. The narrator`s visions issue from a multiple source, multiply gendered,
which allows him great flexibility in his self-defenses. But the indirections and
variability in this recurrent set of authorizing strategies demonstrate the deep
uncertainty and cultural ambivalence surrounding his invocations of maternally
sanctioned grief. The prophetic dreams of Paradise Lost, both the narrator`s and
Eve`s, forge a link between woman-inspired imagination and an empowering
sorrow-an ambidextrous cultural weapon which Milton uses, though he seems to
know it is not only two-handed but double-edged.


Notes
(1) On Milton`s preoccupation with mourning, see in particular William Kerrigan, 1he
Prophetic Milton (Charlottesville: Virginia UP, 1974), 162-6, 184-6; Amy Boesky, ~The
Maternal Shape of Mourning: A Reconsideration of ~Lycidas, Modern Philology 95:4
(May, 1998), 463-83; Dennis Kay, Melodious 1ears: 1he English Funeral Elegy from
Spenser to Milton (Oxford: Clarendon UP, 1990), 222-232; Celeste Marguerite Schenck,
Mourning and Panegyric: 1he Poetics of Pastoral Ceremony (University Park: Pennsylvania
State UP, 1988), 91-106; Michael Lieb, Milton and the Culture of Jiolence (Ithaca and
London: Cornell UP, 1994), 40-41, 46-51, 60-63; Louis L. Martz, Poet of Exile: A Study of
Milton's Poetry (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1980), 60-75, 79-94.
(2) 1ohn Guillory, Poetic Authority: Spenser, Milton, and Literary History (New York:
Columbia UP, 1983), 106.
(3) For a detailed history of the correlation between dream-visions and prophecy, see
William B. Hunter, 1he Descent of Urania: Studies in Milton 1945-1988 (Toronto:
Associated UP, 1989), 21-30. See Maureen Quilligan, Milton's Spenser (Ithaca and London:
Cornell UP, 1983), 218ff., on Milton's resistance to women's prophecies.
(4) This article is the second half of what was originally a much longer piece comparing
Lanyer's work to Milton's. The Lanyer-half of the argument as published separately as
"Prophecy and Gendered Mourning in Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex 1udaeorum", Studies in
English Literature 43:1 (Winter, 2003), 101-116. My thanks to SEL for permission to use
parts of this history-section previously published in that SEL article.
(5) On elegy in Milton`s day, see especially: Peter Sacks, 1he English Elegy: Studies in the
Cenre from Spenser to Yeats (Baltimore: 1ohns Hopkins UP, 1985), chapters 1-5; Dennis
Kay, Melodious 1ears: 1he English Funeral Elegy from Spenser to Milton (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1990); Robert N. Watson, 1he Rest is Silence: Death as Annihilation in the
English Renaissance (Berkeley: California UP, 1994); Eric Smith, By Mourning 1ongues:
Studies in English Elegy (Ipswich: Boyedell Press, 1977), chapters 1-2; 1oshua Scodel, 1he
English Poetic Epitaph: Commemoration and Conflict from 1onson to ordsworth (Ithaca:
Cornell UP, 1991), chapters 1-7; Speaking Crief in English Literary Culture, Shakespeare to
Milton, ed. Margo Swiss and David A. Kent (Duquesne UP, 2002).
(6) Peter Sacks, 1he English Elegy, 83.
(7) Celeste Marguerite Schenck, Mourning and Panegyric: 1he Poetics of Pastoral Ceremony
(University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1988), 16. See on ~Lycidas Amy Boesky, ~The
Maternal Shape of Mourning".
(8) David Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in 1udor
and Stuart England (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997), 397-474; on this social history, see
especially Ralph Houlbrooke, Death, Religion, and the Family in England, 148-175
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), Christopher Daniell, Death and Burial in Medieval
England 1-155 (London: Routledge, 1997), Eamon Duffy, 1he Stripping of the Altars:
1raditional Religion in England c. 14-158 (New Haven: Yale UP, 1992); Philippe Aries,
1he Hour of our Death, trans. Helen Weaver (New York: Knopf, 1981); Clare Gittings,
Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England (London: Croom Helm, 1984);
1ohn McManners, Death and the Enlightenment (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981).
(9) 1he orks of 1ohn 1ewel, ed. 1ohn Ayre (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1847), Vol. II, p.
1136.
(10) Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Nicolas K. Kiessling, Thomas C. Faulkner,
& Rhonda L. Blair (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), Vol. II, p.180.
(11) 1ohn Milton, ~The Reason of Church Government Urged Against Prelaty, Book 2, in
1ohn Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (New York:
Macmillan, 1957), 667.
(12) ~Show Me Dear Christ, Complete English Poems of 1ohn Donne, ed. C.A. Patrides
(London: Dent, 1985), p. 446, line 4.
(13) Mary Rowlandson, ~The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, in Puritans among the
Indians: Accounts of Captivity and Redemption, 17-1724, ed. Alden T. Vaughan and
Edward W. Clark (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1981), 74-5.
(14) Quoted in David Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death, 399.
(15) Quoted in Cressy, 400.
(16) 1ewel, Complete orks, Vol. II, p. 1104.
(17) 1ohn Calvin, Calvin's Commentaries: 1he Cospel According to St. 1ohn 11-21 and the
First Epistle of 1ohn, trans. T.H.L. Parker, ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F.
Torrance (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1959), 10-11.
(18) Anatomy of Melancholy, Vol II, pp. 177, 180.
(19) Calvin, Commentaries, 13.
(20) Calvin, Commentaries, 16.
(21) Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, ed. W. Speed Hill (London:
Harvard UP, 1977), 6 Vols., Vol. 5, p. 371.
(22) Hugh Latimer, orks, ed. George Elwes Corrie (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1844),
Vol. I, pp.479-80.
(23) See especially on this broader subject: Patricia Phillippy, omen, Death, and
Literature in Post-Reformation England (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002); Speaking Crief
from Shakespeare to Milton, ed. Margo Swiss and David A. Kent (Duquesne UP, 2002),
chapters 7,8, and 12; 1uliana Schiesari, 1he Cendering of Melancholia: Feminism,
Psychoanalysis and 1he Symbolics of Loss in Renaissance Literature (Ithaca: Cornell UP,
1992); Lynn Enterline, 1he 1ears of Aarcissus: Melancholia and Masculinity in Early
Modern riting (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995), chapters 1 and 2.
(24) Andreas Hyperius, 1he Practise of Preaching, otherwise called the Pathway to the
Pulpit (London: Thomas East, 1577), pp.171-2, 174.
(25) 1ean Calvin, Commentaries on the Psalms, trans, ed. 1ames Anderson (Edinburgh:
Calvin Translation Society.1847-9). Vol 5, p. 131; Vol. 4, p.408.
(26) Calvin, Commentaries, 171.
(27) Calvin, Commentaries, 11.
(28) William Shakespeare, King Lear, in 1he Riverside Shakespeare, 2
nd
ed. (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 3.1, lines 277, 143. Lear`s linking of his own maddening grief
with his daughters` want of proper feminine softness suggests what he fears: a
transgendering, a transference of feminine grief Goneril and Regan them to Lear, and a
transference of masculine power from himself to his daughters.
(29) Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 176.
(30) Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 180.
(31) Patricia Phillippy notes the connection between Eve and women`s tears as well
(omen, Death, and Literature, 150).
(32) ~Death in Birth, or, The Fruite of Eves Transgression, in 1hrenoikos, or 1he House of
Mourning; Furnished with Directions for the houre of Death. Delivered in LIII
Sermons.By Daniel Featly, Martin Day, Ri. Houldsworth, Richard Sibbs, 1homas
1aylor.1homas Fuller and other reverend divines (London, 1660), 713-723; p. 617 sic:
misprint for ~719].
(33) Thomas Playfere, 1he Meane in Mourning. A Sermon preached at Saint Maries Spittle
in London on 1uesday in Easterweeke, 1595 (London, 1616), B1v-B2r.
(34) Hooker, Ecclesiasticall Politie, 358.
(35) On the mourner-role for women-poets, see for example: Wendy Wall, ~Our
Bodies/Our Texts? Renaissance Women and the Trials of Authorship, Anxious Power:
Reading, riting, and Ambivalence in Aarrative by omen,, ed. Carol 1. Singley & Susan
Elizabeth Sweeney (Albany: SUNY UP, 1993), 51-71; Patricia Phillippy`s omen, Death
and Literature, chapters 5,6, and 7; chapters by Donna 1. Long and W. Scott Howard in
Speaking Crief; Elizabeth M.A. Hodgson, ~Prophecy and Gendered Mourning in Lanyer`s
Salve Deus Rex 1udaeorum, SEL 43:1 (Winter 2003), 101-116; 1anel Mueller, ~The
Feminist Poetics of Lanyer`s Salve Deus Rex 1udaeorum, Feminist Measures: Soundings in
Poetry and 1heory, eds. Lynne Keller and Cristanne Miller (Ann Arbor: Michigan UP,
1994), 208-36; Margaret Hannay, Philip's Phoenix: Mary Sidney Countess of Pembroke
(New York: Oxford UP, 1990).
(36) William B. Hunter and Stevie Davies make clear the importance of gender in this
invocation`s slide from ~Holy Light to the Muse herself (1he Descent of Urania, 31-43).
(37) See also on this point William Kerrigan,1he Prophetic Milton, 137.
(38) 1ohn Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (New York:
Macmillan, 1957). All subsequent citations will be from this edition and will list line
numbers (with book number when necessary).
(39) Poetic Authority, 106.
(40) Patricia Vicari, ~The Triumph of Art, the Triumph of Death: Orpheus in Spenser and
Milton, in Orpheus: 1he Metamorphosis of a Myth, ed. 1ohn Warden (Toronto: Toronto
UP, 1982), 207-230: pp. 215-16. On this topic see also 1ohn Block Friedman, Orpheus in the
Middle Ages (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1970); Richard 1. DuRocher, Milton and Ovid
(Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985); and Michael Lieb, Milton and the Culture of Jiolence.
(41) Vicari, ~The Triumph of Art, 224.
(42) E.R. Gregory, Milton and the Muses (Tuscaloosa: Alabama UP, 1989) , 100.
(43) ~Descende caelo et dic age tibia/ Regina longum Calliope melos (III, iv): Horace Odes
and Epodes, ed. Paul Shorey, rev. ed. Paul Shorey and Gordon 1. Laing (Chicago: Sanborn,
1919). For this parallel, see Michael Lieb, Milton and the Culture of Jiolence, 63.
(44) On this parallelism, see also Noam Flinker, "Courting Urania: The Narrator of
Paradise Lost Invokes His Muse," Milton and the Idea of oman, 86-99, pp.93-4; Diane
Kelsey McColley, Milton's Eve, 91-2; Maureen Quilligan, Milton's Spenser, 228; Michael
Lieb, Milton and the Culture of Jiolence (Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1994), 65;
Kerrigan, Prophetic Milton, 145.
(45) Sara Van Den Berg, "Eve, Sin, and Witchcraft," Modern Language Quarterly, 47:4
(Dec. 1986), 347-65, p.364.
(46) Michael Lieb, Milton and the Culture of Jiolence, 61.
(47) Barbara Lewalski, "Milton on Women--Yet Once More." Milton Studies JI (1974), 3-
20, p.8; Diane McColley, "Eve and the Arts of Eden," in Milton and the Idea of oman, ed.
1ulia M. Walker, (Urbana and Chicago: Illinois UP, 1988), 100-119; Diane Kelsey
McColley, Milton's Eve (Illinois UP: Urbana, Chicago, London, 1983); Deirdre Keenan
McChrystal, "Redeeming Eve," Milton Quarterly 23:3 (Fall 1993), 490-508. See also 1.
Hillis Miller in "How Deconstruction Works: Paradise Lost IV, 304-8," Aew York 1imes
Magazine, (February 9, 1986), p.25: Eve is identified, Miller argues, with "Milton's
independent power of poetry." Quoted in Catherine Gimelli Martin, "Demystifying
Disguises: Adam, Eve, and the Subject of Desire." in Renaissance Discourses of Desire, ed.
Claude Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth (Columbia & London: Missouri UP, 1993), 242.
(48) Diane McColley, "Eve and the Arts of Eden," in Milton and the Idea of oman, 102.
On Eve as a function rather than a character, see Mary Nyquist, "The Genesis of Gendered
Subjectivity," Re-membering Milton, 99-127; Karen L. Edwards, "Resisting
Representation: All about Milton's Eve" Exemplaria 9 (1997): 231-53.
(49) See McColley, "Eve and the Arts of Eden" for more on these similitudes between Eve
and the poet. On the fractures and fissures in Milton's depictions of Eve, see: Michael
Lieb, "'Two of Far Nobler Shape': Reading the Paradisal Text," Literary Milton: 1ext,
Pretext, Context, ed. Diana Trevino Benett and Michael Lieb, (Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP,
1994), 114-132; 1oseph Wittreich, "'Inspired with Contradiction': Mapping Gender
Discourses in Paradise Lost," Literary Milton, 133-160.
(50) Milton's Eve, 98.
(51) St. Augustine, 1he 1rinity, trans. Stephen McKenna, The Fathers of the Church: A
New Translation, vol. 45 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1963),
Book 4, ch. 17, p.158. See on Augustine's hierarchy of prophets William Kerrigan,
Prophetic Milton, 29.
(52) Origen connects these images and the text to which they refer (from Luke 7:36-48)
with Canticles, a tradition which became part of Mary Magdalen's iconography. Origen,
1he Song of Songs: Commentary and Homilies, trans. and annotated by R.P. Lawson,
Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation, no. 26 (Westminster,
: Newman Press, 1957), 160-1. For a more detailed discussion of this iconographic
tradition, see Susan Haskins, Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor (New York: Harcourt
Brace, 1993), 91, 219-20.
(53) ~Show Me Dear Christ, Complete English Poems of 1ohn Donne, ed. C.A. Patrides
(London: Dent, 1985), p. 446, line 4.
(54) Haskins, Mary Magdalen, p.94. See also Walter S.H. Lim, "Adam, Eve, and Biblical
Analogy in Paradise Lost," SEL 30 (1990), 115-131. Lim notes in particular the repetition
of this association of Eve with Mary Magdalene in Book 10, lines 910-18. See also
Catherine Gimelli Martin, "Ithuriel's Spear: Purity, Danger, and Allegory at the Gates of
Eden", SEL 33 (1993), 167-90, and Margo Swiss, ~Repairing Androgyny: Eve`s Tears in
Paradise Lost, Speaking Crief, 242-260.
(55) See for instance paintings by Elisabetta Sirani, Francesco Furini, Correggio and
Orazio Gentileschi, in Susan Haskins, Mary Magdalen, 264-5, 304-5. On her role as
prophetic "illuminatrix," see Haskins, pp.220 & 226.
sentence et solas: 1oy and Sensuality in
Paradise Lost 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 hymenan, 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, 1ust, 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 1esus) 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 hymenan, 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, 1ust, 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.


Bibliography:
1. Donne, 1ohn. "The Good-Morrow." The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of 1ohn Donne.
Charles M. Coffin, ed. New York: The Modern Library, 1952, 8.

2. Milton, 1ohn. Paradise Lost. Complete Poems and Major Prose.
Merritt Y. Hughes, ed. New York: The Odyssey Press, 1957.

3. Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary.
Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 1988.



1997 Anniina Jokinen. AII Rights Reserved.
PubIished by Luminarium Through Express Written Permission of the Author.



to Essays and ArticIes on MiIton

This page was created by Anniina Jokinen on March 19, 1998. Last updated May 6, 2009.

That Living Intellect: Literary Canonization
and
Milton's "Paradise Lost"

For generations since his death, and perhaps even during his life, Milton's "bogey" has
haunted all the masters of the English language as art. It was difficult to explore verse in a
way that he had not already done it, or so it is said. Regardless of whether Milton truly
exhausted all that is good in English verse, his figure is one which is essential to the integrity
of literature in English-Paradise Lost is part of what is considered the "canon," which is
something undeniable and irrevocable. Men like T.S. Eliot have attempted to kill Milton's
haunting presence by using an entirely different set of figurative sources, as in The Waste
Land; but still, what Milton has done and the immensity of his accomplishment is something
not to be diminished by other works. Great works in the English language are now destined
to share their limelight with, or stand in some way affected by Milton.
The reasons for this are many. And to convince a group of atheists or agnostics to
approach the great epic work as a serious piece of literature, the crux of my argument would
be simply that story-by its very nature-need not be true in objective reality in order to
teach us things and reveal other truths we do not know. From Beowulf to The Tempest,
there have been important works in English literature with basis on little more than folk-lore
and mysticism-and to cast these aside as unworthy of any significant attention would be
inimical to the very essence of the literary arts. In the other great epic of the English
language, the "poet's poet" writes:
Right well I wote most mighty Soveraine,
That all this famous antique history,
Of some th'aboundance of an idle braine
Will judgd be, and painted forgery,
Rather then matter of just memory (II:1:1-5).
Spenser predicts, concerning his The Faerie Queene, that it will be regarded by some as
merely a child's story, some illusion painted for useless ends. In light of this prediction, he
argues, though, asking later, "Why then should witlesse man so much misweene/ That
nothing is, but that which he hath seene?" (II:3:4-5). This is the same sort of prediction
which Milton implies when he professes to reveal things "invisible to mortal sight." He knew
that-regardless of whether the Bible was true or not-his story was just that: a story. There
were lessons to be learned from it which remain in the text, independent of the fact that the
story is one no longer considered true in any sense by most.
In discussing The Faerie Queene, Catherine Belsey refers to the concept of ocular
error-trompe-l'oeil-as the harbor of the individual's desire in relation to a piece of
literature, though this term is usually applied in the context of the visual arts. While the line
between art and nature is blurred in the story of Spenser's epic, what makes the piece
interesting is not as much its presentation of themes in a clear and objective manner, but
more so, these "mistakes of the eyes," these delightful interludes when one looks past the
particular morals of an episode of the work, and rather enjoys the work itself, as something
beautiful to enjoy. This is the attitude with which such a work as Paradise Lost should be
approached. Some of the greatest myths and legends have come from pagan religions such as
those of the Greeks, giving rise to equally tremendous art reflecting these stories-from
great verse and fiction to phenomenal works of sculpture, architecture, painting. And to
ignore the utter beauty of the story of Pygmalion, for instance-let alone take it to a modern
level like George Bernard Shaw-because it is not believable, is to lose the flavor of artistic
appreciation. Of course the story is not true-but it can still be appreciated for its
enthralling images of exquisite material beauty and reverent intellectual beauty. The same is
the case with Paradise Lost.
It is difficult to read even the first five lines of Milton's epic-if one knows a little of the
character of its author-and not come in reverence to its altar. Oftentimes, independent of
the scriptural premises, the "one greater man" who is predicted to come procures images of
Milton himself as the hero, the redeemer of literature as Christ is the savior of the soul. In
his long apologia "De Profundis," Oscar Wilde refers to 1esus as the true beginning of the
Romantics, a precursor to their ideas. He says that there is something about a young
Galilean Shepherd taking the world upon his shoulders that is just simply amazing. In the
same sense, there is something about a scholarly near-blind heretic becoming the mouthpiece
of God which simply awakens the senses, revitalizes the spirit of loyalty and piety-whether
this is in reference to one's deity, country, or self-just as Vergil once did. Clearly, the story
of the Aeneid is a fiction-but it has a place in classical literature because of its appealing
artistry and its place in history, in the minds and hearts of men. Oscar Wilde himself has
said, "all art is quite useless"-speaking in terms of industry and conquest, a poem or a
painting will not accomplish a thing. But the true essence of Wilde's statement, which Milton
boldly echoes through eternity in his epic, is that of art for art's sake.
Even the most ardent disbeliever cannot deny the facts of reality, the effects that
religions have had on the art and culture of different ages. Despite the truth that hardly
anyone believes in the Greek pantheon and relatively few in current religious trends
including Christianity, the immense proliferation of art with religious themes is more than
enough evidence to indicate the effects of faiths on many cultural levels. In the same sense,
though people may not believe in Paradise Lost-or the Bible-as accounts of true events in
the history of the world as we know it, it offers a lens, or perhaps a mirror, by which we can
explore the world of Milton, of Christianity, of the English language. Whether or not one
believes in a certain philosophy or doctrine or story, it is irrational to deny the effects of
those on individuals and societies. Such is the case with Paradise Lost.
But there is so much more to Milton's work than mere pandering to his own culture.
The themes of the epic can hardly be ignored-and to say that it is merely an apologetic
encomium making a case for Christianity would miss the many complex ideas presented.
Milton's Satan, for instance, is one of the most intricately wrought, intensely supported
characters in the history of English literature. He is a powerful example of the notion that
Milton was not close-minded to looking at different aspects of his faith and culture, and was
by no means going to chain his hands and the minds of his readers by writing a
straightforward simple-minded Christian panegyric. Even the peasants of China love the
character of Satan, and find him more emphatic and human than the others of Paradise
Lost-this can hardly have been unconscious on the part of such as Milton, so aware, so
conscious of his place in literature. And the modern-day atheists, agnostics, pantheists (non-
theists of every sort) are-and often declare themselves to be-literary Satanists. And why
not? Satan is the ultimate rebel; the adversary of authority; the one who called the Almighty
on his flaws and was not afraid of it; the most profound manifestation of Thomas 1efferson's
notion that we should "question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there
be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."
The exploration of Satan's character, in addition to his own twists on the original story
of Genesis make Paradise Lost an ingenious work of creativity and intellectual fortitude. It
would seem folly that one of the greatest pieces of the English literary canon has been
referred to as "a monument to dead ideas," a mere reflection of times and themes which no
longer exist. However, considering the secularization of the age, the emphasis on heresy and
irreligiousness seem to have become the prerequisites of intellectual virtue. While
transcending dogma and doctrine in order to embrace all art is something a true aesthete
must do, to go so far as to declare Milton's Paradise Lost outmoded and irrelevant can be
nothing short of outrageous and irreverent. The method, form, and lyrical intensity of the
poem are what entered it into the canon initially, and are what will preserve it there, in its
proper place, for all time-after all, it was conceived in and takes place in Eternity-or so
Milton claimed. In the modern day, in the company of those who regard the Bible and its
contents as no more than legend, religious propaganda, or literature, Paradise Lost sits well
and holds its own as a great piece of literature should, for as Milton himself wrote in
"Areopagitica,"
For books are not absolutely
dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to
be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are;
nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and
extraction of that living intellect that bred them.
Even if the Bible were to die in the dust and no one ever turned its pages again for religious
illumination, Milton's work will still remain-and perhaps inspire some to read more
scriptures. But overall, Paradise Lost is arguably one of the greatest achievements in the
history of English literature, and those who are unable to appreciate it because of their own
philistine nature, have not caused Milton or Christianity or the English language any hurt,
but only their own unredeemed souls.


to Essays on 1ohn Milton

Through the Narrow Gate:
Impassioned Reason and Rational Passion
in Milton's "Paradise Lost"

(Book IX: lines 205-375)
In many interpretations of Biblical texts, an analysis of the pre-lapserian
human condition involves the treatment of Adam and Eve as a single being: for
example, in Hale's Prim. Origins of Man, he notes the possibility that "Adam had
been Androgyna, or one double Person . . . consisting of both Sexes." Whether or
not this is an allegorical idea or that such interpreters actually conceptualized a
being with both male and female qualities, the main argument is that of
complementary unity-Man and Woman exist together for each other, as decreed
by God. In the same way that being together, being in love, would create
Harmony, so would being disjointed, being in sin, create harsh discord. In
Milton's Paradise Lost, Book IX (lines 205-375) he describes a conversation
between Adam and Eve and the decision thereafter for a rather capitalistic
"division of labor." The ramifications of this discussion and the actions of the
heavenly couple demonstrate Milton's notion that Man qua Man is an integrated,
composite being.
When reading the "script" of Paradise Lost-intended originally for the
stage-the characterizations of speech and thought (in addition to literary
constructs of men and women already in existence) reveal the metaphorical
significance of the two characters: Adam is Reason manifest and Eve is Passion
(or "delight") incarnate. Adam himself indicates that
smiles from Reason flow . . .
For not to irksome toil, but to delight
He made us, and delight to Reason join'd.
These paths and Bowers doubt not but our joint hands.
It is in this sense that when the two follow Eve's idea to "divide their] labors,"
they literally sever their relationship with each other, set apart what God has
joined together. As presented in many paintings of Genesis, the original state of
Adam and Eve, and, therefore, the proper position of Reason and Passion, is that
of a harmonious embrace, a pragmatic co-existence. Thus, the first stage of the fall
is when this embrace is destroyed. Adam clearly understands the potential
implications of separating from his spouse:
But other doubt possesses me, lest harm
Befall thee sever'd from me; for thou know'st
What hath been warn'd us, what malicious Foe
Envying our happiness, and of his own
Despairing, seeks to work us woe and shame . . .
His wish and best advantage, us asunder,
Hopeless to circumvent us join'd, where each
To other speedy aid might lend at need.
Not only does Adam acknowledge the fact of strength in numbers against the
malice of Satan, but also, he attempts to explain that he and Eve have
complementary abilities to help each other where and when necessary. Further,
the allegory of Passion and Reason shows Man to have disintegrated-lost his
integrated perception of Existence-during this phase of the fall. Eve herself also
recognizes that they are strong together, accusing the serpent with "his foul
esteem/ Of their] integrity"; however, she fails to realize that if they rend
themselves separate from each other, this strength is undermined, loses its entire
foundation of a structured harmony. In a sense, with this confrontation of Eve and
Adam, of Passion and Reason, Milton presents a sort of schizophrenia of the soul,
a discord of the self from its natural state, as formed by its Creator. The argument
is a powerful echo of 1esus' "Sermon on the Mount": "No one can serve two
masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the
one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."
The very complaint Eve has, which leads to the separation of the two is that of
being too constricted:
If this be our condition, thus to dwell
In narrow circuit strait'n'd by a Foe,
Subtle or violent, we not endu'd
Single with like defense, wherever met,
How are we happy, still in fear of harm?
But again, 1esus warned his disciples to "Enter through the narrow gate, for wide
is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through
it." In light of Milton's views on Virtue with freedom as a pre-condition, this may
seem a contradiction, asking Man to follow a narrow road, but the apparent
paradox is reconciled through Adam's words: "For God left free the Will, for
what obeys/ Reason, is free, and Reason he made right." Eve, as a mouthpiece for
Milton affirms that a cloistered happiness-like Virtue-is not happiness at all;
she, like Milton, ardently disagrees that ignorance is bliss. Parallel to this is
Adam's further analysis that Man must give Passion free reign over his Existence,
but Reason must hold the reins so as not go beyond the boundaries set by God.
Passion is a necessary element of human existence-so did Adam require his
help-mete Eve, to be-together-a complete person. However, both Reason and
Passion have their proper place. Though Passion is what gives life much of its
vivacity, and is-in a sense-the fount of freedom, Reason must be the final
arbiter, simply because actions are objective, and, therefore should be based on an
objective standard. This is what Eve fails to accept, what Adam surrenders. For
instance, the schizophrenia of their actions appears in the major role reversal,
before the fall: when Eve rationalizes with him to divide their work, Adam,
impassioned, concedes acquiescence. It is because of this concession that Adam
and Eve become Pope's "fools who] rush in where angels fear to tread." It is also
through this surrender by Adam that Milton annihilates the arguments for an
accusation of misogyny, directed towards him or the book of Genesis itself:
through their conversation after eating of the fruit, Milton shows that Adam
played as much a part in the fall as Eve. Though Eve rationalized her passions,
Adam also became impassioned, and therefore, forfeited his discerning
Consciousness. In addition to not stopping Eve from going by herself, Adam also
consciously eats of the fruit, knowing full well the consequences, whereas Eve
acted on impulse, without fully considering the results of her actions.
The reconciliation of the proper roles befitting Adam and Eve does not occur
until Book X, beginning with Adam overcome by sadness, Eve trying to
intellectually justify "violent wayes"; Milton explains in his Argument for Book
X:
Adam more and more perceiving his fall'n condition heavily
bewailes, rejects the condolement of Eve; she persists and at
length appeases him: then to evade the Curse likely to fall on
thir Ofspring, proposes to Adam violent wayes, which he
approves not, but conceiving better hope, puts her in mind
of the late Promise made them, that her Seed should be
reveng'd on the Serpent, and exhorts her with him to seek
Peace of the offended Deity, by repentance and supplication.
It is only when Adam lends himself to a rational approach, "puts Eve] in mind"
of their hope in the future that they begin their reconciliation with "the offended
Deity" and move to attempt to undo the harm they have caused.
In light of Milton's views on freedom and Virtue, he seems to believe the fall
was inevitable-because men are not perfect, they are bound to make some
mistake sometime, even if it is in the name of freedom or Virtue. And any time a
mistake occurs, it is because of some forfeiture or another of the proper place of
Man's tools of cognition, creating the aforementioned schizophrenia of the soul.
(Perhaps it is on this basis of innocence, by insanity, that God is still presented as
one who will forgive even the gravest of sins.) Also, in his description of this stage
of the fall, it would seem that Milton is arguing against the ideas of love of
material wealth vs. love of God, since the cause of the couple's separation is the
wish to produce more through organizing their work. On the contrary, what
Milton proves is that one's intent is the important element. Productivity is
definitely a virtue, but if it is gained by selling one's soul, or acting against God or
one's nature, then it ceases to be such. Like Voltaire's Candide, Milton's work
argues that one must till one's own soil, cultivate one's own garden. However, in
doing so, in making the most of one's Life, neither Reason nor Passion should be
sacrificed-rather, the two should be integrated into a proper view of the world in
which we live.



to Essays on 1ohn Milton


"Paradise Lost:" A Revival of the Spirit
by Saif Patel
The Oxford English Dictionary defines "cosmos" as "the world or universe as
an ordered and harmonious system," from the Greek, "kosmos," referring to an
ordered and/or ornamental thing. Though Pythagoras is credited with first using
this term to describe the Universe, probably since he is also the one most
commonly cited for ideas of harmony and the Musica Mundana, cosmos is
generally a contrast to "chaos"-"the first state of the universe." In explaining
the theology and cosmology of Paradise Lost, Milton writes, "the heavens and
earth/ Rose out of Chaos," describing the move from the formless mass to the
ordered whole. (I:9-10) As much as this delineates the structure of the world,
however, its culmination seems to appear in the Spirit, as Milton has conceived
it-the free, reasoning, integrated Consciousness. Though many have found a hero
in the English epic from its dramatis personae-from Adam to Satan to God/Son
himself-the most encompassing heroism seems that of Milton himself, as a
manifestation of this most supreme of creations: the wholesome mind.
An instance in which Milton's views on the sovereignty of the Spirit appear in
some of the conversations of the Arch Fiend himself with his fellows-which is
quite ironic, considering that the story is an extrapolation upon Christian
Scripture. One of Satan's "compeers" says, during a discussion after their exile
from Heaven:
Too well I see and rue the dire event
That, with sad overthrow and foul defeat,
Hath lost us Heaven, and all this mighty host
In horrible destruction laid thus low,
As far as Gods and heavenly Essences
Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains
Invincible, and vigour soon returns,
Though all our glory extinct, and happy state
Here swallowed up in endless misery (I:135-140).
The invincibility of "the mind and spirit" is something which even the foes of God
understand. Though the fallen angels corrupt their "heavenly Essences" with
disobedience and revolt, they still have a keen understanding of the powers of
perception, of personal reaction to one's environment-"for neither do the Spirits
damned/ Lose all their virtue" (2:482-483). Satan boldly speaks to his fellows,
asking
What though the field be lost?
All is not lost-the unconquerable will . . .
And courage never to submit or yield (I:105-108).
Like a true hero, Satan refers to conquest and courage, a response to the tyranny
he and his cohorts have received from the hand of God. It is this attitude-of
adventurous righteousness-which many cite as sufficient to show the fallen
Archangel to be the hero of the work. However, working within the confines of the
Biblical account, Milton could not reasonably-even if he wished-display Satan
as the outright protagonist and epic hero. Therefore, it can only be his qualities of
trust in the Spirit, in his own Consciousness as a fortress against the harms
surrounding him, that can represent the truly heroic aspect.
Satan is a deeply solipsistic character, well aware of the world and his
situation in it. Though he becomes quite fatalistic at times and denies possibilities
of recovery from his downfall, essentially, he knows that the loss of Heaven as a
place is always permanent:
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor-one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same
. . . Here at least/ We shall be free . . .
we may reign secure; and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. (I:251-263)
Whatever the reason for their revolt, when Satan and his armies are defeated
by the Son, they lose their aspiration, revert to the disintegrated empty air from
which they were made: "Exhausted, spiritless, afflicted, fallen" (6:852). In
contrast, though Adam and Eve also fall like the Archangel, the difference
between Satan and Man is their different choices in the application of their
autonomy and spiritual sovereignty, especially after acting against God. Milton
explains in his argument for Book X:
Adam more and more perceiving his fall'n condition heavily bewailes, rejects
the condolement of Eve; she persists and at length appeases him: then to evade
the Curse likely to fall on thir Ofspring, proposes to Adam violent wayes,
which he approves not, but conceiving better hope, puts her in mind of the late
Promise made them.
The dividing line between Man and Satan is demonstrated in Milton's summary
with his juxtaposition of the proposal of "violent wayes" with "better hope . . . in
mind of the late Promise made them." Instead of desperate, destructive means,
like Satan and his minions, Adam and Eve are thus able to remain hopeful and
humble.
Adam even compares himself to the fallen Archangel, calling himself
"miserable/ Beyond all past example and future;/ To Satan only like both crime
and doom" (X:820-822). However, the pivotal difference comes later, when the
actual consideration of possible choices-freedom-relents to create in Man hope,
as opposed to Satan, who remains in "desperate revenge." An important concept
here is that of Predestination, with which Milton himself vehemently disagreed, a
strong proponent of free will and its acknowledgment. One of the devils in
Pandemonium, Belial, describes Satan's justifications for rebellion: "we are
decreed,/ Reserved, and destined to eternal woe" (II:160-161). But God charges
this notion with sophistry, saying that
Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault . . .
So without least impulse or shadow of fate,
Or aught by me immutably foreseen,
They trespass, authors to themselves in all
. . . I form'd them free . . . Their nature . . . ordain'd
Their freedom: they themselves ordain'd their fall (III:118-128).
Satan later becomes conscious of his freedom, cursing himself who "Chose freely
what he] now so justly rues," but he cannot take this further to repentance and
pardon, for which "there is] no place/ Left . . .but by submission" (X:70, 79-81).
This he cannot embrace because of his "disdain for God] and dread of shame/
Among the Spirits beneath" (X:82-83). All of this is due to the utter perplexity and
discord of Satan's situation; Belial sums this up in a bitter paradox: "our final
hope/ Is flat despair" (II:142-143).
The difference between Satan and Man emerges in the unfolding of the plot.
Instead of taking Satan's view of utter despair and want of death and eternal
unconsciousness, Adam and Eve decide to take a submissive place in God's plan.
Diametrically opposed to Satan's vengeful schemes to seek war of "the offended
Deity," Man seeks Peace-submitting to the Almighty because he is almighty,
hoping for "The Spirit of God, promised alike and given/ To all believers"
(XII:519-520). Repentance and supplication are things which Satan-in his
desperation-could never accomplish. Though the Arch Fiend was strong of
Spirit, it was crushed in his attempts to act against Divine Will, destroyed by the
"Spirit and Might" given to the Son by God himself.
Whether or not we take a "side" in determining the true victor(s)-Satan and
his army in their spiritual "martyrdom" or Adam & Eve in their submission or
the Son in his military conquest-Milton's insistence on the inner state as the final
determinant of one's position is apparent throughout. Though Satan loses the
battle, he is inwardly convinced of his own inability to do otherwise in the face of
such extreme circumstances as his. Additionally, though Adam & Eve know that
Paradise is lost as a place, their hope is to reach it as a state of mind, to reside
there in Spirit. And the Son-though obviously the champion of the battle-was
decreed to be victorious by the Almighty, and did not necessarily experience the
sort of spiritual change or adventure like the other characters.
This ambiguity by Milton-of not making the hero of his work apparent-is
too pervasive to have been unintentional. Rather, it seems that Milton wishes to
share his own "heroism" in composing such an epic to his culture-both English
and Christian-by taking the reader on a trip through the Consciousness of each
of his constructed characters, exploring the different facets of freedom and
responsibility. In fact, in his role as narrator, Milton says to the Son:
Thee I re-visit now with bolder wing,
Escap'd the Stygian pool, though long detain'd
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
Through utter and through middle darkness borne
. . . I sung of Chaos and eternal Night;
Taught by the heavenly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to re-ascend (3:13-20).
Milton describes his allegorical trek through the heavens and the earth-an
"obscure sojourn" quite similar to that of Aeneas or Odysseus or Achilles. Though
he is blinded physically, Milton explains-as narrator-that he, like other blind
prophets, is granted other boons to recompense for his loss:
with the year . . . Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day . . . So much the rather thou, celestial Light,
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate; there plant eyes . . . that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight. (3:40-55)

It is this "celestial Light" which allows Milton to see things which others cannot,
which allows him to be like "Thamyris . . . Maeonides . . . Tiresias, and Phineus"
(3:35-36).
Though many arguments and counter-arguments can be made as to who of
the figures in Paradise Lost is its hero, as a whole, it is the Spirit, the inward
wholesomeness, intellectual autonomy, and strength of character of the individual
which appears as the most wide-ranging "epic virtue" in the work, displayed by
many of the characters. Essentially, in this piece, Milton takes the entire concept
of an epic and transforms it into an engaging experience, one which is not at all an
attempt at flattery and sycophantic pandering to his own culture and beliefs, but
rather, one which takes the reader's own Spirit to task. Centuries before Milton,
Thomas Aquinas wrote in his Summa Theologica: "In the very gift of sanctifying
grace, it is the Holy Spirit whom one possesses, and who dwells in man." Milton's
epic awakens anyone who participates in this mental voyage from whatever depths
of gloom he may reside, transforming the shapeless darkness therein into the
integrated Consciousness, the illuminated Spirit, which formed the Son, but lives
in us all:
Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven firstborn
. . . Before the Heavens thou wert . . .
Won from the void and formless infinite (3:1-12).


to Essays on 1ohn Milton


A Third Choice: Adam, Eve, and Abdiel
Gerald Richman
Suffolk University
grichmansuffolk.edu

Richman, Gerald. "A Third Choice: Adam, Eve, and Abdiel." Early Modern Literary Studies 9.2 (September,
2003): 6.1-5 <URL: http://purl.oclc.org/emls/09-2/richthir.html>.
1. In Paradise Lost Book IX, after Eve reveals that she has eaten the forbidden
fruit, Adam believes that he has but two choices: abandon Eve or join her in
sin. But C.S. Lewis suggests a two-part third choice. "What would have
happened if instead of his 'compliance bad' Adam had scolded or even
chastised Eve and then interceded with God on her behalf ?]" asks Lewis,
before concluding that "we are not told" because "Milton doesn't know."
That's why Milton says "the situation "seemd remediless" (919)" (127).
Several scholars have responded to the second part of Lewis's question by
arguing that Adam should have followed the example of the Son in Book
III.236-7 1] (an example, of course, that Adam is not privy to) by
volunteering to take Eve's punishment on himself (Danielson 121-7, Fish 269-
71, Leonard 214-32, Samuel 610-11). Dennis Burden (168-71) and Stephen
M. Fallon (229-30) see Milton pointing here to another alternative for Adam,
the remedy of divorce. No one, as far as I have been able to tell, has
responded to the first part of Lewis's question. What would have happened if
Adam had "scolded or even chastised" Eve to repent while there was time
for pardon? Indeed, this is Abdiel's argument to Satan in Book V, an
example available to Adam through Raphael's narration:
Cease then this impious rage,
And tempt not these; but hasten to appease
Th' incensd Father and th' incensd Son,
While pardon may be found in time besought. (V.845-8)
2. Although William Empson asserts, "The poem somehow does not encourage
us to think of an alternative plan" (189; qted in Leonard 221) for Adam, in
fact, through verbal and narrative parallels, Milton makes the reader aware
of this third choice. For example, as Raphael calls Satan's blasphemy "bold
discourse" (V.803), Adam labels Eve's eating of the fruit "Bold deed"
(IX.921). Whereas Abdiel uses the verb "uncreate" in V.894 to indicate the
consequence of Satan's disobedience, Adam uses it in IX.943 as an argument
ad absurdum to justify ignoring the threatened penalty of death. As a result,
Abdiel chooses to "fly / These wicked tents devoted, lest the wrath /
Impendent, raging into sudden flame / Distinguish not"(V.889-92), while
Adam in sharp verbal contrast announces, "I have fixed my lot"(IX.952) to
die with Eve (emphasis added). The verbal echoes begin by aligning Adam's
and Abdiel's understanding of the significance of the two situations, but end
by contrasting their spiritual and physical responses.
3. Narrative parallels also make readers aware of Adam's third choice. When
Eve tries to persuade Adam to eat the fruit, she is in the same position as
Satan when he tries to persuade Abdiel (and others) to join his rebellion
against God. And Adam is in the same position as Abdiel. Both Adam ("How
art thou lost, how on a sudden lost, / Defaced, deflow'red, and now to death
devote?" IX.900-901) and Abdiel ("O argument blasphmous, false and
proud!" V.809) immediately perceive the evil in the words and actions. But
Satan is not yet completely lost; he is still savable Milton implies when he has
Abdiel warn Satan,

Cease then this impious rage,
And tempt not these; but hasten to appease
Th' incensd Father and th' incensd Son,
While pardon may be found in time besought. (V.845-8)

Only after Satan persists does Abdiel accept that it's too late for Satan:
O alienate from God, O Spirit accurst,
Forsaken of all good; I see thy fall
Determined . . . (V.877-9)

Satan both seals and reveals his fate by reiterating his crime and persisting in
sin, fulfilling God's criteria for damnation (III.198-202). 2]
4. Milton implies through Abdiel's words and actions that if Eve had repented
and Adam had refused to join her in sin, Eve would have found pardon.
Indeed Abdiel invents the whole process of repentance in V.845-8 that God
(III.173-97, echoing Abdiel in 186-7) and Adam elaborate,
What better can we do, than . . .
. . . prostrate fall
Before him reverent, and there confess
Humbly our faults, and pardon beg, with tears
Watering the ground, and with our sighs the air
Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign
Of sorrow unfeigned, and humiliation meek.
Undoubtedly he will relent and turn
From his displeasure . . . (X.1086-94)
Rather than being replaced by a second woman, as she and Adam fear
(IX.827-9, 911-12), Eve herself would have become a new Eve.
5. But Adam does not force Eve to choose between repentance and a hardening
of heart as Abdiel forces Satan. Adam falls into the fallacy of false choices,
believing he has only two: lose Eve or be lost with her, for "But past who can
recall, or done undo? / Not God omnipotent, nor fate" (IX.926-7). As C.S.
Lewis observes, no one knows what Eve (or Milton) would have done if
Adam had scolded and chastised her to repent "in time." If Adam had
succeeded, however, Eve would have been made new. But, if, as the tale
would demand, she were entreated fruitlessly, and, like Satan, Eve hardened
her heart, confirmed herself in sin, and denied her Creator, a very different
future might have awaited the parents of mankind than that made possible
because "Prevenient grace descending had removed / The stony from their
hearts, and made new flesh / Regenerate grow instead" (XI.3-5). Milton's
Adam, of course, does not recognize and therefore does not exercise the third
choice made available to him by Abdiel's attempt to save Satan. But verbal
and narrative parallels make readers recognize Adam's failure to attempt to
save Eve and may function at the narrative level, as words like (dis)obedience
at the level of diction, to remind us of the alternatives available to free will, of
alternative possibilities of Paradise Retained or Forever Lost.

Notes
I am indebted to Steven Berkowitz for helping to tighten and strengthen my argument and
to the annonymous reviewer for EMLS for suggesting the reference to Origen (n. 2).
1. All citations are from Scott Elledge's edition of Paradise Lost and are indicated by book
and line numbers.
2. Milton's suggestion here--that in the interlude between initiating sin and completing it,
Satan had an opportunity for redemption (see Book IX.1003-1004, "completing of the the
mortal sin / Original," which indicates the end of a parallel interlude between Eve's eating
of the fruit and Adam's)--differs from Origen's argument that because of the infinite mercy
of Christ even Satan has hope of future grace (De Principiis Book I.6.3 and Book III.6.5).
Works Cited
O Burden, Dennis H. 1he Logical Epic: A Study of the Argument of Paradise
Lost. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1967.
O Danielson, Dennis. "Through the Telescope of Typology: What Adam Should
Have Done." Milton Quarterly 23 (1989): 121-27.
O Empson, William. Milton's Cod. Rev. Ed. London: Chatto & Windus, 1965.
O Fallon, Stephen M. "The Spur of Self-Government." Milton Studies 38
(2000): 220-42.
O Fish, Stanley. Surprised by Sin. 1967. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: U
of California P, 1971.
O Leonard, 1ohn. Aaming in Paradise: Milton and the Language of Adam and
Eve. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1990.
O Lewis, C.S. A Preface to Paradise Lost. 1942. New York: Galaxy, 1961.
O Milton, 1ohn. Paradise Lost. Ed. Scott Elledge. 2nd ed. New York: Norton,
1993.
O Origen. De Principiis. 1he Ante-Aicene Fathers. Ed. and Trans. Alexander
Roberts and 1ames Donaldson. Rev. ed. A. Cleveland Cox. Vol. IV.
Edinburgh and Grand Rapids, MI: NA. Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
16 1ul 2003 <http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-04/anf04-44.htm>.
O Samuel, Irene. "The Dialogue in Heaven: A Reconsideration of Paradise Lost,
III, 1-417." PMLA 72 (1957): 601-11.

Responses to this piece intended for the Readers' Forum may be sent to the Editor at
L.M.Hopkinsshu.ac.uk.

2003-, Lisa Hopkins (Editor, EMLS).


Paradise Lost and Beowulf: The Christian/Pagan Hybrids of the Epic Tradition
by 1ennifer Smith
In Paradise Lost, Milton is adept at drawing from both Christian and pagan sources and
integrating them in such a way that they reinforce one another (Abrams 1075). Of course it
is a commonplace for critics to believe that Milton valued his Christian sources more highly
than the pagan ones (Martindale 20); this is most likely due to the fact that he regarded the
Christian sources as vessels of the truth. His classical allusions, on the other hand, served
as references for things fallen or damned. Thus, as seen in the invocation to Book 7
("Descend from heav`n Urania, by that name / If rightly thou art called" 7.1-2]) wherein
Milton places his muse Urania, the Greek muse of astronomy, in Heaven and distinguishes
her as Christian, Milton works to integrate the Christian and pagan throughout Paradise
Lost. Although a detailed account of the reasoning behind his form is beyond the scope of
this essay, because "a strict Classicist might resent the intrusion of the Biblical models,
and] a strict Puritan` might equally resent the degradation of the Word of God to the
status of a source of precedents for literary composition" (Lewis 5), perhaps Milton`s
choice of form was a political as well as a stylistic one. On the other hand, the reason could
be as simple as Milton himself states in the invocation to Book 1: "Things unattempted yet
in prose or rhyme" (1.16). In this one line, Milton borrows directly from Ariosto`s Orlando
Furioso, thus acknowledging the epic tradition, yet also challenging that very tradition by
promising his readers greatness and originality (Abrams 1476).
Paradise Lost, however, is not the first epic to integrate both Christian and traditional epic
conventions. The Beowulf poet followed this form as well, drawing on pagan epic tradition
for kings, heroes, and monsters while drawing on new Christian beliefs to present these
characters as noble, in possession of the natural knowledge of God, willing to battle his
enemies on earth, and therefore capable of redemption. Thus, I agree with 1ohn D. Niles
that "if this poem can be attributed to a Christian author composing not earlier than the
first half of the tenth century.then there is little reason to read it as a survival from the
heathen age that came to be marred by monkish interpolations" (137). 1ust as the Beowulf
poet`s contemporary audience was thrown into a schizophrenic state by the pull of a pagan
past against the new teachings of Christianity, the poet himself was put to task to
successfully blend these religious ideologies in a complex yet effective plot that appealed to
his audience precisely because they were attempting to reconcile their own beliefs.
Although Beowulf most likely began as such a pagan epic, it eventually was expanded to
include Christian elements, whereas Paradise Lost is definitely a Christian tale that uses
classical allusions to remain connected to the epic tradition. In both tales, pagan or classical
allusions, in contrast to Christian allusions, are used in reference to that which is fallen or
damned. Yet I must be careful not to imply that Milton was using the Beowulf manuscript
as a source because the manuscript was not available in England until 1815; therefore,
Milton could not have been aware of it during the writing of Paradise Lost. Yet remarkable
parallels do exist between the two manuscripts-in particular, the corresponding
hierarchical structure of king/hero/evil-because I believe the poets drew from similar
sources, specifically the Bible and apocryphal texts, in an effort to illustrate the continuing
presence of evil in this world since mankind`s Fall. In Paradise Lost, this king/hero/evil
structure is represented by God, Christ, and Satan; in Beowulf, it is represented by
Hrothgar, Beowulf, and the Satanic trinity of the three monsters.
Both God and Hrothgar are king figures who call on their heroes (Christ/Beowulf) to
defeat the evil (Satan/Grendelkin and the dragon) that threatens to destroy the paradise
each has created (Paradise/Heorot). At times, Milton`s God acts as an earthly king, who
expects the loyalty and servitude of his subjects in return for gifts he bestows upon them.
This is very similar to the pagan concept of the comitatus in Beowulf. Likewise, Hrothgar is
an ideal wise and peaceful ruler like God; he does not directly participate in the violence of
the world and gives freely to those who serve him. This parallel is strongest in each king`s
desire to construct a safe haven for those under their protection.
God wishes to put the recent fall of the angels behind him and believes the construction of
Paradise for his new creation, mankind, will do just that. Thus, "the King of Glory in his
powerful Word / And Spirit comes] to create new worlds" (7.207-09). Similarly, Hrothgar
wants to build a paradise for those who "eagerly served him" (64a), and so, "It came to his
mind / that he would command a royal building / .]which the sons of men should hear of
forever" (67b-68, 70). Both kings expect that those who serve them will also serve these new
creations. In addition, just as Milton`s heaven is a divine haven from fallen worlds, so is
Hrothgar`s Heorot a similar haven in the same way that all such halls in the early Middle
Ages were thought to be, according to the following account from Bede`s Ecclesiastical
History of the English People:
Another of the king's chief men, approving of his words and exhortations, presently added:
The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is
unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at
supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst
the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and
immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a
short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter
from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went
before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. (ch. 13)
1ust as God appears to run Paradise as a "kingdom" in which Adam and Eve are his
subjects, along with the guardian angels, here Hrothgar can appear to be the divine ruler
of his newly created haven, or heaven, on earth.
These king figures must eventually call upon a hero to defeat the evil that threatens to
disrupt their new worlds. When God discerns that Satan will attempt the destruction of
mankind, He asks of his heavenly host, "Which of ye will be mortal to redeem / Man`s
mortal crime, and just th` unjust to save, / Dwells in all heaven charity so dear?" (3.214-
16). Christ steps forward, declaring, "Behold me then, me for him, life for life / I offer"
(3.236-37). As Christ elaborates on his decision, Milton assigns to him the language and
motivation of the classical epic hero:
Death his death`s wound shall then receive, and stoop
Inglorious, of his mortal sting disarmed.
I through the ample air in triumph high
Shall lead hell captive maugre hell, and show
The powers of darkness bound. (3.252-56)
Beowulf, in a like manner, is also seen as a traditional epic hero. Although he has not
created a new world as Christ has done, Beowulf has performed extraordinary deeds, and
"bloodied by enemies where I crushed down five, / killed a tribe of giants, and on the waves
at night / slew water-beasts" (419-21). He is assigned the same type of heroic language as
Christ, and both are fated to combat evil alone as is befitting their heroic natures:
"Number to this day`s work is not ordained / Nor multitude, stand only and behold / God`s
indignation on these godless poured / By me" (Milton 6.806-12); "Now, against Grendel,
alone, I shall settle / this matter, pay back this giant demon" (Beowulf 425-26). Both kings
are moved to great admiration upon such noble and heroic words.
The heroes of each epic must battle similar evils. Satan is most closely paralleled by
Grendel, the first of the Satanic trinity Beowulf encounters. While Grendel evokes folkloric
origins, the poem most definitely alludes to the Christian concept of evil, Satan. Likewise,
Satan is described by Milton through the use of classical allusion and elevated language.
Both demons are motivated by their hatred of the king figures` new worlds: ".]and the
more I see / Pleasures about me, so much more I feel / Torment within me" (Milton 9.118-
20); "Then the great monster in the outer darkness / suffered fierce pain, for each new day
/ he heard happy laughter loud in the hall" (Beowulf 86-88). These demons seek release
from their jealously and rage in destruction. Thus, they act, similarly shrouded by mist and
darkness: "In with the river sunk, and with it rose / Satan involved in rising mist, then
sought / Where to lie hid" (Milton 9.74-76); "Like a black mist low creeping, he held on /
His midnight search" (Milton 9.180-81); "Then up from the marsh, under misty cliffs, /
Grendel came walking; he bore God`s wrath. / The evil thief planned to trap some human, /
one of man`s kind, in the towering hall" (Beowulf 710-13).
Their evil lairs share a similarity as well: both are removed from the society of kings and
heroes. Grant McColley notes that this belief was not commonplace but rather unique to
both Paradise Lost and the apocryphal Book of Enoch (33), and the fact that the Beowulf
poet also held this belief is yet another indication that both poets must have drawn from
the same sources. Following his fall, Satan realizes that he is in a "dungeon horrible, on all
sides round / As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames / No light, but rather
darkness visible" (1.61-63). Fire is mixed with water, he later learns, as he moves out
towards Chaos and travels "along the banks / Of four infernal rivers that disgorge / Into
the burning lake their baleful streams" (2.574-76). This same combination of elements is
seen in Beowulf as well:
Beowulf] then saw he was in some sort of hall,
inhospitable, where no water reached;
a vaulted roof kept the rushing flood
from coming down; he saw firelight,
a flickering blaze, bright glazing flames. (1512b-17)
It is no wonder then that the evil beasts themselves move about in darkness while shrouded
in mist and tormented by the flames of their inner anguish. They seem always to carry
their hell within them, as Satan himself notes: "Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell"
(4.75).
Once these demons emerge from their hellish liars and threaten the stability of the
righteous kingdoms, the heroes must act. Again, Christ uses the language of the epic hero
in gearing up for his initial battle with Satan:
Matter to me of glory, whom their hate
Illustrates, when they see all regal power
Giv`n me to quell their pride, and in event
Know whether I be dextrous to subdue
Thy rebels, or be found the worst in heav`n. (5.738-42)
As in Christ`s first encounter with Satan, Beowulf uses no weapons in his fight with
Grendel but is armed by the power of right, the natural power of God, who will "give war-
glory / to whichever side He thinks the right" (684-87). In both cases the heroes are
victorious, and both kingdoms are cleansed of evil. Both kings rejoice. However, evil proves
in both tales that it remains a permanent fixture in this fallen world, and so it returns.
While Christ has only one Satan to battle at different times, Beowulf encounters three
different versions of evil. In his second encounter, he must fight Grendel`s mother who
avenges her son`s death by reclaiming his arm (Beowulf`s trophy) and killing one of
Hrothgrar`s men. He must go after her, to the hellish palace she shared with her son for a
hundred winters. At first, Beowulf is knocked down by her, but soon he summons his
heroic strength and then
angrily raised the shearer of life-threads,
swung hard on her throat, broke through the spine,
halved the doomed body; she toppled to the ground:
the sword was blood-wet, the man rejoiced. (1565-69)
In this episode and in his final encounter with evil, Beowulf employs a weapon, and so his
final two encounters are bloody. These battles allude more strongly to pagan rather than
Christian practices, and I believe this is due to the fact that, ultimately, Beowulf is a fallen
mortal and cannot be the true hero that Christ has become. This is what Milton reveals in
Paradise Lost about Christ`s heroism in contrast to the classical epic model.
Following his triumph over Grendel`s mother, Beowulf is given a hero`s welcome by his
king; this episode closely parallels Christ`s return to heaven following his initial triumph
over Satan:
Hygelec was told of Beowulf`s return, that there in his homestead
the defender of warriors, his shield-companion,
came from the battle-sport alive and unharmed,
walked through the yards to his court in the hall.
It was speedily cleared, as the ruler ordered,
its benches made ready for the men marching in. (1970b-76)
With jubilee advanced; and as they went,
Shaded with branching palm, each order bright
Sung triumph, and him sung victorious King.
Worthiest to reign: he celebrated rode
Triumphant through mid-heav`n, into the courts
And temple of his mighty Father throned
On high: who into glory him received,
Where now he sits at the right hand of bliss. (Milton 6.884-86, 888-92)
Finally, both heroes will face evil in a final confrontation and will face evil`s draconic
incarnation. In Paradise Lost it is the Dragon of the Apocalypse (4.1-4), and in Beowulf it is
a dragon that "midnight air, breathing out flames" is made to fall by Beowulf (2831b-35)
in much the same way that Satan is made to fall by Christ. Beowulf makes the ultimate
heroic sacrifice in giving his life to slay the dragon and save his people; this, of course,
alludes to Christ`s crucifixion for mankind`s redemption.
Again, although Milton was unaware of the Beowulf manuscript, these striking parallels
exist and show each poet-Milton of course coming from a predominantly Christian angle
versus the Beowulf poet`s pagan one-working Christian heroism into the epic tradition,
and I believe these parallels stem from the poets` use of similar sources to illustrate evil`s
continuing presence in the fallen world. This lineage of evil is nowhere better supported
than through the apocryphal Book of Enoch, which as noted earlier, both poets surely
knew. Although Milton considered the canonical Bible to be the true Scripture, Virginia
Mollenkott believed that the apocrypha, for Milton, provided him with the necessary
narrative details to fill in the blanks of the Bible (43).
Based on Enoch, it is believed by some critics that Grendel and his mother are the progeny
of Cain; the Beowulf poet obviously believed this as well for he says that
the Creator had outlawed, condemned them
as kinsmen of Cain-for that murder God
the Eternal took vengeance, when Cain killed Abel.
No joy that kin-slaughter: the Lord drove him out,
far from mankind, for that unclean killing.
From him sprang every misbegotten thing,
monsters and elves and the walking dead,
and also those giants who fought against God
time and again; He paid them back in full. (104b-14)
The identities of these evil progenitors are made clear by the Book of Enoch; they are those
who have fallen from God`s grace and are beyond hope of redemption: "And the angels,
the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: Come, let
us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children`" (Charles 6.2).
As McColley points out, before the angels seduce the daughters of mankind, they hold a
council to pledge support to their leader, just as the fallen angels do for Milton`s Satan in
Pandemonium (32). Their progeny, monstrous giants, spread evil upon the earth and
inflicted suffering upon mankind. Therefore, God commanded that they be destroyed in
the Flood. In Beowulf, the hero does defeat giants (419-21) and the poet later mentions
God`s decree that the remaining monstrous progeny are to be destroyed by the Flood
(1689-93). How could they, however, survive the flood to wreak havoc in Beowulf`s age?
The Book of Enoch gives an answer: "But though only the righteous survived the Deluge,
sin still prevailed in the world through the demons-the spirits which had gone forth from
the slaughtered children of the Watchers and the daughters of men, and all manner of
corruption was wrought through them" (Charles 3) as through Cain. Thus, Grendel and
his mother may be seen as descendants of fallen angels, ultimately of Satan himself. In
addition, both works reflect enough similar ideas from Enoch as to suggest that the poets
may have believed in such a connection between the fallen angels and the monsters of the
fallen world as well.
In addition, pagan myths note that the gods were attacked by giants, who were half human
and half monster. The revolt of Typhon, one of the giants, is made analogous by Christian
mythographers to Satan`s revolt in heaven (Elledge 14). Milton alludes to Typhon (1.197-
201) and to the "Giants of mighty bone" (11.642). He continues to elaborate upon this idea
about the descendants of Cain:
These are the product
Of those ill-mated marriages thou saw`st:
Where good with bad were matched, who of themselves
Abhor to join; and by imprudence mixed,
Produce prodigious births of body and mind.
Such were these giants, men of high renown. (11.683-88)
Milton also mentions how God wrought the Flood to rid the fallen world of their kind, just
as the Beowulf poet does. In addition, Milton uses the name "Ramiel" for one of the fallen
angels, and this same angel is named in the Book of Enoch as one of the leaders of the
revolt to seduce the daughters of mankind (6.7). In Paradise Lost, Ramiel is overthrown by
Abdiel during the battle in Heaven (6.372). There can be little doubt that both poets drew
heavily from the Book of Enoch to develop the lineage of evil in the fallen world.
Samuel 1ohnson observes in Paradise Lost that the "vulgar inhabitants of Pandemonium,
being incorporeal spirits, are at large, though without number, in a limited space; yet in the
battle, when they were overwhelmed by mountains, their armor hurt them .] The
confusion of spirit and matter which pervades the whole narration of the war of heaven
fills it with incongruity" (489). Likewise, David Sandner contends that critics have
discovered in Beowulf a number of meanings for the dragon: "evil in nature,` the violence
at the center of Germanic society that makes inevitable its destruction,` part of the great
temporal tragedy of man`s life on earth,` part of "a Christian allegory,` an embodiment of
the apocalypse,` the replacement of the old heroic superego by a Christian one` .] the
dragon`s symbolic meaning, in sum, is ambiguous" (163-64). This, I believe, may be due
mostly to the last meaning noted: both poets are attempting to integrate Christian heroism
into the traditional epic to satisfy the varied tastes of their wide-ranging audiences. Thus, a
certain amount of incongruity and ambiguity are to be expected.
I agree with Sandner that such ambiguity in character is what makes Grendel a frightening
evil because he represents what any reader may suffer: "somehow he is] both a monster
and a man, and so claims our fear and hatred on the one side and our pity at his
wretchedness on the other" (166). In addition, given the sometimes fantastical elements of
epic convention, Grendel confronts Beowulf at "the limit of the human" and they "grasp
hands across it in a combat which reveals them as uncanny doubles for one another .]
Beowulf and Grendel stand face to face, mirror images of heroism and malice" (Sandner
169). In Paradise Lost, Satan and Christ may also be seen as opposing images.
While Northrup Frye, among others, contends that Christ is the true hero of Paradise Lost
because he is the only true actor in the poem, creating a new world and later becoming
mankind`s savior (521), Milton tends to blur the lines of epic convention, most likely due to
his integration of Christian and classical elements (Steadman 167). For many, therefore,
the true hero is clouded in ambiguity. As Frye notes, "What Satan himself manifests in
Paradise Lost is the perverted quality of parody-heroism, of which the essential quality is
destructiveness. Consequently it is to Satan and his followers that Milton assigns the
conventional and Classical type of heroism" (Frye 521). By assigning the qualities of a
traditional epic hero to Satan, Milton is associating defiance of God with the actions of an
impenitent, tragic sinner, doomed to damnation. On the other hand, in serving God, Christ
demonstrates true heroism, which Milton wished to celebrate in his revision of the epic
tradition: "In Satan we have the antithesis of heroic action although he appropriates the
language of that action .] The Son] becomes the exemplary hero, or prototype hero, for
all men. Rather than death wish, his drive is love and creation" (Shawcross 143).
Shawcross also subscribes to an idea first propounded by Stanley Fish: "The hero of
Paradise Lost is thus not just an ordinary hero of literature, not a specific personage within
the work, but rather every man who follows the path, who learns like Adam the sum of his
wisdom. His action is personal, significant for him alone, not exemplary, although he may,
of course, become a type of Christ figura for the mundane mind of man to follow"
(Shawcross 146). Of course, the reader can become Christ, as Beowulf becomes Christ, only
in a limited, postlapsarian way. This is why Christ remains the true hero, God the true
king, and Satan the true evil. Thus, even though Beowulf predates Paradise Lost and Milton
could not have known about Beowulf, these works are complements of one another-
Beowulf, the pagan epic made Christian, and Paradise Lost, the Christian epic with
classical ties. But are they within the epic tradition?
Although Harold Bloom believes that Milton defines a tertiary type of epic based on his
original use of complex allusions to the classical epic tradition in order to revise that
tradition (555), I believe Paradise Lost is more closely tied to Beowulf based on this
hybridization of Christian heroism and traditional epic form, and these two works,
therefore, constitute an epic category all their own.

Works Consulted
Abrams, M. H., ed. 1he Aorton Anthology of English Literature. 6
th
ed. Vol. 1. New York:
Norton, 1993.

Bede. "Bede (673735): Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, Book II." Medieval
Sourcebook.
Ed. Paul Halsall. Aug. 1998. Fordham University. 15 December 1999
<http://www.fordham.edu/

halsall/basis/bede-book2.html>.
Bloom, Harold. "Milton and His Precursors." Elledge 555-68.
Charles, R. H., trans. 1he Book of Enoch. Oxford: Claredon, 1912
Chickering, Howell D., 1r. trans. Beowulf. New York: Doubleday, 1977.
Elledge, Scott, ed. Paradise Lost. By 1ohn Milton. 1674. New York: Norton, 1993.
Fish, Stanley. "Discovery as Form in Paradise Lost." Elledge 526-36.
Frye, Northrop. "The Story of All Things." Elledge 509-26.
Ide, Richard S. "On the Uses of Elizabethan Drama: The Revaluation of Epic in Paradise
Lost."
Milton Studies 17 (1983): 121-37.
1ohnson, Samuel. "Paradise Lost]." Elledge 482-92.
Lewalski, Barbara. "The Genres of Paradise Lost: Literary Genre as a Means of
Accommodation."
Elledge 569-87.
Lewis, C. S. A Preface to Paradise Lost. New York: Oxford UP, 1970.
Martindale, Charles. 1ohn Milton and the 1ransformation of Ancient Epic. London: Croom
Helm, 1986.
McColley, Grant. "The Book of Enoch and Paradise Lost." 1he Harvard 1heological Review
31
(1938): 21-39.
Milik, 1. T., ed. 1he Books of Enoch. Oxford: Claredon, 1976.
Milton, 1ohn. Paradise Lost. Elledge 3-304.
Mollenkott, Virginia R. "The Influence of the Apocrypha in Milton`s Thought and Art."
Milton and the Art
of Sacred Song. Patrick and Sundell 23-43.
Niles, 1ohn D. "Pagan Survivals and Popular Belief." 1he Cambridge Companion to Old
English
Literature. Ed. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991.
126-41.
Patrick, 1. Max, and Roger H. Sundell, eds. Milton and the Art of Sacred Song. Madison: U
of
Wisconsin P, 1979.
Sandner, David. "The Uncanny in Beowulf." Exploration 40.2 (1999): 162-70.
Shawcross, 1ohn T. "The Hero of Paradise Lost One More Time." Patrick and Sundell 137-
47.
Steadman, 1ohn M. Milton's Biblical and Classical Imagery. Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP,
1984.

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Paradise Lost and the Acoustics of Hell
Matthew Steggle
Sheffield Hallam University
M.Steggleshu.ac.uk

Steggle, Matthew. "Paradise Lost and the Acoustics of Hell." Early Modern Literary Studies 7.1/Special Issue 8
(May, 2001): 9.1-17<URL: http://purl.oclc.org/emls/07-1/stegmil2.htm>.

I cannot feel that my appreciation of Milton leads anywhere outside the
mazes of sound.
- T.S. Eliot11]

1 What does ne|| sound ||ke? As a ru|e modern f|ct|ona| dep|ct|ons of ne|| |mag|ne |t as unbearab|y
chaot|ca||y and |ncessant|y no|sy In th|s they are |n accordance both w|th 8|b||ca| and c|ass|ca|
sources as we|| as w|th a|most a|| the med|eva| and kena|ssance be||efs about ne|| 1here |s however
one str|k|ng except|on to th|s genera| ru|e Porodise Lost M||tons ep|c has a he|| |n wh|ch sound
works |n qu|te d|fferent qu|te unexpected ways and wh||e the poems he|| has been stud|ed
extens|ve|y |n terms of |ts v|sua| and |conograph|c s|gn|f|cances and wh||e |nd|v|dua| sounds there
have been cons|dered |n deta|| the home of M||tons Satan has not often been thought of |n terms of
a comp|ete acoust|c env|ronment 1h|s art|c|e w||| exp|ore the soundscapes of ne|| |n the hope of

1|1| T.S. Eliot, 'Milton I, The Selected Prose of T.S.Eliot ed. Frank Kermode (London: Faber,
& Faber, 1975) 263.
estab||sh|ng that they are a|most un|que |n kena|ssance ||terature of re|at|ng them to the more
w|de|y stud|ed sounds of the rest of the poem's un|verse and of suggest|ng a new approach to the
d|ff|cu|t quest|on of how far Porodise Lost can be cons|dered as an acoust|c artefact22
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.33] 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."44] Later
Christian epics followed the lead of Virgil and St. Matthew, as in Dante's first experience of
Hell:
nere s|ghs and cr|es and shr|eks of |amentat|on
echoed through the star|ess a|r of ne||
at f|rst these sounds resound|ng made me weep
tongues confused a |anguage stra|ned |n angu|sh
w|th cadences of anger shr||| outcr|es
and raucous groans that [o|ned w|th sounds of hands

2|2|John Milton, Paradise Lost ed. Alastair Fowler, Second Edition (London: Longman, 1998).
Citations oI the poem will be Irom this edition. For the idea oI an "acoustic" approach, see Bruce
R. Smith, The Acoustic World of Early Modern England. Attending to the O-Factor (Chicago:
Chicago UP, 1999). Smith does not mention Milton. On the iconographical traditions, with
Iurther bibliography, see Estella Schonberg, "Picturing Satan Ior the 1688 Paradise Lost", in
Albert C. Labriola and Edward Sichi, jr., eds., Miltons Legacy in the Arts (University Park:
Pennsylvania State UP, 1988) 1-20.
3|3|Matt. 8.12, 13.42, 22.13, 25.30, cited Irom the Authorized Version; De Doctrina Christiana
in The Works of John Milton gen. ed. Frank Allen Patterson, 18 vols in 21 (New York: Columbia
UP, 1931-38) 15.33-5. See Gordon Cambell, Thomas N. Corns, John K. Hale, David Holmes and
Fiona Tweedie, "Milton and De Doctrina Christiana", Milton Quarterly 31 (1997): 67-121, and
published by the University oI Bangor online at
http://www.bangor.ac.uk/english/publicat/ddc/ddc.htm.
4|4|Virgil, Aeneid 6.557-9, in The Aeneid of Jirgil ed. T.E. Page, 2 vols (London: Macmillan,
1931): hinc exaudiri gemitus, et saeva sonare / verbera. tum stridor ferri, tractaeque catenae. /
constitit Aeneas strepitumque exterritus hausit. My translation.
ra|s|ng a wh|r||ng storm that turns |tse|f
forever through that a|r of end|ess b|ack
||ke gra|ns of sand sw|r||ng when a wh|r|w|nd b|owsSS
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.66]
3. 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 1ohn 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".77] 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 1oseph Beaumont included noisiness as part of the terror of hell or
hell's gate.88] The same motif can be found in Elizabethan drama (Kyd), Caroline poetry

5|5|Dante, nferno 3.22-30 in The Divine Comedy Jolume . nferno tr. Mark Musa
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984). Quivi sospiri, pianti e alti guai / risonavan per laere san:a
stelle, / per chio al cominciar ne lagrimai./ Diverse lingue, orribili favelle,/ parole di dolore,
accenti dira, / voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle / facevano un tumulto, il qual saggira /
sempre in quellaura san:a tempo tinta, / come la rena quando turbo spira. Italian text online at
http://www.divinecomedy.org.
6|6|Eileen Gardner, Medieval Jisions of Heaven and Hell. A Sourcebook (New York: Garland,
1993) xxviii. My discussion oI Renaissance views oI Hell is based on Philip C. Almond, ed.,
Heaven and Hell in Enlightenment England (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994), esp. 81-88;
C.A. Patrides, "Renaissance and Modern Views on Hell", Harvard Theological Review 57
(1964) 217-236; D.P. Walker, The Decline of Hell. Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal
Torment (London: RKP, 1964).
7|7|Love, Bunyan, and Sharrock are cited Irom Almond, 84-5. Richard Younge (cited p. 93)
even expects "yelling like Dragons".
8|8|See Watson Kirkconnell, The Celestial Cycle. The Theme of Paradise Lost in World
Literature with translations of the mafor Analogues (1952; New York: Gordon Press, 1967) Ior
Marini (220-1), Fletcher (274), and Beaumont (350), Ariosto, Orlando Furioso 34.4.7. Tasso,
Gerusalemme Liberata 4.7. Spenser, The Faerie Queene 2.7.23.
(Thomas Heywood), and Restoration prose allegory (Bunyan).99] 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's Davideis, 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 1ortures durst not groan.1010]
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.
4. 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 1ohn Dryden after his use in 1660 of the phrase "horrid stillness".1111] How
can the mere absence of noise be considered horrid? Clearly the phrase is in some sense

9|9|Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy 1.1.65-70 in Four Revenge Tragedies ed. Katharine
Eisman Maus (OxIord: OxIord UP, 1995) imagines shaken whips, choking, snakes, groans, and
boiling lead. Heywood (cited in Patrides, 219) expects "Ejulation, Clamor, Weeping, Wailing, /
Cries, Yels, Howles, Gnashes, Curses (never Iailing) / Sighes and Suspires, Woe, and vnpittied
Mones". John Bunyan, The Pilgrims Progress ed. N.H. Keeble (OxIord: OxIord UP, 1984) 52
imagines that Hell's mouth perpetually issues "hideous noises... doleIul voices, and rushings too
and Iro... dreadIull noises..." and evil whisperings.
10|10|Cowley, Davideis cited Irom Kirkconnell, 245-6.
11|11|John Dryden, Astraea Redux, l.7 in The Works of John Dryden ed. H.T. Swedenborg et
al., 20 vols (Berkeley: CaliIornia UP, 1956- ); see commentary at I.220 Ior reIerences to Iour
detractors oI Dryden's line and a deIence by Samuel Johnson. Cowley, interestingly, had used a
similar eIIect with the phrase "dreadIul Silence" (quoted above).
analogous to "darkness visible", but the true force of Milton's use of it here takes a long
time to emerge through the poem.
5. 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. 1ean 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.1212] 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.1313] 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".1414] 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.
6. 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 graspd 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

12|12|Ken Simpson, "Lingering Voices, Telling Silences: Silence and the Word in Paradise
Regained", Milton Studies 35 (1997) 179-95; Jean E. Graham, "'Virgin Ears': Silence, DeaIness,
and Chastity in Milton's Maske", Milton Studies 36 (1999) 1-17; Fran Sendbuehler, "Silence as
Discourse in Paradise Lost", http://www.mouton-noir.org/writings/silence.html~.
13|13|Shirley Sharon-Zisser, "Darkness and Silence in Paradise Lost", Milton Studies 25 (1989)
191-212: quotations Irom 208.
14|14|Cited Irom Smith (11). Smith reviews in more detail theoretical problems with Derrida's
Iormulation.
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:
I|rst Mo|och horr|d k|ng besmeared w|th b|ood
Cf human sacr|f|ce and parents tears
1hough for the no|se of drums and t|mbre|s |oud
1he|r ch||drens cr|es unheard1S1S
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?
7. 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":
1oward the four w|nds four speedy cherub|m
ut to the|r mouths the sound|ng a|chemy
8y hera|ds vo|ce exp|a|ned the ho||ow abyss
neard far and w|de and a|| the host of he||
W|th deafen|ng shout returned them |oud acc|a|m (2S1S S1620)

Wh||e Satan |s away some of the dev||s vanda||ze mounta|ns ne|| scarce ho|ds the w||d uproar
(2S41) 8ut others even p|ay mus|c though the terms |n wh|ch th|s act|v|ty |s phrased repay
attent|on
Cthers more m||d
ketreated |n a s||ent va||ey s|ng
W|th notes ange||ca| to many a harp
1he|r own hero|c deeds
1he|r song was part|a| but the harmony
(What cou|d |t |ess when sp|r|ts |mmorta| s|ng?)
Suspended he|| (2S47SS4)


15|15|1.392-5. Also, Astoreth (441) encourages "songs": Thammuz (449) "amorous ditties":
and Belial (498-9) "noise oI riot".
The question of the devils' music has received much critical attention, since Milton has
always and rightly been considered a poet obsessed with music.1616] 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".1717] 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.
8. 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.1818] 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 wh|ch the un|versa| host upsent
A shout that tore he||s concave and beyond
Ir|ghted the re|gn of Chaos and o|d N|ght (1S413)
ne|| tremb|ed as he strode (2 676)

16|16|Diane Kelsey McColley, Poetry and Music in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997) 175-217. For another discussion with Iurther primary and
secondary reIerences, see Nan C. Carpenter, "Music, Milton and", in William B. Hunter gen. ed.,
A Milton Encyclopedia, 9 vols (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1978-83) 5.165-73.
17|17|Stephen M. Buhler, "Counterpoint and Controversy: Milton and the Critiques oI
Polyphonic Music", Milton Studies 36 (1999) 1-17. For "suspended", see Fowler's note ad loc.,
Christopher Ricks, Miltons Grand Style (OxIord: Clarendon Pr, 1963) 79.
18|18|1.83, 2.547, 2.582: note the submerged pun in the idea oI Lethe as a silent "sound"
(2.604). However, there are two problems with the idea that hell is naturally silent. One is
Cocytus, named, we are told, Ior the "lamentation loud" heard there: the tense does, however,
leave it ambiguous whether this is an environmental property oI the river, or what will be heard
there later, when the damned souls arrive (2.579-80: cI. 2.597). Secondly, Raphael, posted
outside Hell on Day 19 oI the poem's action, hears "Noise... torment, and loud lament, and
Iurious rage" (8.243-4). Fowler ad loc. notes the numerous diIIiculties that this throws up in
terms oI consistency and chronology.
I f|ed and cr|ed out Death
ne|| tremb|ed at the h|deous name and s|ghed
1hrough a|| her caves and back resounded Death (27889)
ne|| heard the unsufferab|e no|se he|| saw
neavn ru|n|ng from neavn and wou|d have f|ed
Affr|ghted (68679)

1h|rd|y ne|| |s a very echo|ng space as we have seen |t ref|ects the word Death back to S|n wh||e
Satan makes |t echo ne ca||ed so |oud that a|| the ho||ow deep ] Cf he|| resounded (131S) A|| he||
had rung at |east hypothet|ca||y of the pro[ected f|ght between Satan and Death (2 723) and ne||
shakes at the open|ng |ts gate
Cn a sudden open f|y
W|th |mpetuous reco|| and [arr|ng sound
1he |nferna| doors and on the|r h|nges grate
narsh thunder that the |owest bottom shook
Cf Lrebus (2880)

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.1919] 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.
9. 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 h|s ear |ess pea|ed
W|th no|ses |oud and ru|nous (1o compare
Great th|ngs w|th sma||) than when 8e||ona storms 29203

19|19|CI. the echoing acoustic oI Hell according to Dante and Virgil quoted above.
A un|versa| hubbub w||d
Cf stunn|ng sounds and vo|ces a|| confused
8orne through the ho||ow dark assau|ts h|s ear
W|th |oudest vehemence 29S14

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.2020] 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.
10. 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".2121] Pre-
lapsarian Eden is never empty of sounds, and repeatedly our expectation that it might ever

20|20|There is a proIitable connection here with the "chaos theory" analyses oI Milton, such as
Catherine Gimelli Martin, "Fire, Ice, and Epic Entropy: The Physics and Metaphysics oI Milton's
ReIormed Chaos", Milton Studies 35 (1997) 73-113. Martin notes Milton's presentation oI
randomness as morally neutral rather than actively evil. For Martin, Chaos is "noisy" not merely
in terms oI acoustics but in terms oI inIormation theory (100), Extending her argument Irom
thermodynamics to acoustics, we might say that Hell's silence is Iar more evil than Chaos' white
noise.
21|21|4.602; cI. 4.647, 4.654-5, 5.40, 7.435. Sharon-Zisser (201) notes the same eIIect in regard
to darkness, which is never allowed to be total in Eden.
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.
11. 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.2222] But
otherwise, it is emphatically Heaven, and not Hell, that we find filled with continuous
sound.
12. 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.2323] 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.2424] 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).2525] 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

22|22|For instance, just in 6.200-219 we have speciIically acoustic descriptions oI shouts,
trumpets, hosannas, "clamour", arms on armour braying discord, and the hiss oI Iiery darts,
making all heaven resound.
23|23|Eleanor Cook, "Melos versus Logos, or why doesn't God sing: Some thoughts on Milton's
Wisdom", in Mary Nyquist and Margaret W. Ferguson, eds., Re-membering Milton. Essays on
the Texts and Traditions (New York: Methuen, 1987) 197-210 cites Kundera but argues that the
distinction is untenable.
24|24|Smith, The Acoustic World, 46.
|25|Ricks, Miltons Grand Style, 106.
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.
13 8y coro||ary then separat|on from the d|v|ne |s f|gured as a |ack of harmony or even worse as
s||ence We may note |n pass|ng that the Ia|| affects Ldens soundscape |n |nterest|ng ways
mutter|ng thunder (91002 10666) and |oud new w|nds (10699 70S) chang|ng the nature of the
background no|se wh||e Adam and Lve are strucken mute (91064) but the more |nterest|ng use of
sound comes on Satan's return to a ne|| defam|||ar|sed by the events and the soundscapes of 8ooks 3
9 Cnce aga|n ne|| fa||s to fu|f|| the acoust|c expectat|ons ra|sed by a|most a|| other kena|ssance
dep|ct|ons of |t Cnce aga|n Satan enters not a no|sy env|ronment but a deserted empty he|| much
qu|eter than the chaos he has come through even the acoust|c |nvent|veness of the s|ngers and
r|oters seems to have run out Wh||e Chaos at |east was exc|a|m|ng and surg|ng ne|| |s desert
many a dark |eague (104167 4378 Satan |n h|s orat|on aga|n remarks on th|s d|fference |n |eve|s of
sound 10479) When he gets to the counc|| chamber where the dev||s are consu|t|ng he provokes
|oud acc|a|m (4SS) commands s||ence (4S9) and g|ves h|s speech
A wh||e he stood expect|ng
1he|r un|versa| shout and h|gh app|ause
1o f||| h|s ear (10S0S6)
8ut th|s s||ence |s not broken by shout|ng c|app|ng speech or mus|c |ndeed w|th|n the poems he||
|t |s never broken by any of these th|ngs s|nce the dev||s |n Porodise Lost make no more acoust|c
|ntervent|ons apart from one Instead there |s on|y one sound |eft that the dev||s can make a mere
d|sma| un|versa| h|ss (10S08) and spatter|ng no|se (10S67) Dreadfu| was the d|n ] Cf h|ss|ng
(S212) and the |ast presentat|on of the dev||s w|th|n Porodise Lost sees them restr|cted to a d|re
h|ss (S43) a |ong and cease|ess h|ss (S73) Iust as the mora| hor|zons of Satan and of the dev||s
seem to shr|nk |n the course of the poem so the r|ch range of acoust|c act|v|t|es seen |n 8ooks 1 and 2
narrows down |n 8ook 10 to hard|y more than a s|ng|e monotonous state what a twentyf|rst century
reader m|ght descr|be as noth|ng more than a background h|ss M||tons he|| |s un||ke a|most a|| other
representat|ons of the p|ace |n that |t |s not as one m|ght expect no|sy |t |s |n a ||tera| sense
death|y qu|et and the fu|| |mp||cat|ons of th|s echo|ng amb|ence|ess chamber on|y become apparent
on our second v|s|t to |t Such s||ence one m|ght argue has an a||egor|ca| s|gn|f|cance ref|ect|ng the
poeno domni the pa|n of be|ng separated from God2626 In M||tons ne|| the poeno sensus the
cramm|ng of every sense w|th agon|z|ng st|mu|| |s suspended as far as hear|ng goes |n order to
create a cont|nu|ng and e|egant rem|nder of the poeno domni In a var|ant of Mo|ochs pred|cted |ater
behav|our the dev||s at th|s stage are on|y us|ng sound to cover up what otherw|se m|ght be
terr|fy|ng|y |naud|b|e In th|s connect|on the force of the or|g|na| horr|d s||ence becomes more
ev|dent as does the effect of M||tons a|most un|que presentat|on of he|| |n terms of an absence

26|26|See C.A. Patrides, Milton and the Christian Tradition (OxIord: Clarendon Press, 1966)
279-283.
rather than an excess of amb|ent sound kaphae|s prophecy of the dev||s |ongterm fate app||es not
mere|y to the|r fame but to the|r acoust|c env|ronment Lterna| s||ence be the|r doom
(638S)2727



14. 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.
15. The first such historicized body, then, is that of 1ohn Milton himself. It has kinetic
memory of how to play the organ and the "Bas-Viol".2828] 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".2929] 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. 1ohn (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

27|27|As well as the obvious eternal Iailure to be talked about, Sharon-Zisser (209) reads this
line as suggesting an eternal Iailure to speak: I suggest it can also imply, an eternal lack oI
anything to hear.
28|28|Carpenter, 165.
29|29|Cited by Carpenter, 166.
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.3030]
16 Porodise Lost |s a|so of course f|||ed w|th m|met|c sound effects onomatopoe|a and m|met|c
syntax wh|ch on|y work |f the poem |s sounded As such |t needs a second body to sound |t and read
|t out a|oud And the poem |s very |nterested |n the processes of vo|c|ng of what |t means to vo|ce
someone e|ses words (M||ton reports the Muse anyone read|ng the poem a|oud reports M||ton
when the speaker asks to borrow the vo|ce heard by Iohn |t |s momentar||y unc|ear whether the
person do|ng the w|sh|ng |s M||ton or the person read|ng the poem a|oud) nence perhaps M||tons
|nterest |n 8abe| and the th|n ||ne separat|ng speech as a veh|c|e for |anguage from speech as as
[ang||ng no|se and h|deous gabb|e (12SS6) and |n the contemporary debate about exact|y how
Satan created h|s speech when tempt|ng Lve w|th serpent tongue ] Crgan|c or |mpu|se of voca| a|r
(9S2930) d|d he d|rect|y commandeer the snakes |arynx to create speech or d|d he use some more
mag|ca| power? Porodise Lost |s |nterested |n th|s prob|em of phys|cs because |t bears on the exact
|nterfaces between the m|nd and sound waves and the m|nd aga|n and because |t thus rep||cates the
cond|t|ons under wh|ch the poem |tse|f |s transm|tted

17 Some of the terms of th|s debate though are strange|y fam|||ar 1S L||ot whose essay on M||ton
gave th|s art|c|e |ts ep|graph character|zed M||ton's work together w|th Ioyce |n conven|ent perhaps
overconven|ent b|ograph|ca| terms |ove of mus|c and defect|ve v|s|on n|s account of M||ton's
aud|tory |mag|nat|on (263) wh||e persuas|ve c|ear|y a|so |nv|tes neg|ect of M||ton's r|gorous
approach to ||tera| mean|ngs In undertak|ng an acoust|c approach one must be carefu| not to be
drawn |nto mere|y mak|ng apprec|at|ve remarks about me|od|ousness nowever |t |s c|ear that an
approach that pr|v||eges sound offers great poss|b|||t|es for |nvest|gat|on not on|y of texts w|th a very
obv|ous re|at|on to performance and acoust|cs but even for an apparent|y strong|y ||terary text ||ke
Porodise Lost Porodise Lost |s |ndeed a reada|oud acoust|c artefact a set of no|ses Itse|f a speech
act (Sharon2|sser 209) cou|d we co|n the phrase sound act? |t |s |ntended as a contr|but|on to
the cosm|c symphony (3413S) 8ut |t |s a|so an |nv|tat|on to ||sten d|fferent|y to ||sten to the sounds
that compose that symphony and |t starts th|s by exp|or|ng the n|ghtmar|sh poss|b|||t|es of ne|| a
p|ace where a|| you can hear |s yourse|f


[`W_
O Campbe|| Gordon 1homas N Corns Iohn k na|e Dav|d no|mes and I|ona 1weed|e M||ton
and e octrino christiono Mi/ton uorter/y 31 (1997) 67121 or |n a pub||shed by the
Un|vers|ty of 8angor on||ne at http]]wwwbangoracuk]eng||sh]pub||cat]ddc]ddchtm

O Sendbuehler lran Sllence as ulscourse ln lotoJlse lost hLLp//wwwmouLon
nolrorg/wrlLlngs/sllencehLml
O Sharon2|sser Sh|r|ey Darkness and S||ence |n Porodise Lost Mi/ton 5tudies 2S (1989) 191
212
O Shumaker Wayne Dnpremeditoted verse lee/inq ond Perception in Porodise Lost
r|nceton r|nceton U 1967
O S|mpson ken L|nger|ng Vo|ces 1e|||ng S||ences S||ence and the Word |n Porodise keqoined
Mi/ton 5tudies 3S (1997) 1799S
O Sm|th 8ruce k @he 4coustic wor/d of or/y Modern nq/ond 4ttendinq to the Oloctor
Ch|cago Ch|cago U 1999
O V|rg|| @he 4eneid of virqi/ ed 1L age 2 vo|s London Macm|||an 1931
O Wa|ker D @he ec/ine of ne// 5eventeenthcentury iscussions of terno/ @orment
London kk 1964

Responses to this piece intended for the Readers' Forum may be sent to the Editor at
L.M.Hopkinsshu.ac.uk.

2001-, Lisa Hopkins (Edit

Human Nature in Republican Tradition and Paradise Lost
William Walker
University of New South Wales
W.Walkerunsw.edu.au
Walker, William. "Human Nature in Republican Tradition and Paradise Lost". Early Modern Literary
Studies 10.1 (May, 2004) 6.1-44 <URL: http://purl.oclc.org/emls/10-1/walkmilt.htm>.
1. Many critics and historians have recently come to agree that Milton`s late poetry
and prose are, among other things, expressions of his ~republicanism. Though this
term is used to mean different things, its meaning in this context is commonly taken
to include a commitment to a way of thinking about politics that is displayed by
figures in what, in light of the work of historians of political thought such as 1. G. A.
Pocock, Blair Worden, and Quentin Skinner, we now think of as the republican
tradition of political thought. That is to say that the case for Milton`s republicanism
commonly includes the proposition that, to one extent or another, Milton`s thinking
about politics conforms in important ways with the thinking of one or more figures
in a tradition of thought running from Aristotle, through ancient Romans such as
Sallust, Cicero, Livy, and Seneca, and up through Renaissance Italians such as
Bruni and Machiavelli.
1]

2. Though scholars of republican political thought seldom see it as a philosophy of
human nature, many recognise that an understanding of human nature serves as a
crucial premise of arguments concerning forms of government, liberty, history, and
virtue which are more commonly thought of as the essentials of this tradition. 1. G.
A. Pocock, for example, emphasises that republican tradition is grounded in a vision
of man as ~the zoon politikon whose nature was to rule, to act, to make decisions
and who thus found his fulfilment in citizenship (Pocock 335, 402). Quentin Skinner
claims that the negative theory of civil liberty he sees at the heart of republican
tradition is grounded in a rejection of Aristotle`s understanding of human nature as
something that has specific ends or purposes (1990). Machiavelli`s restatement of
this theory of liberty is, moreover, grounded in ~his generally pessimistic view of
human nature, his view that it is wisest to regard our tendency to act corruptly as
ineliminable (~Machiavelli on virt 177). Taking issue with Skinner, Paul Rahe
argues that ~the classical republican argument, articulated by Aristotle and Cicero
on the basis of their observation of Greek and Roman practice, was grounded in the
conviction that the distinctive human feature is man`s capacity for moral and
political rationality. On the basis of this claim, he goes on to insist that Machiavelli
must be differentiated from the classical republicans, both Greek and Roman, on
grounds that he rejects this understanding of what man is (292, 305). Though there
is considerable disagreement amongst historians of political thought over what the
republican view of human nature is, there is thus strong agreement that a view on
this issue is a major premise in republican argumentation about politics.
3. One thing a comprehensive argument for the view that Milton is aligned with the
tradition of republican political thought would have to do, then, is to identify the
republican understanding/s of human nature, and then show that Milton`s portrayal
of human nature conforms with it/them. The case for Milton`s republicanism as it
currently stands does not do this. That it could not reasonably do so becomes clear
if we compare how three of the major figures in republican tradition-a Greek, a
Roman, and an Italian--envision human nature with how Milton does this in his
major poem, Paradise Lost (1667). Over the course of this comparison, it will also
become clear that because Milton differs from the republicans on this issue, he also
differs from them on other major issues. On the basis of these observations, we will
be able to see that the current account of Milton`s republicanism (at least when it
comes to his epic) is simplistic, and thereby work towards a more refined account of
how this poet is related to republicanism understood as a tradition of political
thought.

```
4. In the Aicomachean Ethics, Aristotle understands human nature to be a ~composite
nature made up of body and soul, where the soul has an irrational and a rational
element (1177b28, 1178a19). The irrational element consists of a ~nutritive or
~vegetative element and an ~appetitive element, and the rational element consists
of a ~scientific (or as some translations have it, ~theoretical or ~speculative)
element and a ~calculative or ~practical element (AE 1102a26-1103a). By virtue
of the scientific element, ~we contemplate the kind of things whose originative
causes are invariable, while by virtue of the calculative element ~we contemplate
variable things (AE 1139a6-9; the distinction is drawn again in Politics 1333a17-
25). There are two main kinds of virtues of the soul which are defined in terms of
the standing of its various elements and how they are related to each other: the
virtues of character (which Aristotle sometimes also calls the moral or practical
virtues) and the virtues of intellect. The moral virtues are those virtues Aristotle
emphasises in his discussion of the virtues of citizenship: courage, justice, pride,
temperance, and liberality. He understands these moral virtues as virtues of the
appetitive, desiring part of the soul which, though part of the irrational part of the
soul and though sometimes resisting and opposing rational principle, yet shares in
rational principle ~insofar as it listens to and obeys it (AE 1102b30-32). Aristotle
describes these moral virtues as ~states of character, where a state of character
(hexis) is that ~in virtue of which we stand well or badly with reference to passions
such as fear and anger, where to stand badly in reference to a passion is to feel it too
weakly or too strongly, and where to stand well with reference to a passion is to
"feel it moderately" (AE 1105b19-29).

5. Though we are adapted by nature to receive these states of character which
constitute the moral virtues, though we have a potential or capacity (dynamis) for
them, we do not possess or come to possess them by nature; we acquire them mainly
by way of the repeated performance of those particular actions to which the moral
virtues would dispose us (AE 1103a14-25). Thus, ~the virtues we get by first
exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we
have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g. men become
builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by
doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts (AE
1103a32-1103b2). Since the repeated performance of actions of a particular kind is
habitual action or produces a habit within us, ~moral virtue comes about as a result
of habit (AE 1103a14-1103b-26). Once we have these moral virtues, not only are
we disposed to act in accordance with them-to act temperately, liberally,
courageously, justly--but we also desire to do so and take pleasure in doing so (AE
1104b3-14). But however strongly disposed we may feel by virtue of our virtues to
perform a particular action, they never simply cause us to perform that action, and
we still must always choose to perform an action in order to act virtuously. This
choosing or choice (prohairesis) that for Aristotle is an essential element of morally
virtuous action is, as Nederman puts it, ~the outcome of desire and intellect acting
together in order to achieve an end (~Political Animal 291). So crucial a capacity
is this for Aristotle that he at one point identifies man with it: ~choice is either
desiderative reason or ratiocinative desire, and such an origin of action is a man
(AE 1139b 3-5; also AE 1112b32).
6. In the first book of the Aicomachean Ethics, Aristotle also identifies what, for
human nature, constitutes ~the chief good, that for the sake of which men act. He
calls it ~happiness (eudaimonia), and explains what this is by identifying ~the
function (ergon) of man on the basis of his perception of ~what is peculiar to man
(AE 1097b23-34). Observing that whereas man shares with plants and animals the
life of nutrition, growth, and perception, only he has ~the element that has a rational
principle, Aristotle infers that the function of man is ~an activity of soul which
follows or implies this principle (AE 1097b33-1098a9). Given that i) this is the
function of man, ii) the function of a good man is to perform this function well and,
iii) those actions are well performed when performed in accordance with a
particular excellence or virtue, Aristotle feels he can reasonably provide a more
comprehensive definition of happiness or human good: ~human good turns out to be
activity of soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in
accordance with the best and most complete (AE 1097b-1098a). Since he has
identified the particular activity of soul which is to be well performed (i.e.
performed in accordance with the virtues that are proper to the soul) as one that
follows or implies the rational principle, Aristotle is here claiming that the good life
consists in the excellent exercise of rational principle.
2]

7. It is because ~the activity of the practical virtues... which] is exhibited in political or
military affairs (AE 1177b6-7) is in accordance with part of the rational principle
in us that it can count as a fulfilment of the function or work of mankind and
qualify as a happy life. But the political life may also qualify as the means by which
the human animal may fulfill specific innate and natural impulses, and reach its full
development or end (telos). For, in an extraordinarily controversial passage at the
opening of the Politics, Aristotle also defines man as a ~political animal (zoon
politikon) that forms political societies in order to satisfy ~the bare needs of life but
that continues to exist in them ~for the sake of the good life (P 1252b27-1253a4). In
so doing, he seems to mean, as Keyt argues, ~that nature endows man with a latent
capacity for civic virtue (politike arete) and an impulse to live in a polis, and that
man needs to exist within political societies in order to fulfill this impulse and
achieve happiness.
3]

8. As we have seen, however, the rational principle is bipartite: besides the calculative
or practical reason which, having the virtue of practical wisdom, enters into good
deliberation and choice of those actions which are in accordance with the moral
virtues, there is scientific reason. The particular virtues proper to scientific reason,
those states of scientific reason which permit it to function well, are philosophical
wisdom (sophia), intuitive knowledge, and scientific knowledge. The objects of
scientific reason, those things about which one contemplates, are necessary, eternal,
invariable things, such as the gods and the heavenly bodies. For Aristotle, not only
is scientific reason, as a faculty or element, better than and superior to calculative
reason, but its virtues are superior to those of calculative reason (AE 1143b33-34),
and its objects are superior to those of calculative reason. It would seem to follow
that the activity of scientific reason--contemplation (theoria)
4]
--is superior to that of
calculative reason (which includes deliberation) and that contemplation would be
closer to the life of happiness than political activity. And, in the final book of the
Aicomachean Ethics, Aristotle does indeed argue that contemplation is ~superior to
that which is the exercise of the other kind of virtue (i.e. the political life which is
the exercise of moral, practical virtue) and is, indeed, ~perfect happiness (AE
1177b29-30; 1177a17-18; 1178b8).
9. However, nowhere in the Politics does Aristotle so explicitly and comprehensively
subordinate the life of the citizen and statesman (lived in accordance with the moral
virtues) to the life of the philosopher (lived in accordance with the moral virtues and
the virtues of both scientific and speculative reason) as he does in the celebrated
passage in Book X of the Aicomachean Ethics. Indeed, the explicit discussion of the
relation between the two lives at the opening of Book VII of the Politics is
inconclusive. Moreover, in the Aicomachean Ethics, Aristotle still claims that ~man
is born for citizenship (AE 1097b12) and that ~man is a political creature and one
whose nature is to live with others (AE 1169b18-19). In Books VIII and IX, he
emphasises that these others must include friends, for ~the supremely happy man
will need virtuous] friends (AE 1170a1-3). And even in Book X, there is some
question as to the appropriateness and feasibility of the life of contemplation for
humans: while it may be proper for the gods, the life of contemplation is ~too high
for man and ~our nature is not self-sufficient for the purpose of contemplation
(AE 1177b26; 1178b33-35).
10. As he presents what he refers to as ~our philosophy of human nature (AE 1181b15)
over the course of the Politics and the Aicomachean Ethics, Aristotle is thus
ambivalent, if not simply inconsistent, on precisely how the contemplative life and
the political life are related to each other, human nature, and happiness, and this is
one reason why there has been such extensive controversy over his treatment of this
issue. But it is at least clear that, while sometimes wanting to grant some kind of
priority to the contemplative life, Aristotle sees both the political life and the
contemplative life as forms of human action that are in accordance with the best
part of man`s composite nature--reason. As such, both qualify as fulfilments of the
function man has by nature and as forms of the happy life, though the political life
will perhaps be happy only ~in a secondary degree (AE 1178a8).

```
11. In his major philosophical writings, Cicero, too, presents an account of human
nature which serves as the foundation for many of his propositions about human
fulfilment and the political life. In 1he Laws, for example, he deduces ~the nature of
justice from his account of ~the nature of man according to which only man
shares the capacity to reason with the gods, and only he is therefore a member of
that ~single community shared by gods and men which is subject to the law of
nature (1.23). Because Cicero understands all humans to be endowed with reason
which allows them to recognise and obey this natural law which is the criterion of
justice for both gods and men, he feels that we all have a particular purpose in life:
~we are born for justice (Laws 1.28). By this he means that ~we have been made by
nature to share justice amongst ourselves and to impart it to one another, and that
~we are born to join a fellowship of citizens (Laws 1.33; 1.62). Though, as
Nederman observes, Cicero sometimes speaks of this capacity to form and join in
fellowships as something that is rather passive which requires ~an external
stimulus, such as a wise orator, ~to awaken and invigorate it (Medieval
Aristotelianism 9), Cicero also indicates that human nature has an inborn desire and
impulse to exercise reason and to behave in a way which is consistent with it and
natural law: in the opening of the remaining pages of 1he Republic, for example, he
claims that ~nature has given to mankind such a compulsion to do good, and such a
desire to defend the well-being of the community, that this force prevails over all the
temptations of pleasure and ease (Rep 1.1). ~We are led by a powerful urge, he
writes as he continues to recommend the political life, ~to increase the wealth of the
human race; we are keen to make men`s lives safer and richer by our policies and
efforts; we are spurred on by nature herself to fulfill this purpose (Rep 1.3). In
addition to this, men have a ~sense of shame-that dread, as it were, of justified
rebuke which nature has imparted to man (Rep 5.6; see also Of Duties 1.126-27).
Cicero thus postulates the purpose or end of human nature on the basis of his
observation of both a capacity to reason which is peculiar to humans, and a
powerful inborn desire and urge in man to exercise that capacity through the
formation of communities and the administration of justice within them. Finally,
Cicero also makes clear in these works that at the heart of this political activity are
forms of speech and eloquence (Laws 1.62; Of Duties 1.50; 1.107; 3.23)
5]

12. Given that mankind is born for justice, where this means being born with powerful
urges to exercise reason through speech in order to administer justice within a
human community, it follows that mankind can fulfill itself and live the good life
only by being a member of and participating in some kind of community. Since ~all
are held together by a natural goodwill and kindliness and also by a fellowship in
justice (Laws 1.35), since every human is really a ~citizen of the whole world as
though it were a single city (Laws 1.61), it might seem that humans do not really
need to be members of any more limited political communities, such as man-made
states, in order to fulfill themselves. But Cicero claims that participation in this
universal community of all rational agents which is under the law of nature is
insufficient to satisfy the human socio-political instinct. As he says in 1he Republic,
human beings also have an ~innate desire to form communities bound by legal
consent and community of interest (1.39). In order to fulfill themselves, men must
therefore participate in smaller communities bound by laws of their own making,
but where these laws still conform with the law of nature which is the natural
criterion of all justice. As Scipio puts it later in the dialogue, ~the good life is
impossible without a good state; and there is no greater blessing than a well-ordered
state (Rep 5.7; see also 4.3). And it is because this is the case that Cicero also
commonly claims that of all forms of community, our country should have the first
place in our affections (Rep 2.5; Duties 1.57).
13. Creating and administering a state is not only the means of fulfilling our natural
impulses and achieving the good life, but also the means of pleasing the gods and
achieving eternal happiness in the after-life. Early in 1he Republic, Cicero claims
that there is no ~occupation which brings human excellence closer to divine power
than founding new states and preserving those already founded (Rep 1.12). In so
doing, he differs sharply from Aristotle who in the final book of the Aicomachean
Ethics identifies contemplation as that activity which brings humans closest to the
gods (AE 1177b26-1178b31). Scipio`s adoptive grandfather, Scipio Africanus the
elder, further distances the work from Aristotle when he appears to Scipio in a
dream and informs him that ~for everyone who has saved and served his country
and helped it to grow, a sure place is set aside in heaven where he may enjoy a life of
eternal bliss (Rep 6.13; also 6.16). Doing what it was born to do, then, the human
animal not only fulfills its nature and achieves the good life, but also assures its soul
of eternal bliss once it has ~escaped from the fetters of the body as though from
prison (Rep 6.14). On the other hand, those who fail to act politically deny their
nature, fail to fulfill themselves, and suffer various forms of punishment (Rep 3.33;
6.29).

14. Cicero thus does not share the vision of man, occasionally affirmed by Aristotle, as
an animal that achieves perfect happiness only in contemplation. Because Cicero
ranks the political life above the contemplative life, Cicero, as Nederman observes,
is more emphatic concerning the importance of the exercise of speech in the form of
eloquence than Aristotle is (Medieval Aristotelianism). While Aristotle explicitly
asserts the importance of speech to the life of the statesman (P 1253a7-17), there
would appear to be little place for it in the contemplative life. And he seems to be
more skeptical than Cicero is concerning the power of ~arguments to make people
virtuous (AE 1179b-1180a). There is, in addition, nothing in Aristotle`s ethical and
political writings approximating Cicero`s view that one of the reasons living the life
of the statesman and citizen is valuable and important is that it is a means of
achieving bliss in the afterlife.
15. These important differences should not, however, prevent us from seeing how the
Greek and the Roman agree on basic issues. Both assert that the human animal has
a composite nature (of body and soul), though Cicero`s dualistic interpretation of it
differs from Aristotle`s. Both see reason as a crucial element of the soul, an element
which sets it apart from the animals. Both assert that humans, by virtue of their
nature, have special abilities to reason and to speak, and inborn urges to exercise
those abilities within socio-political communities. Both define the end or purpose of
human nature in terms of the exercise and development of these inborn abilities and
urges, and both understand human flourishing and perfection in terms of the
achievement of this end. Both think of human virtue basically in terms of the rule of
reason over passion and appetite, and both see virtue understood in this way as a
precondition of human fulfilment. Though both see human nature as being moved
by an impulse to live as members of a political society, they tend not to see the virtue
that is required to do this well as being natural, but as something that must be
instilled and sustained through education and civil law. Both think of statesmanship
as, if not the, than at least a principal way humans may exercise their reason, live
the life of virtue, and fulfil the purposes they have by nature.
6]


```
16. Though in the preface to the Discourses Machiavelli confesses to be ~filled with
astonishment and grief by the fact that ~the highly virtuous actions performed by
the ancients are now shunned and that ~of the virtue of bygone days there remains
no trace, he nevertheless commonly asserts that humanity has remained the same
over time, as has the general order of things in which it exists (98). Near the end of
the work, for example, he agrees with those prudent men who claim that ~men have,
and always have had, the same passions, whence it necessarily comes about that the
same effects are produced (517; see also 98-99, 142, 207, 266). The indication here
that Machiavelli is inclined to think of the unchanging human agent mainly in terms
of passion and desire is confirmed throughout the work by explicit descriptions of
how man by nature desires (200, 216, 268), and descriptions of both men and women
being driven and motived by the passions of love, fear, and envy (97, 463, 485, 487),
and the desires to rule (which he sometimes calls ~ambition) and to seek vengeance
(116, 395, 404, 425, 427, 441, 524-25). On occasion he explicitly equates these
passions and desires with ~the force of nature which cannot be resisted (430-31;
464).
17. Machiavelli sometimes associates these passions and desires which are inherent to
human nature with vice and corruption and immoral, blameworthy, wicked, and
dishonourable conduct. Thus, he refers to men who, ~less virtuous than
Themistocles, ~let themselves be swayed by their desires and their passions (377),
and urges all legislators ~to be all the more ready to restrain human appetites and
to deprive them of all hope of doing wrong with impunity (217). And on a number
of occasions he strongly urges that those unchanging passions and desires which
constitute human nature lead to a kind of ~mental blindness which prevent men
from seeing things as they are and following courses of action which would allow
them to achieve their goals (404, 410, 427, 429, 524-25). That Machiavelli
understands human nature in terms of passion and desire and often associates them
with evil and failure, has lead Rahe and others to find an Augustinian strain in his
writing (302). And Machiavelli does indeed claim that ~in constituting and
legislating for a commonwealth it needs be taken for granted that all men are
wicked and that they will always give vent to the malignity that is in their minds
when opportunity offers (112). But he also claims and implies that the passions
and desires which he sees as defining human nature are in fact the products of
various aspects of the human condition and that they may thus change and take on
different configurations in different people. Thus, the affair of the Decemviri shows
how easily men are corrupted and ~in nature become transformed, however good
they may be and however well taught (217). Though ~nature has made the
French ardent at the beginning of a fight and weak at the end, ~it does not follow
from this that the nature which makes them ardent at the start could not be so
regulated by rules as to keep them ardent right up to the end (503). The envy
which is supposedly inherent to man`s nature in fact ~may be got rid of (485). And
though there may be a nature common to all, yet different men may have different
~natures, as the difference between Manlius Torquatus and Valerius Corvinus
makes clear (467-68).
18. More importantly, perhaps following an Aristotelian metaphorical locution (P
1318b9; 1326a1-5), Machiavelli on several occasions refers to the populace of a
particular political society as ~matter and ~material which, depending upon how
it is treated and worked upon, is ~good and ~virtuous or ~bad and ~corrupt
(154, 159, 246, 428-29). This way of speaking about people is confirmed by the way
Machiavelli continually distinguishes between the early days of the Roman republic
~when men were good, and the later days when ~men have become bad (160-61).
It is further confirmed by his claim that ~anyone seeking to establish a republic at
the present time would find it easier to do so among uncultured men of the
mountains than among dwellers in cities where civilization is corrupt; just as a
sculptor will more easily carve a beautiful statue from rough marble than from
marble already spoiled by a bungling workman (141). Drawing such an analogy,
Machiavelli suggests that he does not think there is anything wrong with man; the
problem is with what educators and statesmen usually make of him.
19. Indeed, Machiavelli explicitly takes issue with those who, postulating an inherently
wicked human nature, proceed to explain events in terms of it and thereby evade
taking responsibility for their own part in them. Thus he chastises those who
account for the extraordinarily wicked conduct of the people of the Romagna before
Pope Alexander VI got rid of the lords who ruled it by way of wicked human
nature: ~it was the wickedness of the princes that gave rise to this, not the wicked
nature of man (483). While Machiavelli does not here say that man is not wicked,
he does reject the postulate of natural human depravity as an explanation of what
happened here, and insists that ~it was the prince who was responsible for the
~evils in the Romagna (483). This kind of argument, which is also in 1he Prince
and which likely owes something to the opening of the 1he ar with 1ugurtha where
Sallust condemns those who blame human nature for their own failings (1.1-4),
becomes quite pronounced in the final sections of the Discourses, where Machiavelli
emphasises that the ~nature of individuals, soldiers, families, and peoples is a
product of education, rules, customs, institutions, and ways of life. Because the
passions and desires that constitute the ~nature of men are not in fact inherent to
them but are products of how they are educated, trained, brought up, and ruled,
because human nature is highly imitative and malleable, Machiavelli strongly
asserts, those princes and republics whose soldiers and citizens have a corrupt
nature have only themselves to blame.
20. Finally, though Machiavelli occasionally associates the passions and desires with
vice and contrasts them with some kind of mental vision, reason, conceived as an
independent element of human nature which vies with passion and appetite for
authority over the soul and which, having won the battle, makes it virtuous, makes
no appearance in the 1he Prince or the Discourses. And the passions and desires,
not to mention the beasts with which man shares them, have much more positive
associations with drive, energy, greatness, and even virtue in Machiavelli than they
do in the ancients--Cicero criticises those who take after the lion and the fox, while
Machiavelli praises them, though Machiavelli still draws a distinction between their
natures.
7]
This of course means that Machiavelli also abandons the Aristotelian and
Ciceronian view that, in large part by virtue of the rational principle which
distinguishes man from the beasts and allows him to reason and speak eloquently,
mankind reaches its full development and fulfills itself only through active
engagement in political life and/or contemplation. As Rahe, puts it, Machiavelli`s
~republicanism is, in fact, grounded upon the conviction that all talk of natural
human ends is nonsense (293). Humans may thus not know the fulfilment of
natural ends, but only of the desires and passions which happen to form within
them, and though Machiavelli regards some of these desires and passions as being
base, he is far from thinking man naturally depraved for being a creature that is
possessed and driven by them.
21. Machiavelli thus does not share Augustine`s overwhelming sense of the depravity of
human nature, but is pessimistic about what men usually become as a result of the
conditions under which they live-it is not an untouched block of marble, but one
that has been botched that is difficult to turn into a beautiful statue. One must take
for granted that all men are wicked, that is, not because that is what they are from
the start, or because that is what they are powerfully disposed to become, but
because that is what they almost always have become as a result of their upbringing
(though he also concedes that, like all things of this world, man is inclined to
deterioration over time). Emphasizing that the same passions and desires have
animated mankind over millenia, and that the particular configuration of those
passions and desires is usually a mode of vice or corruption, Machiavelli also asserts
that the essential, unchanging being of humanity is a rather amoral, malleable,
imitative life-form which, by virtue of a way of life, becomes a structure of passion
and desire which may be a good or a bad ~nature.

```
22. Unlike all of the authors we have been considering, Milton in Paradise Lost (and
elsewhere) thinks of mankind as the product of a deliberate act of creation
performed by a beneficent and omnipotent deity, an act that is recounted, mainly on
the basis of Genesis, in some detail by Raphael in Book VII and Adam in Book
VIII. These accounts, and the numerous other references to God`s act of creating
man and the world over the course of the poem, make clear that God did not simply
make man, but that he made him to do certain things, and for a particular way of
life. This is suggested early in the poem by the Son when, speaking to God, he
presumes that God will not abolish the entire ~Creation (which includes mankind)
and unmake for Satan ~what for thy glory thou hast made (III, 163-64). That God
makes man in particular for and to is confirmed by Raphael in Book VII where he
prefaces his account of God`s creation of man with the observation that mankind
was to be the ~Master work which
endu`d
With Sanctity of Reason, might erect
His Stature, and upright with Front serene
Govern the rest, self-knowing, and from thence
Magnanimous to correspond with Heav`n,
But grateful to acknowledge whence his good
Descends, thither with heart and voice and eyes
Directed in Devotion, to adore
And worship God Supreme who made him chief
Of all his works. (VII, 507-16)
Raphael here indicates that God does not just happen to endow man with reason,
but that he does so so that he can do things God wishes him to do, such as govern the
animals, and acknowledge, adore, and worship God (see also XI, 339). That God
does indeed create man to do things such as adore and glorify him, but also to
produce other humans who do this as well, is confirmed by the angels immediately
after the creation when they observe that God created man in his image ~to dwell
on earth] / And worship him, and to ~multiply a race of worshippers / Holy and
just (VII, 627-31). As Uriel explains to the disguised Satan earlier in the poem,
God made man to serve him, indeed, ~to serve him better than the fallen angels did
(III, 679). And as the narrator, describing Adam and Eve in paradise, explains,
For contemplation hee and valor was] form`d,
For softness shee and sweet attractive Grace,
Hee for God only, shee for God in him. (IV, 297-99)
In Book IX, responding to Eve`s suggestion that they work alone, Adam observes
that ~not to irksome toil, but to delight / He made us, and delight to Reason joined
(IX, 242-43). After the fall, the Son confirms several of these claims: Eve was
~Adorn`d... And lovely to attract Adam`s love, but not his subjection; she was
made ~for Adam, whose ~part / And person was to bear rule (X, 149-56). Finally,
in his terrible lament after the fall, Adam must face the fact that he failed to do what
he knows God made him to do: ~God made thee of choice his own, and of his own /
To serve him, thy reward was of his grace (X, 766-67).
23. These assertions that God made man for and to have two major meanings, the first
of which is that God made him with the will and intention that he do certain things
and exist for the sake of certain things. One of the deepest assumptions of the poem
and the unfallen characters in it is that because God made man in this way, human
nature has an end or purpose: it is to do the things God wills it to do, to live in the
way God intended it to live when he created it and as he continues to sustain it over
time. From one perspective, it may appear that this purpose is manifold, since, in
making and sustaining human nature, God wills and intends that it do all kinds of
things: besides worshipping, acknowledging, extolling, praising, thanking, and
adoring him, mankind is to multiply; to govern their appetites; to subdue and
possess the earth and all its creatures; to do the work of body and mind God
appoints for it (IV, 618); to be happy and blissful (IV, 726); to love each other
(conjugal love is ~not the lowest end of human life (IX, 241); to use and admire the
world God framed for him (IV, 691-92); to eat freely of all fruits of paradise (VIII,
322); and to abstain from the tree of knowledge (to ~persevere in not eating of its
fruit, as Raphael puts it). In addition, the poem makes clear that God has distinct
purposes in mind for Adam and Eve: Adam is to contemplate and govern Eve, who
is to obey and solace Adam, take care of domestic good, cultivate her grace and
softness, and bear children. From another perspective, however, there is really only
one purpose or end of human nature, since all of these activities are the same in the
sense that they are all activities willed by God. As the narrator elliptically puts it
summing up the creation, God is the ~Author and end of all things (VII, 591).
Adam confirms this, and partly explains what it means for this to be the case when,
thanking Raphael for revealing to him the war in heaven and forewarning him, he
claims to receive God`s admonishment ~with solemn purpose to observe /
Immutably his sovran will, the end / Of what we are (VII, 78-79). God being the
end of man, man`s end or purpose is to do his will.
24. It would have been possible for God to have made human nature in such a way that
it was constrained to do or not to do what he made it to do. But God did not do this,
and the poem is most emphatic on this point. God made human nature in such a
way that it was capable of both performing the ~voluntary service he God]
requires (V, 529) and not performing it. For as God himself observes,
I form`d them free, and free they must remain,
Till they enthrall themselves: I else must change
Thir nature, and revoke the high Decree
Unchangeable, Eternal, which ordain`d
Their freedom. (III, 124-28)
Raphael later confirms this crucial point: God ~ordain`d thy will / By nature free,
not over-rul`d by Fate / Inextricable, or strict necessity (V, 526-28). Having
ordained that human nature be free in the sense of not being subject to the force of
fate and necessity, it is free in this sense, and it is not constrained in any way that
would prevent it from voluntarily and happily performing the service God requires.
But being free to serve God, man is also free not to serve him (III, 103-111).
25. In these passages, Raphael and God make clear that the freedom of unfallen human
nature is a freedom from external forces such as fate, necessity, and God himself,
but they and several other characters indicate that human nature is free from the
force of other elements as well: it is free, or capable of being free, from the force of
appetite and passion which do, however, have the potential to ~overrule, ~govern,
and ~enthral him. God makes this clear when he observes that, as a result of the
fall, man`s ~lapsed powers are ~forfeit and enthrall`d / By sin to foul exorbitant
desires (III, 176-77 ) with the result that he is in a ~sinful state (III, 186). Raphael
of course attempts to prevent this from happening by telling Adam to ~govern well
thy appetite (VII, 546), and warning him to ~take heed lest Passion sway / Thy
1udgment to do aught, which else free Will / Would not admit (VIII, 635-37).
Adam explains to Eve that being free from appetite and passion in this way is a
matter of making sure that reason, rather than appetite and passion, governs the
will: ~God left free the Will, for what obeys / Reason, is free, and Reason he made
right~ (IX, 351-52). After the fall, we learn that prelapsarian human nature was
indeed free in the sense that the will was ruled by reason and understanding, rather
than ~sensual appetite (IX, 1123-31; also XII, 83-85). Unfallen human nature,
then, is free in the sense that it is free from forces that are external to it (such as
necessity and fate) and forces that are internal to it (such as passion and appetite) to
fulfil his purpose, which is to serve God out of the proper care for him. Man is
capable of the voluntary service which is his end because God made human nature
free.
8]

26. It would also have been possible for God, being omnipotent, to have made human
nature and its world in such a way that, though free to do what God intended him to
do, it could only do so with great difficulty or even pain. This might seem an idle
speculation, but there is one point at which Adam himself feels that this is in fact so:
to continue to obey God in the face of Eve`s disobedience, Adam feels he must
endure great pain. Indeed, he feels that ~the link of Nature and ~the Bond of
Nature (IX, 914, 956) draw him not to persist in obedience, but to share in Eve`s
disobedience. But though this episode may show that there may arise situations in
which fulfilling his purpose may involve pain and loss, such situations seldom arise.
They seldom arise because God makes man for and to not just in the sense that he
makes him with the intention and will that he do certain things, but in the sense that
he makes him in such a way that, at least in most situations, he can efficiently
perform with ease and even delight the things God wills him to do. This is the point
Adam makes when, concerning the act of persevering in not eating of the forbidden
tree, he observes, ~Let us not think hard / One easy prohibition, who enjoy / Free
leave so large to all things else (IV, 432). He and Eve proceed to observe how easy
and delightful it is for them to do all the other things--such as working, loving,
mating, worshipping, praying, conversing-they rightly feel God intends them to do.
As even Satan must confess to himself, that for which God made the angels--~his
service--is not ~hard (IV, 45). Human nature is thus not only free to fulfill or not
to fulfill its purpose, but it is made in such a way that, should it choose to do so, it
can do so well, easily and in a way which is delightful and beneficial to it.
27. Human nature is, moreover, disposed in and of itself and independently of
experience to fulfill its end, though Adam and Eve also display what, in relation to
their end, are some wayward dispositions. Eve, for example, displays an inclination
towards narcissism which Adam opposes by seizing her hand and reasonably
pleading with her (IV, 465-91; VIII, 510). Adam, on the other hand, as he confesses
to Raphael, is somewhat disposed to overvalue Eve, to give himself over to the
passions and desires she produces in him, to submit to her (VIII, 521-559). Though,
as Raphael claims, ~Nature... hath done her part (VIII, 561), Adam seems to
display some natural disposition to uxoriousness and even idolatry. But it is hardly
the case that Adam drags Eve kicking and screaming to the nuptial bower, or that
they drag themselves out of their rose-petal bed each day to rule the pesky animal
kingdom. On the contrary, Adam and Eve commonly display an alacrity in relation
to their ends, they harbor many strong dispositions and instincts which, though not
causing them to fulfill their end, clearly incline them to move in that direction and
render moving in that direction pleasant to them. If virtue is thought of in terms of
dispositions or qualities of character which incline one to fulfill one`s end, we can
say that unfallen human nature is by nature virtuous.
28. Human nature, then, has an end in the sense of a purpose, and this end derives
primarily from the fact that God made and sustains it with a particular will and
intention. This end is freely to serve God out of care for him, and human nature is
free to achieve or not to achieve this end. But God made it in such a way that it is
virtuous, disposed and inclined in and of itself to achieve its end, and should it
choose to do so, it can easily do so well and with delight. In addition, since acting
freely is, according to Adam, God, Raphael, and Michael, a matter of exercising the
will in accordance with reason (rather than passion and appetite), and since the end
of man is an ongoing act of freely chosen service, man`s fulfilment of his nature is
grounded in the exercise of reason. That is to say that man cannot achieve his end
of properly serving God unless his reason dictates to his will. The moment reason
ceases to dictate to the will, the moment the will is directed by nothing (if that is
possible), or anything but reason, it loses its freedom, and having lost its freedom, it
is incapable of choosing to serve God and freely serving him. All of this follows
from the fact that, as God puts it in a rather Aristotelian-sounding formulation,
~reason is but choosing, or, as Michael puts it, ~true Liberty... always with right
Reason dwells / Twinn`d, and from her hath no dividual being (XII, 83-85). It is
thus not the case, as Stanley Fish has argued, that Milton understands man to
achieve his end of serving God on the basis of faith, where faith is belief or will that
are entirely independent of reason.
9]
Were man to serve God out of faith as opposed
to reason, his service would not be free, and if it were not free, it would not count as
service.
29. According to Milton, the consequences of achieving this end are first of all,
continued happiness for himself and his progeny. That is to say that what the poem
refers to as ~happiness is not, as it is for Aristotle, ~that which is always desirable
in itself and never for the sake of something else (NE 1097a35-36), but only a
consequence or even reward of man`s achieving his end, which is to serve God
voluntarily and in the spirit of gratitude and love of him. Thus, as Adam tells
Raphael, God informed him that the ~bitter consequence of not observing his will
would be the loss of ~this happy State, and Raphael informs him that he owes his
continued happiness to himself, to his ~obedience (V, 521-22). A further
consequence of man`s achieving his end is immortality and innocence for himself
and his progeny. And though man is granted dominion over the animals, the angels
indicate that this rule, too, is really the result, the ~reward, of man`s dwelling on
earth and worshipping God (VII, 628). There are several indications that further
things would have followed upon man`s continued fulfilment of his end. First, God
has promised them that, if they obey him, they shall give birth to an innocent and
immortal progeny who, besides worshipping God, will help them do the work in the
garden, work which on their own Adam and Eve cannot adequately perform.
Second, after informing Adam and Eve that they must leave paradise, Michael
speculates that had he stood, Adam might have remained there, his ~Capital Seat,
and known the pleasure of receiving all generations who would have come ~to
celebrate / And reverence thee their great Progenitor (XI, 342-46). It also seems
that, standing, Adam and Eve would have found their nature gradually to have
become the purely spiritual and superior nature of angels (V, 495-510). Indeed,
commenting on Raphael`s account of how this may occur, Adam observes that ~in
contemplation of created things / By steps we may ascend to God (V, 511-512).
Moreover, ~under long obedience tri`d, Adam and Eve and their unfallen progeny
might eventually ~open to themselves at length the way to heaven, ~And Earth be
chang`d to Heav`n, and Heav`n to Earth, / One Kingdom, 1oy and Union without
end (VII, 157-61). The consequences of failing to achieve his end are made clear in
the final books of the poem.
30. For the purposes of assessing Milton`s relationship with classical republicanism, it is
important to note that in defining the end of human nature and the consequences of
its fulfilment in this way, Milton grants virtually no importance to the life of
citizenship and statesmanship which is so central to the ends of human nature as
Aristotle and Cicero understand them. There is, first of all, no indication in the
poem that God made man for political society in the sense that he made him with
the intention and will that, once there were sufficient numbers of humans, they
would exercise civic virtue in a Greek polis, a Roman republic, an Italian city-state,
or an early-modern European nation-state. Certainly, God grants man dominion
over the earth and wills that he subdue and rule over it, and he grants Adam
authority and rule over Eve. Unfallen mankind, moreover, may be said to exist
within a hierarchical cosmic order subject to a law, similar to that imagined by
Cicero. But none of this means that Adam and Eve are subjects or citizens existing
within what either the ancients or Milton would have thought of as a political
society. The society of Adam and Eve is essentially a domestic, familial society, an
oikos rather than a polis, and all indications are that, as long as they had stood, it
would have remained as such, regardless of how many children they had. Adam`s
generations would have returned to paradise to revere not their lord, king, consuls,
nobles, senators, ephors, guardians, tribunes, ministers, podesta, or rulers, but their
father, their ~progenitor, and while for seventeenth-century patriarchalists such as
Robert Filmer fathers were lords by virtue of being fathers, Milton shows no
inclination to think so either in his epic or elsewhere. The implication is that the life
of the citizen and statesman is not the life God intended man to live, not when there
were two living in blissful solitude, not when there would have been enough humans
to take care of all the work in the garden, not when there would have been a human
race ~to fill the Earth (IV, 733). And though it might be argued that Adam and
Eve are made in such a way that they are capable of performing the tasks of citizens
and statesmen well as the ancients understood them, there is no indication that they
have been endowed with an impulse or desire to live and exercise civic virtue within
political society. Neither is there any indication that Adam and Eve and their race
need a political society in order to fulfill and perfect themselves, as Aristotle and
Cicero say humans do. Indeed, once Adam and Eve are married, they exist in
~blissful solitude, as though, excepting the fact that they can not quite keep the
garden in order, their domestic society has the self-sufficiency which Aristotle
ascribes only to states. Because Adam and Eve neither have any natural impulse to
form nor need a political society, neither they, nor God, nor the angels see a future
in politics for prelapsarian man.
31. Adam, however, is formed for ~contemplation, and it is difficult here, and in many
other passages where Milton uses terms which were standardly used to translate key
terms in Aristotle, not to feel an allusion to the Greek philosopher Milton so
commonly cites in his political prose. But in Paradise Lost, Milton rarely uses terms
standardly used to translate key terms in pagan republican texts to mean what the
pagans used those key terms to mean, and his usage of ~contemplation is no
exception. First of all, the contemplation that is proper for man is in no way
incompatible, as it would be for Aristotle, with the ~work of body that is also
appointed by God for him. In addition, Raphael gently rebukes Adam for
wondering about the heavenly bodies and ~Ent`ring on studious thoughts abstruse
(VIII, 40). Informing him that ~Heav`n is for thee too high, Raphael instructs him
to be ~lowly wise and to ~think only what concerns thee and thy being. In so
doing, Raphael seems to direct Adam away from the Aristotelian conception of
contemplation as an exercise of speculative rather than practical reason which is
grounded in the intellectual virtue of philosophical rather than practical wisdom,
and which aims at knowing and understanding, among other things, the heavenly
bodies. Learning his lesson, Adam understands that ~the prime Wisdom is ~not to
know at large of things remote / From use, obscure and subtle, but to know / That
which before us lies in daily life (VIII, 191-94). Having learned this, Adam may
well contemplate with ease and delight in the way God intended him to, but as a
mode of consideration which will not be directed to ~things remote from use, his
contemplation will be different in important ways from the activity of Aristotle`s
philosopher.

```
32. Whereas all of the republicans think of human nature as having remained
essentially the same over the course of its entire existence, Milton sees it as having
existed in two radically different states which are separated from each other by an
act performed by the first two human beings. As a chosen, voluntary violation of
God`s will, as a violation of what God made man for, that act is in God`s eye a
~revolt (III, 117), ~Treason (III, 207), a ~crime (III, 215, 290) for which a
~penalty or ~ransom must be paid in order for justice to be served. Demanding
that justice be served, that is, God wills that man pay for his crime. God indicates at
the opening of Book III that he will accept two kinds of payment: proclaiming ~Die
he or 1ustice must (III, 210), he indicates that he shall deem justice to have been
served by the immediate and total annihilation of mankind. But he adds that he
would also deem the death of a just and loving mortal as adequate ~satisfaction,
death for death (III, 212). Observing this second possibility, the Son presents
himself as ~a sacrifice / Glad to be offer`d, one who, out of filial obedience and love
for man, will satisfy God`s justice by paying ~the deadly forfeiture, and ransom set
(III, 220). This, however, does not let man off the hook-justice will die unless he,
too, pays a penalty. For as the Son observes to God in Book X, in sacrificing himself
for love of man, the Son can only ~mitigate and not ~reverse the doom of man,
which is ~Death (X, 76; XI, 40-41). Man, too, must die, not in the sense that he and
his progeny be permanently wiped from the face of the earth, but in the sense that
every individual human perish after many days. This death, moreover, will
terminate an existence which is to be one of misery, pain, and sorrow: expressing
God`s will by way of his judgment and sentence on fallen mankind, the Son observes
that until they ~to dust return, Adam and Eve will live, work, and multiply in
~sorrow (X, 193-208). As God puts it in his official decree to the angels, now that
man has fallen, he wills that he leave the garden, ~to Till / The Ground whence he
was taken, fitter soil (XI, 97-98; my emphasis). Willing, as always, that justice live,
God thus wills that man`s existence be one of ~woe (XI, 60) terminated by death.
Adam understands: ~dust, he says to Eve, is now their ~final rest and native home
(X, 1084-85). The end of fallen human nature (what God wills for it) in this world is
now the end of human nature (its dissolution and death).
33. This end differs in two important ways from the end of unfallen man. First, it is not
so much a form of choosing and acting as it is a form of suffering and enduring.
Certainly, man is to work and to multiply. But willing that man experience sorrow
and die, God wills not that man freely, voluntarily do or perform in some way, but
essentially that he be subject to various forces and processes. Second, this end is
imposed upon him, regardless of what he wishes, thinks, chooses, or wills. Whereas
before the fall man is free to fulfill or not to fulfill his end as determined by God`s
will, after the fall he is not. For after the fall, human nature is forced, both by what
it is in and of itself and by various agents such as the Son and Michael, to experience
and do at least part of what God wills for it: Michael and paradise force Adam and
Eve from paradise; having been expelled, Adam and Eve, at least as long as they
choose to live, have no choice but to till the soil in a harsh clime; they cannot avoid
suffering in the new world; they can do nothing to evade their own dissolution.
~1ustice shall not return as bounty scorned (X, 54), God asserts in one of the
hardest lines of the poem, because man is not free to scorn God`s justice as he was
free to scorn his bounty.
34. 1ust as unfallen human nature is well suited to do that which God wills for it, so
fallen nature is as well. But whereas unfallen human nature is well suited in this
respect because God framed it in a particular way, unfallen nature is well-suited for
the existence God wills it to have because of what it becomes as a result of its having
committed ~the mortal sin original (IX, 1003). That is to say that whereas God
intervenes through his angels to reframe the natural world in such a way as to make
it a suitable environment for sweat and sorrow (X, 648-714), he does not intervene
immediately after the fall to recreate man in such a way that he will be suited for the
new life of sorrow ending in dust God now has in mind for him. Rather, human
nature becomes this kind of thing on its own as a result of what it does. Thus, in
Book IX, having disobeyed, Adam and Eve burn in lust, gratify that lust, sleep, and
awaken to find themselves entirely changed. That the narrator does not identify
God as being in any way involved in this process is only to be expected since, as God
himself earlier insists, ~they enthrall themselves (III, 125). Immediately after the
fall, however, a crucial dimension of human nature is up for grabs, and God must
act in order to prevent man from doing something which would result in his having
a nature unsuited to his new ends, and which would prevent justice from being
done:
Lest therefore his now bolder hand
Reach also of the Tree of Life, and eat,
And live for ever, dream at least to live
For ever, to remove him I decree. (XI, 93-96)
Though God later says that it was he who ~provided Death (XI, 61), he here
indicates that the act of committing the crime on its own is sufficient to cause human
nature to change from being immortal to being mortal. But in order to keep it that
way, God decrees that man be banished from paradise and so denied the
opportunity to make itself immortal once again by eating of the Tree of Life.

35. The reason that this fallen human nature is suited for paying the penalty for its
crime as God wills is that it is ~manifold in sin, (X, 16), ~corrupt, and
~depraved. For by virtue of being corrupt, sinful, and depraved, human nature is
subject to processes of decay leading to death. ~Dissolution is, as God observes,
~wrought by Sin, that first / Distemper`d all things, and of incorrupt / Corrupted
(XI, 55-57 ). Sin makes the point when she instructs Death to feast on the plants and
animals ~Till I in Man residing through the Race, / His thoughts, his looks, words,
actions all infect, / And season him thy last and sweetest prey (X, 607-609).
Manifold in sin, seasoned and infected by it, that is, man is now something which
left to itself in its world decays until it dies-his life has become ~a slow-pac`t evil, / A
long day`s dying, as Adam observes (X, 963-64). But besides qualifying him for the
death God intends for him, what Michael calls man`s ~natural pravity (XII, 288)
also qualifies him well for the misery, pain, sorrow, and sweat which God wills him
to experience before that end. First of all, this natural pravity is repellent to the
ideal environment of paradise: even had God not evicted him from paradise, the
~pure immortal Elements there would in accordance with ~the Law of Nature
have forced him out, since they ~eject him tainted now, and purge him off / As a
distemper (IX, 52-53).
10]
The only environment which is now suitable for
corrupted mankind is the corrupt, harsh natural environment which is brought
about by his own sin and God`s decree. In addition, the very processes of
dissolution that lead to death will in many cases be a source of terrible pain and
suffering, as Michael demonstrates in Book XI. It is, moreover, clear from Book IX
onwards that simply existing in a ~sinful state (III, 186) is painful to humans:
though they both feel intoxicated immediately after eating, and take ~thir fill of
Love and Love`s disport, Adam and Eve awaken to find that they are ~destitute
and bare / Of all thir virtue (IX, 1062-63). Having lost honor, innocence, faith,
purity, confidence, and righteousness, they are overwhelmed by the sense of shame
and feel ~confounded and ~abasht (IX, 1054-1066). They have in addition, as we
have already seen, lost their peace of mind, for they are now subject to terrible
passions (IX, 1122-1131). Despoiled of all their good, the first fallen humans are, in
short, ~miserable (IX, 1139), which is precisely what God, demanding that they be
justly punished for their crime against him, wants them to be.
36. Being manifold in sin further suits and qualifies fallen human nature to fulfill its
end because it amounts to a loss of inner freedom. For being in a sinful state, or
being ~distempered as the narrator and God also put it (IX, 1131, 887; XI, 65; XII,
50), means that passion and appetite have displaced reason as governor of the will,
and, as we have seen, the poem asserts that any agent whose will is dictated by
passion and desire rather than reason is not free. Observing at the end of Book IX
that as a result of the fall the will is subject to sensual appetite rather than reason,
the narrator confirms God`s earlier claim that man enthrals himself, and that man`s
~lapsed powers are ~forfeit and enthrall`d / By sin to foul exorbitant desires (III,
125, 176-77 ). In disobeying God, Michael informs Adam, ~themselves they vilifi`d /
to serve ungovern`d appetite (XI, 516-17). That servitude, he later indicates, is not
a punctual action, but a permanent condition:
Since thy original lapse, true Liberty
Is lost, which always with right Reason dwells
Twinn`d, and from her hath no dividual being;
Reason in man obscur`d, or not obey`d,
Immediately inordinate desires
And upstart Passions catch the Government
From Reason, and to servitude reduce
Man till then free. (XII, 83-90)
Having lost inner freedom, man is now incapable of not just freely serving God as he
was created to do, but, strictly speaking, of freely doing anything, since you can only
voluntarily do something if you act in accordance with reason, and fallen man is
incapable of doing that. Were the end of fallen man a form of voluntary service,
fallen man would thus by nature in an essential sense be unsuited for his end. But
because the end of fallen man is essentially no longer a matter of choosing and doing
(which require reason and freedom) but of suffering and enduring, his being in a
state of bondage is entirely compatible with the fulfilment of his end. Indeed, this
loss of freedom constitutes a further dimension of the very fulfilment of this end, for
simply existing in a state of bondage, simply existing in a state in which one is no
longer in control of one`s passions and desires but is continually ~tossed by them,
as Adam and Eve are in the final books (IX, 1126; X, 718), is in itself sickening.
Those critics such as Lewalski who like to see the poem teaching us ~to live as free
moral agents and as virtuous citizens who value and deserve personal and political
liberty (Life 13), fail to acknowledge these ways in which the poem insists not only
that human nature enters a state of bondage as result of the fall, but also that this
bondage is consistent with and indeed part of the fulfilment of its end as determined
by God.
37. The ~Eternal purpose for fallen man, however, is also determined by the will that
~Man shall not quite be lost, but sav`d who will (III, 172-75). Though out of wrath
and justice God wills that man suffer and die, that is, he also out of mercy wills that
he (at least some humans) be redeemed and saved. By this he means, as he, the Son,
and the angels make clear over the course of the poem, that after having achieved
their end of misery and death, some will return with the Son to Heaven where,
ultimately, "God shall be All in All" (III, 341). God thus wills what Michael calls a
~happy end for postlapsarian man (XII, 605). Now, because human nature is
depraved, it is totally unsuited and incapable to achieve this dimension of its end.
That is to say that in respect of this dimension of its end, there is a profound
disjunction between what man by nature is and his end, where his end is defined in
terms of what God wills for him. To put it another way, if by a ~natural end one
means that to which a thing is inclined to be or become by virtue of its own internal
capacities and instincts, then part of man`s end (his happy end) is in relation to him
unnatural. In order to achieve the happy end, then, human nature requires the
intervention of an agency that is external to itself and that counteracts its own
predominant inclinations and dispositions. That agency is God: man will be saved,
God asserts in Book III, "not of will in him, but grace in me / Freely voutsaf`t" (III,
74-75). God will uphold man so ~that he may know how frail / His fall`n condition
is, and to me owe / All his deliv`rance, and to none but me (III, 180-82; see also III,
287-89). This emphasis on supernatural agency in bringing man to his happy end
which is, in relation to what he is, unnatural also features throughout the final
books (XI, 359-60; XII, 394-95). Thus, the end of fallen human nature (i.e. that
which God wills for it) is essentially bipartite and each part is fulfilled in
fundamentally different ways: human nature as we know it, simply by virtue of
being its own depraved and enslaved self and existing in the corrupt world of
nature, suffices to achieve misery and death which are its end in this world; God
and the Son bring it, in spite of itself, to the happy end, which is its end in the
afterlife.

38. If, however, human nature could do nothing on its own before it died except suffer,
if it was entirely deprived of the ability to choose and act in accordance with that
choice, then God could not justly hold him responsible for his existence and make
the happy end a reward for it. This, however, God clearly intends to do at the
~dread Tribunal presided over by the Son at the end of time (III, 326-333; XI, 709-
710; XII, 458-65). That is to say that the hard teaching on fallen nature presented
by some passages in the poem conflicts with God`s will to punish and reward
individual humans on the basis of how they live. It is partly in order to address this
aspect of the theology of the poem that Milton qualifies the vision of fallen human
nature as something that can do nothing but till and suffer as it dies. He does so,
first, by observing that God acts upon fallen man in such as way as to make it
capable once again of choosing and acting freely: even though man`s powers are
~enthrall`d by sin to foul exorbitant desires, God claims that ~once more I will
renew them. (III, 175). He will, moreover, ~clear thir senses dark, / What may
suffice, and soft`n stony hearts / To pray, repent, and bring obedience due as well
as ~place within them as a guide / My Umpire Conscience (III, 188-95). Here again
we have a ~to locution: God acts on fallen human nature so that, or with the
intention that, it may freely do certain things such as pray, repent, and obey. This is
confirmed at the conclusion of Book X and the opening of Book XI where we see
how God`s grace ~had remov`d / The stony from the hearts of Adam and Eve, ~and
made new flesh / Regenerate grow instead (XI, 3-5). In addition, in the final book,
Michael informs Adam of how he shall be delivered from the Law, which serves
only to ~evince thir natural pravity (XII, 287-88), to a ~better Cov`nant, the
covenant of grace (XII, 302). After the first coming, the Son will send a Comforter
to man ~who shall dwell / His Spirit within them and ~the Law of Faith... upon
their hearts shall write (XII, 486-87). Commenting on these passages, Grossman
observes that ~when the Spirit writes on the heart, man can be released from the
self-enthralment incurred by Adam`s fall and once again perform his moral part
(17-18; 64-65). This is perhaps too strong since, as the remainder of Book XII
makes clear, human nature is far from being restored to its unfallen state by virtue
of the covenant of grace, but it does appear to be restored from sin to a state in
which it has and may exercise some degree of freedom. Though it is still only as a
result of how God and the Son act upon it, fallen human nature, all of these passages
suggest, ends up being capable of some degree of voluntary action, of something that
would count as ~obedience, of something that could justly be punished or
rewarded.
39. There are further indications that there is a realm of freedom within the constraints
established by man`s fallen nature and a justice which man is not free to scorn. In
Book IV, for example, the narrator speaks as though the ~wedded Love enjoyed by
Adam and Eve in paradise continued to exist after the fall to drive out the lust in
which Adam and Eve burn immediately after the fall and to ground love between
fathers, sons, and brothers (IV, 746-57). Similarly, in Book XI, Michael comments
on those who suffer and die of disease as those who ~pervert pure Nature`s healthful
rules / To loathsome sickness (XI, 523-24), as though the realm of fallen nature is
pure, and as though even fallen mankind, as part of the natural realm, may be
capable of obeying those rules. This point is perhaps confirmed in Book XII when
Michael criticises Nimrod for dispossessing ~Concord and Law of Nature from the
Earth (XII, 28-29). That human nature may retain some of its prelapsarian
freedom and even disposition is further indicated by Michael when he corrects
Adam who, in the face of the pleasures enjoyed by the sons of Seth and daughters of
Cain, observes, ~Here Nature seems fulfill`d in all her ends (XI, 602): ~1udge not
what is best / By pleasure, Michael instructs, ~though to Nature seeming meet, /
Created, as thou art, to nobler end / Holy and pure, conformity divine (XI, 603-
606). It seems that even though pleasure may seem meet to fallen human nature,
this nature nevertheless has an essentially religious purpose and therefore fulfills
itself by living a life that conforms with the holy and the divine. Finally, in his
discussion of the loss of inward liberty which supposedly follows from Adam`s
original lapse, Michael leaves open the possibility of both inner and outer freedom:
if reason is not ~obscured but simply ~not obey`d, it would seem that man is free
to obey reason; if man ~permits / Within himself unworthy Powers to reign / Over
free Reason, it would seem that he could revoke that permission and thereby
regain his inner freedom.
40. Insofar as the poem asserts that reason is not entirely displaced by passion and
appetite as ruler of the will of fallen man, it grants it a degree of freedom, and
insofar as it grants it a degree of freedom, it grants it the possibility of virtuous
action--virtue is still reason, Michael informs Adam (XII, 98)-where virtuous action
consists in voluntarily doing those things which God wills him to do. God`s will for
the fallen human nature that is to a limited extent free as it suffers and dies may be
divided into two main parts, the first of which concerns how he is to respond to the
grace God may offer him: though he is not free to scorn justice, man is still free to
~neglect and scorn the grace God offers him (III, 199) or to pray for and accept it if
granted.
11]
This is in part by virtue of God`s giving man the law with purpose to
resign him ~to free / Acceptance of large Grace (XII, 304-305). God wills, that is,
that man (if only those he has elected above the rest) freely accept his grace; that he
repent; that he pray to, appease, and obey him. Even if he is not fully capable of
performing these actions well, as long as he endeavours to do them ~with sincere
intent, he will be doing something that pleases God and mollifies his wrath (III,
192). The second main aspect of God`s will for fallen man who enjoys limited
freedom concerns his response to his punishment, the life of misery and death which
he is not free to forego. Though man will suffer and die, he is free to do so in a
variety of ways, and much of the instruction provided by Michael in the final books
is aimed at describing the proper way (XI, 551-52; XII, 561-573; 575-87). Exercising
his limited freedom in these ways, some fallen men may do as God wills fallen man
to do and justly be rewarded with the happy end after their death. Those who do
not exercise their freedom in this way will not, however, fail to achieve their end. It
is just that, in light of their response to their punishment and his grace, God wills
that they be punished again by suffering in hell forever.
41. As much of the recent commentary on the poem, and the final books in particular,
has emphasised, the particular ways in which God wills fallen man to exercise
whatever freedom remains to him may include what Aristotle and Cicero would
think of as political activity. And over the course of the final books, fallen mankind
does display some impulse to form various forms of political society. But there are
no indications that, by founding and governing states, human nature may fulfil
itself, or that it may reach its fullest development, or that it will be rewarded in the
afterlife. Indeed, the cases of Enoch and Noah suggest that renouncing and
abandoning one`s political community may in some cases be the only means of
avoiding God`s wrath and being rewarded. The fact, at least, that one renounces
one`s own political society and life within it does not mean one cannot achieve one`s
end, as it does for Aristotle and Cicero. More importantly, though that dimension
of man`s end in this world which is answerable to his choice may include political
activity, the life of the armed citizen and eloquent statesman can hardly be said to be
its core. At the core of the life in this world that is open to our freedom is the
Christian life, where the Christian life is grounded not in civic virtue and patriotism
but in Christian virtue, and where it is lived not after the example of Cicero, but of
the Son. To the extent that the freedom of prelapsarian man survives the fall-and
Milton is ambivalent about this--so does his end, which is not to found and hold
office in republics, but to serve God out of the care to please him. Humans are to
lead ~lives Religious, as the Sons of God did before they chose to ~yield up all thir
virtue (XI, 623).

```
42. There is no short, simple answer to the crucial question of how Milton`s vision of
human nature in Paradise Lost is related to the republicans` vision of human
nature. This is because there are major inconsistencies within the works of major
republican figures, important differences between these figures, and major
complications concerning this issue in Paradise Lost. But, attempting to take into
account some of these difficulties, we can say that Milton follows the classical
republicans (but not Machiavelli) in thinking of the human agent (both pre and
postlapsarian versions) as a composite that includes a rational element and an
appetitive, passionate element. In addition, he is generally inclined to share the
classical republicans` basic understanding of both virtue and inner freedom in
terms of the rational element`s rule over the appetitive, passionate element. Milton
departs from the republicans, however, in many important ways. Though on some
occasions (such as his discussion of religious toleration in Book XII) he resorts to a
dualistic vocabulary to discuss this composite human nature, on others he explicitly
asserts a monistic ontology which is at odds with the dualistic interpretation of
man`s composite human nature that prevails in Cicero and other republican
historians such as Sallust. In addition, Milton`s vision of human nature as part of
God`s creation stands in stark contrast to the vision or assumption of the
naturalistic origins of man in the republicans (though they sometimes see him as a
product of a personified Nature). Understanding human nature as God`s work,
Milton sees it as having an end or purpose in the sense that it was made and is
sustained by a deity that wills and intends things for it. None of the republicans we
have considered, with the possible exception of Cicero, sees human nature as having
an end in this sense-those republicans who see it as having an end or purpose define
this end in terms of the exercise of faculties unique to human nature, and the full
development and perfection of capacities and instincts that are internal to it. Milton
thus ascribes to human nature a kind of end or purpose which the republicans
seldom ascribe to it.
43. Though he sees it as having an end of this kind, however, Milton also sees it as
having an end of the kind attributed to it by the classical republicans: he sees it as
having innate instincts and dispositions to do and become certain things. But
Milton also differs profoundly from the republicans concerning the content of the
end of human nature conceived in this way: whereas the classical republicans
understand human nature as we know it in various degrees to have a capacity for
and to be disposed to exercising reason as a citizen (and as a philosopher in the case
of Aristotle), Milton understands it to be primarily disposed in and of itself to
corruption, suffering, and dying, though he also grants it a residual capacity for
virtuous action. This is not to say that the republicans do not see human nature as
being prone to decay and death-they do, but they do not see decay, depraved
behavior, and death as something to which human nature is actively, inherently, and
ineradicably disposed as Milton does in this poem. In addition, the life of divine
service as Milton understands it might include activities such as founding states and
administering justice in them, but it need not, and it would seldom include those
military activities which are central to citizenship as both the ancients and
Machiavelli understand it. Milton`s understanding of a particular kind of religious
life as part of the end of fallen man is also at odds with the basic understanding of
religion as something that should be serviceable to good citizenship and the state
which is expressed by Aristotle, Cicero, and Machiavelli. Milton`s understanding of
that to which human nature is disposed in and of itself as not just suffering, but as
punishment for a crime, as the satisfaction of justice, is also alien to the sensibility of
those republicans we have considered here. And whereas for Milton the
consequences of achieving these natural ends include eternal bliss in heaven, the
consequences of achieving the ends of human nature for the republicans (again with
the possible exception of Cicero) are confined entirely to this world. One reason
Milton differs from the republicans in these way is that he understands human
nature as we know it (i.e. fallen human nature) to be guilty and infected by sin as a
result of an act that it committed in the distant past, an act which for the
republicans never occurred. Such an inherently depraved nature that disposes us to
commit more sin is foreign to Aristotle`s prevailing view that we are by nature
neither virtuous nor wicked but naturally adapted to receive moral virtue which we
may cultivate and perfect by way of habit. It is also alien to both the ~natural
goodwill and kindliness Cicero sometimes sees in man and the raw, malleable
human ~material which Machiavelli, following an Aristotelian usage, felt could be
made into a good or bad nature by different forms of education and upbringing.
44. Though we have focussed on descriptions of human nature in Milton and the
republicans, it has become clear that because Milton differs from the republicans on
this issue, he differs from them on other issues, positions on which are more
commonly taken to be at the heart of republican tradition. Thinking of human
nature the way he does, for example, Milton obviously thinks about history and
virtue in a way which is profoundly at odds with republican thinking on these
subjects. In light of these differences, the reading of Paradise Lost as a poem that
affirms or is even consistent with the basic political principles of Aristotle, Cicero,
and Machiavelli is untenable. This is not, however, to say, that the case for the
poem`s participation in and extension of the tradition of republican political thought
is without merit. For in many cases, traditions of thought and writing are extended
and perpetuated by authors who are hostile towards elements of those traditions.
This is why, for example, those scholars who observe that Machiavelli radically
departs from the classical republicans on several major issues nevertheless continue
to see him as a central figure of republican tradition. This is why those critics who
observe Milton`s hostility towards pagan epic nevertheless see him as participating
in the tradition of western epic poetry. As the current scholarship on the issue
indicates, there is a case to be made for Milton`s response to and participation in
republican tradition, but this case needs to take into account the ways in which he
not only differs from, but openly repudiates major aspects of it.
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Notes
1]
See, for example, Worden, Zagorin, Lindenbaum, Dzelzainis, Lejosne, Himy, Armitage,
Mueller, Norbrook, Lewalski, Skinner (~Slavery). Note that in light of his recognition
that the English, including Milton, did not repudiate monarchy and recommend republics,
Skinner has recently used the term ~neo-Roman rather than ~republican to refer to
Milton`s reaffirmation of the views of ancient Romans.
2]
For confirmation of this point, see Kraut 60, 237.
3]
On ~the innate desire orexis] for living together, see also Kullman 102-103. For a way
of resolving some of the problems identified by Keyt, see Nederman (~Political Animal).
4]
See Miller 6; Kraut 15-16, 65.
5]
For confirmation of some of the points made here, see Wood 70-89. Schofield observes
that Cicero on natural justice follows the Stoics, but adds that in works such as On Moral
Ends and Of Duties, he complements his account of the natural inclination to be just as one
that is grounded in reason with an account of this inclination as one that moves out of the
natural impulse of parents to love their offspring, an impulse that mankind shares with the
animals.
6]
For confirmation of these points, and further argumentation against Skinner who tends
to separate Aristotle from classical Roman and republican tradition, see Brunt, Rahe, and
Scott (England's 1roubles 290-97).
7]
See Skinner, ~Republican virtues 144-45; Hulliung who emphasises that Machiavelli
felt it was ~the bestial in the Romans that made them great (xi); Scott, ~Classical
Republicanism 56-57. See also Machiavelli, 1he Prince 56-57.
8]
These passages indicate that man is free essentially by virtue of having and exercising
properly reason, not by virtue of being made of a special matter that is ~animate, self-
active, and free, as Stephen Fallon claims (Milton 81). If Fallon were right, everything, by
virtue of being made up of this matter, would be free, a postulate which the poem explicitly
denies.
9]
See Fish, How Milton orks 501, 506, 554. Fish is here reaffirming the position he takes
in Surprised by Sin 241-285.
10]
See Rogers who, citing earlier critics, forcefully makes this point, 147-161.
11]
For a discussion of how man`s freedom to accept or reject grace aligns him with
Arminianism, see Hill 268-78; Fallon ~Elect.`

Responses to this piece intended for the Readers' Forum may be sent to the Editor at M.Steggleshu.ac.uk.

2004-, Matthew Steggle (Editor, EMLS).

by Kyla Ward
First Appeared in Tabula Rasa#3, 1994
O Go to timeline entry
"And long it was not after, when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be
frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true
poem, that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest things; not
presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities unless he have in himself the
experience and practice of all that which is praiseworthy."
An Apology for Smectymnuus, 1642
We can presume 1ohn Milton, born 1608, believed what he wrote. This goes for both
Paradise Lost and the political article above. He certainly made every effort to live up to it,
on his own terms.
Milton lived and acted in a time of crises, the civil war where England went to the brink
France came to in 1789, and then came back, when no one, least of all their movers and
shakers, dreamt it possible. The English civil war didn't even change the dynasty. It was a
matter in which political concerns were irredeemably tied up with religious, and Milton
makes an excellent 'abstract and brief chronicle of the time'.
Milton was a Puritan, which at this point can be considered a left-wing Protestant. The
present-day reputation of Puritans just goes to show what isolation and physical hardship
will do to anyone: those were the American Puritans, who had left England in 1619. In
England, these 'believers in purity' were among the foremost of intellectuals and radicals --
to be expected in a country in which the overall power of Catholicism had been broken. It
was the attempt of Charles I to impose some order on a turbulent and ever-expanding
range of experimental sects, and especially to unite the churches in Scotland with those of
England, that brought things to open war. If there was one thing that could band such a
variety of groups together, it was the spectre of the return of Catholicism, which is how
many interpreted his action. The other thing was a brilliant leader; this was Oliver
Cromwell, and the English Reformation did not outlast either of these inspirations.
Milton was the son of a prosperous scrivener -- part scribe, part justice of the peace -- and
what was considered a gentleman. He was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, and
there seems to have been a general idea he was to take holy orders. He received a classical
education, to the confusion of his more modern readers who may find themselves
floundering amongst the allusions to Greek myths -- my advice, I'm afraid, is go and read
them. You'll find most of the Romantic poets make a deal more sense too -- and after
you've read Milton. Milton saw himself, and from an early age, as a poet, who aimed to
prove the English language as fit a vehicle for heroism as Greek or Latin. In another
political pamphlet, also of 1642, he found the space to write of;
an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labour and intent study
(which I take to be my portion in this life) joined with the strong propensity of nature, I
might perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it
die.
It could be extrapolated, he also aimed to make the central Christian myth as fit a subject
for poetry as any Greek or Latin fable. In these years, he did publish some poems such as
Lycidas, an elegy in the accepted classical form on a drowned friend, and a masque, Comus,
contrasting the rewards of Christian temperance and Pagan lasciviousness. After receiving
his MA in 1632, he travelled in France, Italy and Switzerland, returning to England when
news reached him of the escalating turmoil.
In the lead-up to the war, the increasingly demanding parliament caused the abolition of
the 'Star Chamber' in 1641. This body was, of long standing, a high court of justice
responsible only to the crown, and one of it's responsibilities was censorship of the press.
Books had to be approved by a government licensee before printing, by a licensed printer.
This fitted in with the printers guild's (Guild of Stationers) idea of healthy competition very
nicely. It was when this system broke down that we first hear of 1ohn Milton, the
pamphleteer. An Apology for Smectymnuus was written in support of an anti-hierarchical
church pamphlet produced by one of his old tutors.
Pamphleteering was the main way of disseminating opinions. It held it's own dangers
under the administration; in 1637 another Puritan pamphleteer named William Prynne
had had the remainder of his ears cut off for distributing seditious writings -- it was his
second offence. The worst Milton encountered however, whilst the reformation was on, was
notoriety. He was hard put to shake the nickname 'Milton the Divorcer' after his
publication, 1he Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce in 1643. He was separated from his wife
at the time. Milton's political pamphlets are interesting in that they are all very personal, in
one way or another. They are all idealistic, all related to ideas of a reformed and just new
society, that must needs start with the demolishment of the Church hierarchy and the
monarchy. His role, as in the above quote from Reason of Church Covernment Urged, is the
poet of the State. In a way, he achieved this.
In 1644, the revolutionary parliament brought back the mechanism of censorship,
inevitably for the same reasons the King had maintained it. Milton published Of Education
and Areopagitica, illegally in Amsterdam, the latter being a defence of the free press.
Parliament responded, eventually, by offering him a position of Secretary for the Foreign
Tongues and politely requesting, in effect, that he write propaganda justifying their
regicide. Milton accepted. The results were Eikonklastes and Pro Populario Defensio -- 'a
defence of the people of England'. He was replaced of necessity in his secretarial duties in
1655, but continued active in what was, after all, his vocation as a reformer. In 1655, he lost
the last of his eyesight, which had been deteriorating for some time.
In 1660, after the death of Cromwell (from natural causes, believe it or not), the parliament
accepted concessions from Charles's son, who had spent the last decade in France. Charles
II was crowned that same year. The movement back to monarchism had been tending for
some time, and it can only be seen as an act of genuine belief in his cause; a last gesture of
faith, perhaps; that Milton published A Ready and Easy ay to Establish a Free
Commonwealth this year, under his own name. It must be said, this was the equivalent of
standing up during hunting season with a pair of antlers on your hat.
As it happened, he brazened through. His Eikonklastes and Pro Populio Defensio were
banned, and all copies theoretically called in and publicly burnt. But Milton had his
following as a writer, and someone, friend or foe, came up with the statement he had
already been punished by God with his blindness. He received a full pardon, and went back
to his inherited estate and to a project, it seems, had already been partially begun.
This is the background to one of the most extraordinary pieces of literature to come out of
the Christian thesis.
Of Man's First disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the world, and all our woe,
`
What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the height of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
That Milton never did take holy orders is no real mystery. He didn't want a canon, he
wanted an argument. And that is what Paradise Lost is, a series of arguments. The brilliant
movement, imagery and scope; that can hypnotise an atheist and set Christian critics at
loggerheads; is all part of the grand debate, in which several voices argue their points and
logic finally reveals the truth. This is a classicist, who has read Plato and Cicero, and is
here achieving perfectly the great Renaissance trick of mating Christian belief with
essentially Pagan science.
The several voices are, of course, God, Mankind and 'th' Arch-Enemy, And thence in
Heav'n call'd Satan'. It was certainly not unknown or as a rule unacceptable, for all the
different elements of the Christian myth to be portrayed and speak; consider the Mystery
plays of the proper Middle Ages. It was not even unknown to create them as characters --
consider Christopher Marlowe's Faustus. Milton created them, however, as characters in
an heroic epic, which provides one of the few feasible models for good characters. To give
him and the achievement credit, Milton is one of the few authors that have ever managed
personalties for angels.
But Milton gives personalities to demons that more than match them. If this is a heroic
epic, then the Fallen Angels are the dragon, the villain, who always does provide the story.
But how is it, in an overtly Christian and moralising tale, that a careful and idealistic
writer gives us one of the most powerful and attractive visions of evil ever produced? And
not only that, the most logical.
This knows my punisher; therefore as far
From granting hee, as I from begging peace:
All hope excluded thus, behold instead
Of us out-cast, exil'd, his new delight,
Mankind created, and for him this World.
So farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear,
Farewell Remorse: all Good to me is lost;
Evil be thou my Good.
Satan's position from the bible onward has been special; there always seems to have been a
hierarchy of angels, and Satan was of the highest rank. Milton was attempting to reason
how an 'angelic intelligence' could willingly defy God. Satan's logic, in Milton's grand
scheme, must needs be consistent and expressed with all power, but be given the lie by the
logic of God. It is perhaps an indication of Milton's disapproval, of certain ways of
thinking, that many readers then and now have found the opposite to occur. The artist
William Blake, who worked in the eighteenth century and produced the most adequate
illustrations of Paradise, (also of Dante's Inferno, and the biblical Book of 1ob) considered;
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.
1he Marriage of Heaven and Hell. 1793
Grant at least, that Milton created a political heaven and hell, as he was most qualified to
do.
Paradise Lost was published in 1667, twelve 'books' 'freed of the troublesome and modern
bondage to rhyme'. It was moderately well received. Milton published two more works
before his death in 1674, Paradise Regained and Sampson Agonistes, a poem and a play, in
1671. Paradise Regained was said by Milton in the preface to be the result of a friend's
vastly predictable joke. It deals with the temptation of Christ by Satan, who makes his
return in excellent form. Sampson Agonistes deals with the legend of Sampson and Delilah.
Sixty years after, the manuscript of A Christian Doctrine was discovered in a cupboard at
the house of one of his friends, together with strict instructions for the friend to publish it
after Milton's death. It was his last pamphlet.
Checklist
` Paradise Lost, 1ohn Milton (ed). Christopher Ricks, Penguin Classics, 1989, c1968. (1667)
` A Preface to Milton, Lois Potter, Preface Books, series ed. Maurice Hussey, Longman,
1971.

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