Paradisul Pierdut

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“ Lost” by John Milton a Christian epic?

“Paradisul pierdut” de John Milton, o epopee creștină?

Contents

Introduction

1. Knowledge and Cosmology in Milton’s time

1.1 Knowledge and Cosmology

1.2 Literature and Science in the 17th century

2. The role of mankind in Paradise

2.1 Humanity’s inclination to Humanity

2.2 Gender roles in Paradise

2.3 True Knowledge and Enlightenment

3. Notes on John Milton’s characters in the epic

3.1 A contradictory God

3.2 Satan as the protagonist

3.3 A more complex insight of Eve’s persona

4. Milton’s style in Paradise Lost

4.1 Miltonic style

4.2 Epic language in Paradise Lost

4. Conclusion

5. Bibliography

Introduction

Paradise Lost represents John Milton’s masterpiece, he is known especially because of it, the greatest epic poem in English literature; he chose for the subject the basic principles of Christian theology. The epic poem was written in the 17th century, in blank verse and it is arranged in twelve books. The author was completely blind when he started it and he dictated the entire work to his assistants.

The poem regards the biblical story of the Fall of Man, how Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan and expelled from , Satan’s own expulsion from Heaven and his conviction to live in Hell. ’s aim being to justify God’s actions towards men; also to reveal the Fall consequences to the world, both good and bad. The story has two parts, one about Satan and the other one about Adam and Eve. It received both glory and slur, yet the subject of ’s poem attracts readers from every generation because of the questions that haunts humankind : If the world was made by a good and just God, why is there so much evil in the world today? This question will always captivate readers and also scholars, always looking for answers to ’s analysis of one of the fundamental myths of the world.

I have chosen to analyze the epic poem Paradise Lost for the same reason, the need to an answer for these universal questions that captivates the readers and haunts the world.

The first chapter of my thesis examines “The age of ” and how his works connected with the reformer works of his contemporaries in science to assist to the dynamic evolution of learning of that period. Moreover, I discussed about the influence of the war and Puritanism in his works and in Paradise Lost. As far as for as knowledge concerns, I emphasize that fact that it exists in Paradise Lost through Eve’s attitude and through the information provided by Raphael, also presenting the cosmological elements in the epic.

The second chapter, concerns the role of the other in ; the relation between man and woman, Eve’ submission to Adam, ironically, because at the end Eve seems to be more powerful than him by convincing him to fall with her and eat from the forbidden fruit. The chapter deals with the interaction between Adam and Eve and their self evolution throughout the epic, they discover themselves rather different than God’s description. ’s God tries to protect them in a naive paradise but He is also offering them the Tree of Knowledge as a test to obey his rules, but human inclination to explore and learn is unavoidable and the Fall is imminent.

The third chapter analyses some of the most important characters in Paradise Lost like God, who has a contradictory position in the poem because of his decisions and his actions towards the two humans. On the one hand, God seems to be the protector of his law and a sustainer of free will but He is also seen as a tyrant. Satan is part of this chapter, too. There are many interpretations of the poem and one of them is that when Satan is the protagonist because he tries so hard to accomplish his goals and defeat his weakness and doubts. I examine the introduction to Eve, the character in the poem, studying the words used by the author and the syntax he chose. He introduces Eve in a apparently confusing manner, every contradiction and every double meaning that uses makes us, readers, believe that she was not meant to fall.

The fourth chapter talks about ’s style in the epic, original and at the same time a bit difficult for the readers because of the use of Latin words and Latin structure of the sentence. His engineering skills are highlighted in the original invention meaning the art of poetical narration, the interference of the dialogue and all his tricks that capture attention. I approached the theme of cosmology, how God created the Universe as a peaceful and harmonious system until Satan’s fall which brings chaos to Earth. An important aspect of his masterpiece is the language use and I tried to show that in the subchapter about the epic language, how the language also contributed in the creation of the greatest Christian epic in English literature.

1. Knowledge and Cosmology in ’s time

1.1 Knowledge and Cosmology

The theme of knowledge and the theme of education are such important elements in Paradise Lost and some critics called it a poem of knowing and choosing. The prevalence of these themes arise from the fact that Milton is writing about the ancestors of humankind, the first humans on Earth who have no history and do not know thing except knowing through God’s perspective and what He tells them. In Book V, coming to Earth, Raphael explains to Adam the distinction between human and angelic knowledge, the human one is achieved by discourse and the angelic knowledge is gained through intuition. He tells him that the two type of knowledge are different: “differing but in degree, of kind the same”, putting forward that if the humans obey God they will obtain intuitive knowledge. (Book V, 490). He is anxious to tell Adam about the war story in and how Earth was created but he is stooped by Adam’s question about the essence of the Universe. Raphael says to Adam:

“Sollicit not thy thoughts with matters hid,
Leave them to God above, him serve and feare;” (Book VIII, 167-168)

At this moment, is implying that the purpose of knowledge is not every single thing in universe but to enhance our "appreciation of God's goodness" and of course to enhance our faith, too. (Marshall Grossman, "'s Dialectical Visions" 32). It is interesting how Eve, probably showing intuitive knowledge, the type Adam has not yet obtained, selects the moment right before the comment of Raphael to move out listening the conversation. This deed "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). As makes Raphael say that: "Knowledge is as food, and "needs no less / Her Temperance over Appetite" (Book VII, 126-127). Exactly as we should be moderate with food, we must make differences between the types of knowledge and pass by the one which separate us from God.

This leads us to the Tree of Knowledge of the good and the bad. underlines the fact that the importance of the Tree importance consists in the knowledge it entails than it’s function an being “The only sign of our obedience”. (Book IV, 428).

Even so, the Tree of Knowledge puts up questions about the distinct types of cognition that exist before and after the fall of men. Eating the apple and disobeying God, Adam and Eve missed their change to acquire intuitive knowledge and according to some scholars they have obtain the knowledge of the dark in which humans fall when they are disposed from the goodness of God and just because the have been pushed away from God they cannot learn as they used to. When the angel Michael arrives to Earth to warn Adam about the future, he starts giving his visions, but at some point he stops and starts narrate the rest because he finds Adam as "mortal sight to faile" (Book XII, 9). After the fall Adam is not the same and his capacity of understanding God and Heaven is less the unfallen Adam so angel Michael must be careful than the angel Raphael telling his story in a more understandable way, for the angel Adam to understand. Ira Clark states in her "A Problem of Knowing Paradise in Paradise Lost” that all the narrators of Paradise Lost report their problems of telling generated by the problems of knowing, and these issues exist between angels and God, between the humans and the angels, Adam and Eve and nevertheless between the author and the reader. So, the fallen reader could not understand Heaven, not to mention, Paradise and Hell and the techniques uses to portrait them are metaphors, similes, repetitions, epithets and negatives, as Ira Clark asserts, and if the reader can’t understand and does not know may be the fallen Adam and Eve could not know evil.

Some critics, as Michael Lieb disagree on the command God gave to the humans, not eat from the forbidden fruit stand in it’s ambiguity, if the consequence of eating the apple is not understanding evil or death than their only motif to submit God is their belief, which should be reason enough. (" Lost and the Myth of Prohibition"). Still Ira Clark does not agree upon that, writing that apogee of the work "depends on Eve and Adam's having a competent sense of knowledge". (201). This contrasting points of view are cover up in ’s description of a in which the two humans have immediate knowledge of everything and are at once to pure to be aware of happiness or perceive evil when they see it.

Nothing more than the formation and primness of the Universe establish the purpose of Paradise Lost. This epic poem examines the cosmological subject in academic discussions between Adam and angel Raphael and the author’s metaphors and presentations. Moreover, picture Satan examine the Universe in am expedition of revelation through a new world in his fall from and his transition through Chaos towards Earth. Adam is trying to comprehend the physical place of Earth in the Universe it is related ontological and theological worth as the home of men. He wonders:

“Thir magnitudes, this Earth a spot, a graine,
An Atom, with the Firmament compar'd
And all her numberd Starrs, that seem to rowle
Spaces incomprehensible (for such
Thir distance argues and thir swift return…” (Book VIII, 17-21)

makes us think about the first man grappling with many of the questions of a thinker from the Renaissance period, gazing new types of the Universe, must have reflected on. Replaying to the theory that everything rotates around the Sun, scholars have been constrained to call in question the role of men in the order of the Universe. Raphael is responding to concerns telling saying that there is no reason "bodies bright and greater should not serve / The less not bright, nor Heav'n such journies run / Earth sitting still" (Book VIII. 87-9). Well the poem does not respond to all this questions outright, and critics find it tough to establish ’s position towards science. In these discussions we must remember that was not a scientist but a theorist. John Milton did not provide scientific knowledge but he contributed to understanding what new notions of science might signify to traditional Christian cosmology. He reflects on this in conditional patterns, the same does Raphael in his presentation of the Universe:

"What if the Sun/ Be Centre to the World" (Book VIII, 122-3)

As the Reformation evolved, ensuing theological discussions gained political importance and , as a politically aware theologian, forward this issues in Lost. Scholars discuss ’s expansion of the interest about the ascension of science. The modern readers are inclined to deal with scientific knowledge as unavoidably advanced and await in recognition of now-a-days science principles and cognition. must have appreciated the new science, as a rationalist, but as a classicist and Christian theologian, he did not put science above poetry and biblical.

In the epic poem, Paradise Lost, cosmology shows up through direct sc gained political importance and , as a politically aware theologian, forward this issues in Lost. Scholars discuss ’s expansion of the interest about the ascension of science. The modern readers are inclined to deal with scientific knowledge as unavoidably advanced and await in recognition of now-a-days science principles and cognition. must have appreciated the new science, as a rationalist, but as a classicist and Christian theologian, he did not put science above poetry and biblical.

In the epic poem, Paradise Lost, cosmology shows up through direct science references, integration of the new theories if science into diverse characters’ worldwide and cautions against looking beyond the boundaries of human knowledge. These samples show that a scientific discover like that can be a way to gasp God's glory and "Almightie works" (Book VII.112), like Raphael tells to Adam :

“Yet what thou canst attain, which best may serve
To glorifie the Maker, and inferr
Thee also happier, shall not be withheld….” (Book VII, 115-117).

Some critics say that The social order theories in ’s Paradise Lost reflect scientific thoughts. In John Rogers’s The Matter of Revolution, it is states that the works of explores the measurement of the vitalist scientific motion that talked about "the infusion of all material substance with the power of reason". (“The Matter of Revolution”, 1). holds back before the theological branches, while scientific proves, as a heliocentric Universe, give contributions to his reformer political theory. A dispersed Universe – or more focus something else rather than men, build in God’s image, demands each object to act predictably and appropriately within the larger scheme, "each in thir several active Sphears assign'd" (Book V. 478). If this structure fails, chaos will be the result.

Consequently, illustrate the anxiety followed from new and often unwanted discoveries and theories as Raphael warns:

“God to remove his wayes from human sense,
Plac'd Heav'n from Earth so farr, that earthly sight,
If it presume, might erre in things too high,
And no advantage gaine. …” (Book VII, 119-122).

Currently, critics say that was conscious of development and it’s implications. It we understand the philosophy of in terms of scientific theory or acknowledge ’s notion of the extent of suitable human knowledge, has still to be fixed. Even though Adam in "led on, yet sinless, with desire to know/ What neerer might concern him" (Book VII, 61-62), the warning of Raphael deduces :

“Sollicit not thy thoughts with matters hid,
Leave them to God above, him serve and feare;
Of other Creatures, as him pleases best,
Wherever plac't, let him dispose: joy thou
In what he gives to thee, this
And thy faire Eve; Heav'n is for thee too high
To know what passes there; be lowlie wise …” (Book VIII, 167-173)

What consciousness praise God and what consciousness – too significant for human understanding – threatens the device it search for to explain? was probably still insecure about his issue as he sent Adam and Eve to out of Heaven: “Homeward returning. High in Front advanc't,/ The brandisht Sword of God before them blaz'd/ Fierce as a Comet; which with torrid heat, ….” (Book XII, 632-634)

1.2 Literature and Science in the 17th century

During the 17th century a lot happened in the English literature and it would be impossible to cover everything that took place in that period, but it will be a short review of the movements that defined the 17th century and, of course, Milton’s connection with it. In essence, English literature can be divided in two small areas: the Renaissance and the Caroline, Interregum and the Periods of Restoration.

In the seventeen century, the system of national finance capture an important position, since for some of the time is was an elementary factor in the interconnection between the Crown and the Parliament. It is at the very source of the constitutional strive and not because people were frightened to be taxed a lot but because they acknowledge that the control of the purse lately involves the control of the policy. Since the constitutional fight is the main feature of the era to a much bigger degree that at any other period in history, the national finance in its bond with that fight have already been handled and needs advance elucidation.

Effectively, the result of the long struggle was that the Restoration split the personal earning of the king from the pubic income of the kingdom which had, so far, been identified with it. The usual income was allocated to particular objects as for the other objects the parliament had to vote for it and the route of the reign of Charles the II, the principle was finally set in place of assigning the costs of the specific object for which the supplies have been made.

The magnificent manliness, of the Elizabethan period exhibit itself in an amazing individual versatility embody in Walter Raleigh who was equally suitable to play the part of sailors, soldiers, statesman and a man of letters. It was a period in which one man could devise and describe Falstaff and Lear and some others. The elements were not that combined in the following period. The plentiful delight of life’s exuberance and the admiration of the seriousness Puritanism and Paganism of life had ruptured.

Puritanism dominated the nation and Paganism took over the court. The puritan period left important traces and give the best in John Milton and Bunyan. Paganism reached nothing more than the gentle lyrics of Herrick and the amazing corruption of the Restoration comedy. The world could not be divided in puritans and pagans, not even in the seventeen century but there is no period in history that had the two sides so ready for war; and because of this openness at war, the puritans acquire an extravagancy and grimness as the pagans acquire an extravagance of frivolity incompatible with perfect artistic realization. The exceptions were the genius Milton and Bunyan, pagans created no Aristophanes to establish against them.

The most important an deepest feelings men had were focus on religion and the love for liberty, but they weren’t set yet on fanaticism. Comus in the complete expression of the Puritanism, which was religious and cognitive neither Roundhead nor Cavalier but it wad beneficial for both sides when The Civil war started. wad taught to differentiate the Royalists with the Philistines, during the Civil War, or to allegorize the fight of Puritanism in the Samson Agonisles; while the fundamental invincible spirit at the heart of English Puritanism, free from all the confusion of war and faction, still created its sublime expression in the epic Lost.

Only in , the intense faith in the Puritanism was combined with intellectuality. Wittingly, he wanted to address to the public who listen to him, even though were few. John Bunyan is one of the representatives of the Puritanism who took captive the submissive through his clearness and humility. He was a man of the people, from an inferior social class, no education, he was a connoisseur of the controversial literature of the Puritanism. The undying allegory of the Pilgrim's Progress shows the base virtue of the Puritanism, who did not become arrogant by fighting with the Devil, nor rough by fighting with flesh, nor bitter by the world disdain and persecution. It gives an amazing vivid feeling of immortal human types under the conditions of the Restoration of England. In the history of the literature arises especially as the predecessor of the English novel which was about to be realized by Daniel Defoe.

The new age that appeared was materialist and shameless, the age that had passed was too serious to be intelligent a spiritual, this new age was witty and clever because was no longer in earnest. Though the tragedy of the period was not honest, was pompous and unconvincing. In stead, its comedy was amazing, but it was not simply immoral and carefree; it supposed in its reaction opposed to the Puritanism, that virtue is ransom form being despicable only when the situation render it comic. The note of the Restoration triumphed through the Revolution, the request of decency stayed in suspension, and concerning the polite society, until the seventeen century has passed, belonging to the earlier age.

The seventeen century pointed a change from an age or belief from a period of reason. Literature shows the population’s restlessness in society, religion and monarchy through that period. British people’s life changed as the dispute and the war shook the nation. These problems reformulated the part of the person in society, the point of view regarding faith and social forms in . The writers of that period gave their own theories and they influenced the population.

The works of show the influence of the Reformation and the Renaissance, both had an impact on his work, they pull in different directions.

Approximately speaking, the essence of the Reformation gives the substance of his poetry and the spirit of the Renaissance classicism its model. Only can create living and amazing poems in the right classic form. In these forms he showed interest for the Protestant movement. Actually, ’s Puritanism, which was a product of the Reformation and the Hellenism, a product of the Renaissance, nearly conciliate in his giftedness than the previous section of topic and form would imply. was not a atheistic pagan, neither a puritan formalist, he consumed the real spirit of both inclinations and wrote under the combined impact of both of them.

2. The role of mankind in

2.1. Humanity’s inclination to humanity

Many critics have noticed the inclination Adam and Eve have for one another and this gets to the climax in the final scene where they realize that paradise is anywhere if they are together. The interest is how this bond happened, not only illuminating their attraction for their fellow humanity but also how this is manifested through desire, speech and perceptions that helps them discover who they are and not what God told them they are.

In garden where Adam and Eve where born God is everything, even tells them how to define one another and themselves underestimating the complexity of the human being and His descriptions are simple: man and female, the man is superior and the woman is inferior . Adam and Eve notice that the definitions about one another are much more complicated than God’s conception as they observe each other, seeing their similarities and dissimilarities reflected, his omniscience makes it impossible to relate to, even though they love and respect God.

Equally human, Adam and Eve create definitions about mankind for each other that ruin God’s, it removes them from Him and throws them to words one another, this a bond that all man has with his kind above everything and by hearing about their creation are now aware that are made from the same flesh, but this goes beyond God’s physical extract of Eve from the ribcage of Adam. As in their intangible similarities as in their substantial ones Adam sees a part of himself in Eve, in Book IV:

“Bone of my Bone, Flesh of my Flesh, my self

Before me; Woman is her Name, of Man

Extracted” (Book VII. 492-494)

The enjambment “my self/ Before me” expresses the observations of Adam in which he sees Eve as a part of him, his “self”, before knowing who that “self” is. Eve helped Adam discover who he is and understand his emotions and what they meant to him in his life in the Garden of Eden. Eve has a latent power for self-discovery and she had this power even before he intercept it through knowing her, Eve is like a key to unlock Adam’s awareness, that he didn’t had before. In a way, Adam and Eve are an unit of the same flesh and bone, but also they are individuals with different opinions about each other, so they are able to find self-identification through their presence and across God.

A part of Adam’s understanding of self comes from the idea that they will never be perfect like their father, God, as they are humans and mortals. Adam and Eve share a sense of understanding of existence transcending from the fact that she was made from the man’s rib. Adam somehow explains what he had understood of Eve so far :

“Woman is her Name, of Man

Extracted; for this cause he shall forgo

Father and Mother, and to his Wife adhere;

And they shall be one Flesh, one Heart, one Soul” (Book VIII. 496-9).

Adam can not imagine himself without Eve, he thinks that they share a soul and a heart as he states, one without another wouldn’t form a whole so they would be incapable to exist, because for Adam, Eve is as superior as he is, even if he is told something else, because she was made from his flesh b Adam can not imagine himself without Eve, he thinks that they share a soul and a heart as he states, one without another wouldn’t form a whole so they would be incapable to God, and conferred Eve with the same privileges of adherence.

This statement of Adam shows that for him is more important the union with Eve than procreating for the sake of humanity, and of course his relation with Eve as her husband.

He demonstrates that love and desire are not utilitarian, acting like a mortal, that we can relate to, and not like a copy of God on Earth and transcending His will. To Adam the union with Eve is more important than being God’s substitute on Earth. In the fact that Adam felt Eve as being as much a part of him as he is himself are two important aspects : one, the fact that partnership is more important than parenthood, and the second one is that their sense of selves is based on the presence of one another.

The readers can observe their attraction and trust through out their speech and it is observable at the beginning of the epic poem that the structure at the speech was formal and unknown. Kenneth Gross marks in his essay “Satan and the Romantic Satan: A Notebook”: “Adam’s first speech sounds oddly like learned by rote, or like a bit of preacherly ventriloquism” (423).

There are some others critics that have noticed this evolution in Adam’s and Eve’s speech as a proof to their expulsion from Heaven and that they are not longer under God’s status, yet this evolution of their speech also proves their use of one another as a way of discovering themselves.

As Gross says, Adam’s evolution of speech from the recited to an original one, enlighten Adam’s individual identity from learned to understood and shoeing his personal development. Adam and Eve learned to speak more familiar in their dialogues so they have notice their intellectual abilities, so they can evolve beyond God’s duties, that were assigned to them at the beginning.

The two of them, Adam and Eve, became more aware of their abilities and by having dialogues with each other they develop their language and they can play with it, understand it and realize the things they are able to do on their own, despite their inferiority to God.

They start what Nerthop Frye called “verbal play” ( Frye, Northop. “The Garden Within.” The return of : Five Essays on ’s Epics. : U of Press.1965. 60-72, 98-103), being able to drop out the “ventriloquism”.

Still they admit their compatibility with each other that with God, Heaven constantly reminds them about the division between The Father and them, humans, which leads them into the arms of each other, as in Book VIII Raphael tells Adam:

“In what He gives to thee: this

And thy fair Eve. Heav’n is for thee too high

To know what passes there. Be lowly wise:

Think only what concerns thee and thy being.

Dream not of other worlds, what creatures there

Live in what state, condition or degree

Contented that thus far hath been revealed

Not of earth only but of highest Heav’n” (Book VIII. 170-178).

Raphael refuses Adam the opportunity to aim ascendance and he reduces him to the stage of mortality, that he is only a mortal, by proceeding that way Adam and Eve are far more closer to humanity than with God and Heaven, because their thought are considered to be useless and in vain, Raphael tries to enchain Adam’s personal development. He uses commands as “Think only”, “dream not” or “live in” which simply limiting Adam’s capacity to enlarge his outlook physically and metaphysically.

Adam, throughout the poem has to split between Divinity and the mortal companion, Eve and pulled between the Divinity he will never be and the mortal condition in which he already is, he always has to chose between being responsible and obey God and the curiosity of human being and this rupture is obvious in the consequences of Adam and Eve’s temptation when he blames Eve for everything, as she does the same, instead of being mature and be the human that God called “superior”, the leaderships position, he prefers to chooses the erring human position. After God’s arrival in the garden he begins by questioning Adam about his superior condition and if he can live up to it :

“Was shee thy God, that her thou didst obey

Before his voice? Or was shee made thy guide,

, or but equal, that to her

Thou did’st resigne thy Manhood and the Place

Wherein God set thee above her made of thee,

And for thee, whose perfection farr excell’d

Hers in all real dignitie” (Book X. 145-51).

In this fragment of the poem, Adam tends to fallow Eve and his human impulses rather than follow God’s rules; His expectations are harder to meet.

He chooses to follow Eve because she is human as he is, he relate with and her expectations better than he does with the one God has. Adam is imperfect and God is impeccable and perfect, and thus he is drawn by Eve’s same imperfection.

As readers we can see Adam making a conscious movement apart from Divine Parenthood and reaching an more individually selfhood, by choosing to follow Eve. His proclivity to Eve is a sort of reverse transcendence advancing beyond the Divine and extending into the mortal domain.

After deviating from God’s rules and their ulterior expulsion from Heaven, Adam and Eve started casting guilt on one another, yet the substrate of their actions have a more positive side than it is suggested. Because Adam and Eve consider each other to be capable of manipulation and failure they follow each other instead of following Heaven’s rules.

C.S. Lewis wonder in his essay “The Fall”: “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” (Lewis, 454).

If Adam had reprimanded Eve he would not be a human and he complains “what could I more?” expressing the fact that he is a mortal and he couldn’t do anything else but to Fall with her, because doing more would have been negating his place as a parte of her world and a part of humanity (Book IX, 1169). Adam didn’t opted for punishing Eve because that would have meant ignoring his own imperfection, a very important aspect in his part of the founders of mankind rather than sustaining an illusive standard of his Godhead on Earth.

The relationship between them is one of equality, because he is not being disappointed of her, he is rather angry. By feeling anger he puts himself in the same plane as Eve, highlighting that she is more equal to him than God had told them. The anger of Adam makes her, ironically, more powerful than God made her.

Many critics’ insist that Eve, unlike Adam, is unable to live without him, she is a being gifted with the power of persuasion, this is a clear fact not only for Adam in his anger to her, she had successfully manipulated him, but to Christ as well. Stella P. Revard speaks about the Son’s disappointment in Eve in her essay “Eve and the Doctrine of Responsibility in Paradise Lost”: “The Son’s indictment of Eve would seem to imply that, although she had not stood, she had been capable of so doing and thus was liable to punishment as an independent being…Adam has argued that Eve ‘coused’ him to sin and therefore was in a way ‘responsible’ for his sin. (Revard, 71)

Even though she is told that he is inferior to Adam, she is ready to accept her responsibility and the son is willing to concede her that responsibility. Blaming each other for the fall seems like they embrace the fact that they are responsible for the expulsion from , unlike Satan who does not confess a thing.

Adam declares that Eve yet apparently perfect in nature, didn’t seemed capable of their fall and states in Book X, in response to the temptation of Eve:

“So Divine,

That from her hand I could suspect no ill,

And what she did, whatever in itself,

Her doing seeme’d to justify the deed;

Shee gave me of the Tree, and I did eat.” (Book X, 137-43)

By denying the self God told her she is and the self He created, it is obvious that Eve is an independent human that can make her own decisions and choices, she is developing herself, and she can evolve and think on her own.

It is important to mark the real “turning point” (Revard, Stella P. "Eve and the Doctrine of Responsibility in Paradise Lost." PMLA 88.1, 1973, 69-78) in Paradise Lost it is the moment when they realize Eve’s judgment to work independently, in opposition with the moment when Satan persuades her to eat the apple.

On a front stage Milton’s Adam and Eve answer to their disobedience in a way that plays into biblical descriptions that made them seem as non-moral and deteriorated as they begin to “cast lascivious eyes” (Book IX,1014).

For the first time Adam feels the tipsy effect of desire:

“Eve, now I see thou art exact of taste

And elegant of sapience no small part

Since to each meaning savor we apply

And palate call judicious. I the praise

Yield thee, so well this day thou hast purveyed.

Much pleasure we have lost while we abstained

From this delightful fruit, nor known till now

True relish tasting.” (Book IX. 1017-24)

While Adam and Eve temperately find themselves “naked left/ to guilty Shame” (Book IX, 1056-7) Adam’s statement “Eve now I see” gives a surprisingly forgiving view of the couple’s choice to eat the apple implying a surprising fact of truth and understanding. Adam and Eve are capable to form a concept idea of death and the loss of one another.

In the sonnet of William Shakespeare “when I have seen by time’s fell hand defaced”, the speaker asserts at the end “this thought is as a death which cannot choose/ but weep to have that which it fears to lose”. (Shakespeare, William. "Sonnet 64 . “Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Ed. Stephen Booth. : Press, 2000).

2.2. Gender roles in

Eve must “obey” (Book IV.636) Adam, as God states, because she is a physical part of him and she was made for him, too. His role as a superior gets complicated because he feels a more than metaphysical bond to Eve and even though He wad told that he has authority, she produces “an awe/ about her” that surprises Adam in a more obedient role. (Book VIII. 558). The substance of Adam and Eves’ conversations and their transparency of their desire exceed God’s rules and the scale he had established of femaleness and maleness. Even though temporally, after their fall Adam and Eve fast and blindly, they regress into their parts of punishing the superior and helpless man, the woman without guilt in a way confirms much of the existing commentary about Eve’s subordination. Adam’s pushing of “ungrateful Eve” in brief lived and loose dome more out of fear than out of genuine anger, this fearful objection, contradicts Adam’s inability to control Eve: Adam understands that he never had controlled Eve, but actually that he has been “upbraided” by her intelligence and her persuasion (Book X. 1164, 1168).

In addition to this, Adam and Eve must get through guilty anger to understand that Paradise in only if they are together, they reveal their real alignment with each other.

In principle, despite the fact that God has planed for female Eve to be subordinate to Adam, their instinctual commitments ignore The plan of God for the authority of male in Paradise and that makes Eve as much individual as Adam.

As many critics have studied the inclination of humanity in , many also studied the role of genders; staking requests admire Eve’s feminine power to mock Miltonic misogyny.

In ’s first description of Adam and Eve, the speaker explains: “He for God only, she for God in him” (Book IV. 299). Eve is described as “for God in him”, is to Adam what he is to God. Adam is responsible for Eve, Adam being her “guide and head”, as God’s will state. (Book IV. 442).

Adam and Eve embrace this imbalanced relation between them yet they don’t know themselves. They did not have the chance to know each other even though they are human beings came into life at fully grown, reaching adult stages physically. In this sense, Eve is conscious and accepts this gender power structure in her first days and declares to Adam: “God is thy law, thou mine. To know no more/ is Woman’s happiest knowledge and her praise” (Book IV. 637-8). Eve’s initial understanding of herself transmits a point of view that she strays from throughout the epic. She starts seeing how the restraints and expectations of this gender ideology alter her sense of self; she eliminates the impersonal layer of agreement from her personal opinions wanting a more personal understanding of her role in and in the life of Adam.

Before Eve distinguish how she truly is against only fictitious aspects of her gender, it Adam who first sees it through God’s design of gender to Eve’s true value. At first, upon knowing why and how she was made, she says to Adam: “O thou for whom/ and from whom I was formed flesh of thy flesh” (IV. 440-1). In these words of hers there is a sense of true liability to Adam: without the male, she, the female is to “no end” and sense the weight of the fact that without Adam, she would not exist (Book IV. 442). At first glance, it seems that Adam echoes the feeling when he says: “To give thee being I lent/ Out of my side to thee” (Book IV.483). He declares the he only “lent” her a rib, not fully giving it to her, by this word he suggests that she has to repay him in a way the favor or to be conscious of his sacrifice with obedient gratitude, but than he explains to Eve: “Part of my soul I seek thee and thee claim/ My other half” (Book IV. 487-8).

Apparently Adam is not asking Eve to repay him but suggesting that by giving her his rib, a part of him, he will spend his life seeking for Eve, being a part of him physically and emotionally, that is missing. This way they are bound together: God had made them, two humans from the same substance and this solid bond is more powerful than their physically separation because they are “both one soul” (Book VIII. 604).

Adam points out his acceptance of Eve as his equal to mare than recognition of their physical bond. Adam explains to Raphael his need for a companion:

“Among unequals what society

Can sort, what harmony or true delight,

Which must be mutual in proportion due

Given and received?” (Book VIII.383-388).

When God asks him why lower creatures are inappropriate companions for him when he can share their language, Adam tells Him that these humble beasts are “unequals”. He tells God that he needs a companion “mutual in proportion” to have “true delight” and “harmony”. Adam did not consider Eve only a worthy but an adored companion and he clearly states that she is indeed equal, in spite of God making her inferior “for God in him” (Book IV. 299).God does not need a companion to fully witness His existence (Book VIII. 428).

But “Not so is Man/ But in degree, the cause of his desire/By conversation with his like to help/Or solace his defects.” (Book VIII. 416-419).

Adam had explained to Raphael that God is perfect so he does not need a companion, so Adam who is himself unsure of who he is and being so pliable, needs an even companion who can discuss with and help comfort his deficiencies. To correct his self-doubts he must have Eve as his companion, or she makes him forget about them in a way that replaces God’s explanations about his life and aim in , but it emphasis that Adam equalizes Eve more emotionally than physically.

Adam also highlights the need of someone in order to feel complete, reaffirming the ability of a companion to confirm the gaps God left when he created the two human beings. (Book VIII. 428). Adam, himself, is not enough to stay on top, unlike God, forever “sufficiently possessed/ of happiness”, for that reality he must have Eve next to him. (VIII. 404-405).

Moreover, Adam articulates the contradiction between him as God’s substitute and the self he becomes through Eve:

“But here

Far otherwise: transported I behold,

Transported touch. Here passion first I felt,

Commotion strange! In all enjoyments else

Superior and unmoved, here only weak

Against the charm of beauty’s powerful glance.” (Book VIII. 529-533).

Adam report a change provoked by Eve’s presence – a feeling of awareness and distance from God. Without Eve he would not be conscious about his deficiencies or his emotions, as he says : “In solitude/ What happiness? Who can enjoy alone/Or all enjoying what contentment find?” (Book VIII. 364-5).

Additionally, in spite of God making Eve of and for Adam, the imbalance of gender power equalizes through the epic poem and sometimes is even reversed. God’s plan was for Adam to control Eve, but he strays from the plan by adoring her. The emotional swerve from God’s rules lightens how the subject Adam and Eve are to desire, a sentiment that replaces God’s stated reason.. Moreover, Adam answers “to a short absence I could yield” (Book IX. 248), when Eve suggested that they worked separately in the garden. In the beginning she is the one who “yielded with coy submission”, but now is Adam who is doing it, subordinating himself to Eve by a will that is totally his and not God’s. (Book IV. 410).

Even God admits that the gender hierarchy between the two human beings He determined fails to take hold. After their temptation, God make an effort to punish Eve so he declares: “to thy husband’s will/ Thine shall submit: he over thee shall rule” (Book X.196). In Book IV Milton’s speaker tells that Adam and Eve are “not equal as their sex not equal seemed”: that God had created Eve “for” Adam and he has “absolute rule” over her and Eden (Book IV. 296, 299, 301).

Unavoidably, the two humans pass over God’s original edict, driven by some unmanageable and higher forces of desire and understanding of each other. Adam being intoxicated by Eve’s enchantment and her total autonomy, he cannot strengthen the gendered hierarchy and the total rule of the male in .

Eve’s development it is clear in her rationalization of her temptation by Satan, after eating the forbidden fruit, Eve, like Adam, diverge from her role as submissive wife, like God told her and becoming a learned self that is influenced by Adam and her cognition of him rather than God and her submission to him. Eve wondered, before knowledge takes hold, about her role as Adam’s inferior and she is more thoughtful about how knowledge will affect her relationship with Adam and not with God:

“Shall I to him make known

As yet my change and give him to partake

Full happiness with me? Or rather not,

But keep the odds of knowledge in my pow’r

Without copartner so to add what wants

In female sex, the more to draw his love

And render me more equal, and perhaps,

A thing not undesirable, and sometime

: for inferior who is free?” (Book IX. 816-24).

Eve is very conscious of her role and her inferiority limitations and her partner’s benefits from his superiority. She is conceding her position, and not only hers’, Adam’s position, too, as individuals function in the dynamic they share.

The apple is just the agent of her true acquaintances: eating the apple was entirely her decision, it is one of the decisions that she takes on her own, autonomously, this demonstrating her independent self.

Being punished by God, Eve turns to Adam and declares: “Was I t’have never parted from thy side?/ As good have grown there still a lifeless rib!” (Book IX. 1153-4). Eve is aware of her departure from Adam, away from her status as “she for God in him” and as inferior to Adam because she is made from his rib. (Book IV. 299). By inquiring her attachment to Adam she becomes aware of the emptiness of a life based exclusively on another person.

In this sharing of knowledge with Adam after eating the fruit, it is clear that Eve is conscious of the imposed reductions of her females. Eve is becoming the self she tried so hard to be, one that need and loves Adam, but it is produced for her as much as it is produced for her.

Eve has an anticipation that Adam doesn’t: she may be at the end of male-established gender hierarchy, but in the end it was Eve who in the end, has the mental foresight to call in question God’s subjectivity of law and see the true meaning of death, happiness and value of fellowship in a interrogatively reflective way.

2.3. True Knowledge and Enlightenment

Throughout “Paradise Lost”, puts in contrast the dualities of male and female, the superior and the inferior, mortality and divinity to illustrate the distinctions at both closures of these binaries. For Adam, as for Eve, too, the is “infinitely good” , this is how God made it, but they do not really understand the value of “all these joys” without knowing what bad is for comparison.(Book IV 414, 411). In God’s perspective, the pair under- appreciate .

Milton’s language and Biblical rhetoric assert that eating the forbidden fruit, the temptation of Adam and Eve is The Great Fall of humanity, but without the fall both Adam and Eve would never be able to understand themselves, one another or what it means to be a human, because without understanding what evil is they could never appreciate Paradise, or their life and the love for each other without feeling solitude and even know morality. explains the need of true knowledge before Adam or Eve speak: “the Tree of Knowledge, grew fast by:/ Knowledge of good bought dear by knowing ill” (Book IV. 221-2).

As the female has a male equivalent, also does good, it has it’s own opposite, therefore Adam and Eve had to be tempted and eat the fruit from the tree of Knowledge in order for humanity to realize the worth of “good” and for Adam to understand the value of life.(Book IV. 414).

Adam and Eve, as humans, are really different from their unchangeable and perfect Father, God. Both of them are aware of this difference challenging God’s laws through their replacing perceptions about Eden and themselves.

The pair came to understand by their development and experience that the meaning of life and it’s value, also their surroundings are in the end products of opinion and by that they show the subjectivity of God’s organization in . Through discussion the pair elucidate for each other the ability of humans to live beyond God’s chains.

The idea of is controlled as both Adam and Eve come to see that dreamland is anywhere if they have one another, not just in a dreamland garden. For that reason, at the end of the epic Adam and Eve can go “hand in hand” making their “solitary way” out of with sadness and also a bitter independence. (Book XII 648, 649).

In God’s opinion humanity may have fallen when they were expelled from Heaven and Eve ate the apple but actually the temptation in necessary for the couple to find themselves, reevaluate the boundaries of human resources and discover the subjectivity of death.

Not like the generations after them, Adam and Eve are born immortal and genuine: they have not experienced death or age, therefore the concept of dying is unthinkable for them. By telling then that they can do everything they want, but except eating from the Tree of Knowledge “lest ye die”. (Book X, 664), God allows Adam and Eve to do everything but being conscious about bad, good and not knowing the concept of death, so without understanding death life is not as prized as it should be by the two humans.

Adam states, as he thinks God’s impending threat that they will die if they eat from the tree, he highlights the emptiness of God’s promise: “So near grows death to life, whate’er death is/ Some dreadful thing no doubt” (Book IV. 425-6).

The humans do not understand the concept of death, physical expiration. But throughout the epic Eve phrases death as being “dreadful” for them build on the lives they have together. Eve imagines herself being expelled from Heaven, without Adam and by thinking she would be replaced by another to stay by his side exclaims that it would be “a death to think!” (Book IX. 830). Adam and Eve have another definition about death and it is that of losing one each other rather than self-destruction.

The presence of each other made their have developed heir speech and faculty, it could be said that they have grown-up together. In this partnership of them are helping each other understand the sense of their emotions and form points of view about experiences in Eden based on one another. Basically, in creating each other and themselves, Adam and Eve, get their own definition of life to opposite to their definition about death. It is ironically because it is Satan who shows them how truly subjective is the definition of God as he says to Eve: “it gives you life/ to knowledge” (IX. 687).

He is the villain in the epic, although Satan’s captivating temptation it has it’s roots in real truth – to be conscious of what death represents is to understand the value of life. This way Adam, Eve and their expulsion into the knowing change the sense of power of mortality and displays the subjectivity of God’s authority by letting mankind knowledge to define their existence. Precisely as Adam and Eve manage to redefine life and death through acquaintance, their achievement of truth similarly helps them redefine their roles in each other’s life. Adam states while narrating his firsts waking moments to Raphael: “But who I was, or where, or from what cause/ knew not” (Book IX. 270-1). Adam does not know where he has come from or who he is in his initial awake moments, God created an entire mature male human being, and still that progressive growth of self that fallow modern adults’ physically evolution is absent in Adam’s infantile mind.

Eve consolidates the idea that her and Adam’ s perceptions of each other replaces those of God as well as the fact that over the course of the epic Adam and Eve adjust themselves more with fellow humanity than with God. Raphael visits Adam and hire only Adam in an exegetical discourse, still it is said about Eve:

“Went she not as not with such discourse

Delighted or not capable her ear

Of what was high. Such pleasure she reserved,

Adam relating, she sole auditress:

Her husband the relater she preferred

Before the angel…” (Book VIII. 48-53).

In this fragment clearly states that Eve is not capable to engage in such discourse as Adam and Raphael do and that in fact that grad conversation “delights” her.(Book VIII. 48-53). This means that Eve is very capable to engage in such discourse, she is as “capable” in mind as Adam, but she rather maintains her place as the inferior of Adam.

Adam and Eve, lastly have a more aware and explicit achievement of the subjective meaning of . When Eve eats the apple from the Tree of Knowledge he becomes fearful because she think that God will replace her by another Eve to stay by Adam’s side and this thought makes her convince him to eat the apple, too.

Firstly she is afraid of being expelled from alone: the thought of being lonely is as menacing as expulsion implying that her perception of Adam and Eden are strongly connected. As Eve awakens to true consciousness, she sees that the one being lonely in her is Adam. After Christ’s explanations about how they are being expelled from for their disobedience, Eve says:

“With thee to go

Is to stay here; without thee here to stay

Is to go hence unwilling. Thou to me

Art all things under Heav’n, all places thou…” (Book XII, 615-618)

In her above statement to Adam, she takes Heaven down to the domain of humanity suggesting that the Divine is into the mortal pair rather than above them as a leader. catch this approach of holiness, explaining: “Earth be changed to Heav’n and Heav’n to Earth,/ , joy and union without end” (Book VII. 160-1). Both Heaven and Earth are a Miltonic view that not only forms the idea of Heaven a personal one, but also undermine the authority of God to rule over them.

Furthermore, use of “union” expresses not only serenity between Heaven and Earth but also a intrinsic bound between the two. As Adam and Eve “are one” so does Heaven and Earth emphasis the subjectivity of not just but of the authority of God and the percept of Heaven above, too. (Book IX. 958).

At long last, Adam and Eve’s acquirement of truth represents their enlightenment, helping to be aware of their honest love by testing it with true heaviness. They take God in their hearts when leaving Heaven but mainly they take each other in a paradise within. Now being fully formed grown-ups they leave with the final understanding and in defiance of their imperfection and mortality, are able to make their own way.

3. Notes on John Milton’s characters in the epic

A Contradictory God

About ’s God in Paradise Lost, scholars carry a war throughout the studies about ’s work. He appears to be a contradictory character and He can be seen and interpreted different by any reader, one can believe that He is just an enforcer of His own law and a firm sustainer of Free Will and a tyrant. presents to the reader some of the features, because they are so many, of a being so complex that He overruns our domain of understanding.

would not be able to emerge the untouchable logic of Divinity, and Paradise Lost would have no God. presents Paradise Lost with two conflicting Gods, as am added ply of complexity and intelligence, which the reader can define easily, He is either the kind and the maintaining father or the merciless tyrant. By putting together the two flat characters results a single and more complex one closer to the unintelligible Divinity, pointed out by contradictions.

God furiously thinks, in Book III, in his palace, at times sentencing his creations and gently forgiving their disobedience later on, He “sits/high throned above all heighth bent down His eye/His own works and their works at once to view” (Book III, 57-9), and telling the angels about the role He and The Son will play in the Fall of Man. God appears as a contradiction mostly from his speech, it presents Him as two incompatible characters who are distinct in language and voice. The one with a tyrannical attitude speaks for the Mankind with disdain and a passionate voice while the fair God talks in a more focus and reasonable manner, seemed more like a diplomat than a king with his hands filled of rebellious creations.

The speech starts in a threatening way, God speaking of Mankind’s temptation with a kind of disgust, He attests swift declarations with poetic decorations in which quickly increases intonation and intensity until he insults humanity.

“Bysome false guile pervert; and shall pervert
For man will heark'n to his glozing lyes,
And easily transgress the sole Command,
Sole pledge of his obedience: So will fall,
Hee and his faithless Progenie: whose fault?
Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of mee
All he could have; I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.” ( Book III, 93-97).

After this intense tirade He calms down his language and extends his lines. In following excerpt the God of Milton negates the existence of predestination and clearly asserts that man is totally responsible for his fall:

“What pleasure I from such obedience paid

When will and reason, reason also is choice

Useless and vain, of freedom both despoiled,

Made passive both, had served necessity,

Not me? They therefore, as to right belonged,

So were created, nor can justly accuse

Their Maker or their making or their fate,

As if predestination over-rul'd

Thir will, dispos'd by absolute Decree

Or high foreknowledge. They themselves decreed

Their own revolt, not I: if I foreknew,

Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault

Which has no less prov'd certain unforeknown.” (Book III, 107-119)

In this fragment, God is described as a Creator who collects no benefit from the sightless adoration of his creations. He asserts that by doing that makes it an act of vanity and that will be no point in creating man at all if the whole human race will bet to his every fad. God tries to explain that he has given man the possibility of Free Will, but among this it come the liability for actions and with this the responsibility for the fall.

In opposition of the calm presence, the tyrant God comes to curse humanity and balanced on the edge of immorality. He injects his next part of the speech, as evidence of his almightiness, with anger, repetition of certain words and violent language. The next four lines are disturbing and aggressive which include a slope rhyming couplet presenting a distempered God:

“This my long sufferance and my day of grace
They who neglect and scorn, shall never taste;
But hard be hard'nd, blind be blinded more,
That they may stumble on, and deeper fall;” (Book III, 198- 201)

He talks about humankind who would spurn him and he speak of them with great disdain, and yet he is stating to offer them salvation, speaking of “my day of grace”.(Book III, 198).

This revengeful God is very much unlike the fair God in his approach to Mankind’s deviations from His laws, While the God that is just is searching for ways to bring humanity in the initial state, such as scarifying Christ, the other God attacks, the fair God forgives as the tyrant condemns.

The God Milton created is all-powerful and is nether hindered by these ways of discover or stumbled the chains of human emotions. He knows everything: there is nothing for him to find out. His reasoning in circular, everything is related with everything else; he can drag from time and space everything he wants to know. As temporal, volatile creature, the intellect of God, excepting all humans’ defects, it exists in an incomprehensible form for us, so it makes sense for the reader to be confused by ’s God. He realizes the imperfection of human in understanding, asserting: ““It is better therefore to contemplate the Deity and to conceive of him, not with reference to human passions, that is, after the manner of men, who are never weary of forming subtle imaginations respecting him”. (Milton, John. “Christian Doctrine”, Complete Prose Works of John Milton, Ed. Hughes, Merritt. : Macmillian P, 1957).

By declaring this, demonstrates that he is fully aware of the distinction between humankind and God and he shows to the readers two features of God: the revengeful one and the forgiving one. The author shows the readers a general character and a God that rectifies the mistaken opinions of the readers may have concerning his nature. This conflicting nature of God is an effect of the reader’s attempt to put Him in a box he could never include him; he must be one of the two characters.

When we read the speech of God in Book III, Paradise Lost, we can see two parte of many parts of the character and being displayed limited information, we can’t form an idea about the shape of this figure in our mind. Also, is not just the fact that we have two pieces of the puzzle but the pieces do not fit. Of course, as humans, we try to fix the puzzle and make a full image and there is the unavoidable outcome that we can not make heads or tail about God’s image.

Milton continues to stress the distinction between the logic of God and the logic of Divinity and the relevance of not commanding this imperfections onto the notion of God in these passages in the Christian Doctrine: “When we speak of knowing God, it must be understood with reference to the imperfect comprehension of man; for to know God as he is really is, far transcends the powers of man’s thoughts much more of his perception. God therefore has made as full a revelation of himself as our minds can conceive or the weakness of our nature bear”. (Milton, John. “Christian Doctrine”, Complete Prose Works of John Milton, Ed. Hughes, Merritt. : Macmillian P, 1957).

This excerpt maintain the theory the author provided the readers of Paradise Lost with two abstemiously Gods so that readers can differentiate between the two of them and understand the contradiction.

If would have created two Gods who behaved and spoke in the same way contrariety would have been lost in the equivocal language and his purpose of supplying the readers with a precise representation of the truest God, would have crushed.

After all, a God without contradiction is not a God, without contradiction he would be just a man sitting in Heaven, all-powerful, and separated from Adam only by altitude, Milton would had been obligated to limit to the flat plane of intellect and understanding by which humanity is bound and God exceeds by his own nature.

3.2. Satan as the protagonist

Satan created by in Paradise Lost is one of the most complex and dynamic character in the history of literature. Having a sick desire for vengeance and destruction, He is also the most likeable character in the poem, maybe the most likeable is too much but even so every reader have sympathize with him in some point in the poem, if not throughout the whole epic. Critics and also the reader of the poem wondering on whose side was : Satan’s or God’s, but the most asked question which preoccupied most scholars is: Can Satan be define as the hero of the epic poem? The question emerge, on one hand from religious and moral values and on the other hand, to a rigorous dedication to literary interpretation. In the Bible or in the mythical text Satan is seen an opponent figure, as the evil who always attempts to sabotage the protagonist. In Paradise Lost he is seen as demeaned. He looks like he has no compensatory qualities and is portrayed as a apathetic figure. In the epic, Milton Plays with this pressure that the character of Satan in Paradise Lost is inciting as such forcing the reader to think that Satan may be actually the hero of the poem or a character that must be seen in a complex light.

Throughout the poem the reader could identify with Satan’s desires and also with His disappointments. introduces a God in Paradise Lost who is angry and cold, this making Satan more interesting and heroic, a figure readers could identify with. Applying Aristotle’s notion of hamartia when reading Paradise Lost it seems right to construe that Satan who was a good person but fell from grace is a hero, after all. (Baxter, John, and Patrick Atherton, eds. Aristotle’s Poetics. : McGill-Queen’s  University Press, 1997). What makes the discussion about Satan as being the protagonist so controversial is the fact that people are used to another type of hero, it is usually a man who is basically good and fights against evil, always winning. Though, in the epic this hero prototype is challenged entirely, by Satan’s character.

All the characters in the poem are complex, including contrasting dualities. Remarkable in Paradise Lost is that not even God could be classified as a hero according to the traditional definition. The readers may see him as anti-heroic and fear him rather than notice him in the religious way a God should be seen. The God Milton created is not a friendly one. He is a tyrant and a powerful ruler who will give blessings if Adam and Eve follow his will and cursing if it is not. He does not have to give explanations to anyone, if His rules are not respected he is capable of awful bane, this happened when Satan was expelled from Heaven forever. According to the traditional definition of a hero, ’s God can not be one in Paradise Lost. Aristotle states the heroes are more complex than the classical prototype allows. They are attractive and good people, who make mistakes, enjoy kindness and prosperity but who are reticent and narrow by a character deficiency which endanger their situation and makes them force their competence, briefly heroes are humans. Aristotle’s concept of hamartia allows the readers to detect the characters’ dualities that are not displayed.

Satan has profound questions and ideas, but he becomes so easily misleader, though being reliable and tenacious in following what he believes is true make him heroic made clear in the next quote:

“The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
What matter where, if I be still the same..” (Book I, 256-258)

Satan is brave enough to challenge God, he wishes to be different converted by the true nature of God as by its own. Satan did not intend to be delusive, hateful or even defiant when he challenged God, even though these aspects appear later when God sends Him in permanent exile. On the opposite, he emerge conversation as a way of knowing himself and the world around him. Identifying with ’s Satan and share feeling with it, he can be noticed as a heroic figure and he articulates what the reader think but is too afraid to say it. Another matter in consider Satan a traditional hero is that He does not achieve his purpose in the end.

The fearless of Satan can be admired by the readers as his persistence to find answers to his questions, he is acid but realizes the fact of his conditions, as he states: ““Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven” (Book I, l. 263). One thing that makes him heroic is the acknowledgment of his condition and the engagement of moving on, and a review of the events happening in Book II of Paradise Lost uncover some heroic characteristics of Satan, mostly when he is in contrast with God. As a king in hell he reaches after justice and equal rights. In Book II he convokes his fallen angels to a congregation so that everyone could say their opinions and make plans against God. Satan asks the angels:

“… and by what best way,
Whether of open Warr or covert guile,
We now debate; who can advise, may speak.” (Book II, 40-42)

After debating about a strategy and after listening the opinions of many angels, Satan require for volunteers to go on with the plan demonstrating how democratic he is, moreover, he does not force anyone to do what he whishes and when no one volunteers he decides to do it himself. When he decides it his companions are ashamed, the author makes it clear in this excerpt:

“….Towards him they bend
With awful reverence prone; and as a God
Extoll him equal to the highest in Heav'n:” (Book II, 11. 477-479)

Satan has the ability for a heroic awareness when he stops along the way to think about his decisions and his plan. He takes a break at where he “torments inwardly (Book IV, 1. 88), reflecting on what has happened so far and meditates:

“O then at last relent: is there no place
Left for Repentance, none for Pardon left?” (Book IV, 11. 79-80)

He determine based on his own happenings:

“So farewel Hope, and with Hope farewel Fear,
Farewel Remorse: all Good to me is lost;” ( Book IV, .11. 108-109)

As a real hero, Satan lives this deep existential hopelessness but he goes on, he stays loyal to his beliefs even being misguided as incompatible as he is with social principles. ’s Satan suffers a transformation, at first being good and complete like humans are in the beginning. This transformation does not reduce him as a heroic figure, if the readers are denying the traditional type of hero. If a reader accepts the idea of a hero who is a good person but has a defect or a task that is not very easy to resolve, the concept of hero can develop significantly. Satan is capable of enduring unbearable pain and misery while going on and struggle for what he believes in. By trying to entitle others he gains the readers sympathy. The reader do not necessarily have to agree with Satan’s plans to destroy Paradise in order to see him as a hero, A hero is that person who lingers opposed to odds, that is ready to dive into the depths of his inward being, no matter how terrifying the process might be. He still acts even though he knows the danger of his decisions. A real hero is that person who is willing and capable to realize his complication as human and to face the dares of life anyway.

3.3 A more complex insight of Eve’s persona

The introduction that John Milton does when presenting the character of Eve provide readers with the unusually chance to know a character totally adult and totally new to the world. Even the destiny of Eve is indefinite, this introductory quote shows the potential of future distinct selves, Eve might aid to the future glory of the male, Adam, but on the other hand by her mutiny she might cause the fall of the entire humankind and their separation from God.

“Shee as a veil down to the slender waist

Her unadorned golden tresses wore

Dishevell’d, but in wanton ringlets wav’d

As the Vine curls her tendrils, which impli’d

Subjection, but requir’d with gentle sway ,

And by her yielded, by him best reciev’d,

Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,

And sweet reluctant amorous delay.” (Book IV. 304-311)

Milton points out through his stylistic selections, in lines 304-311 in Book IV of Paradise lost, by selecting contrasting words in his engagement of the run-out sentence, that Eve has the ability to grow in more than one way, and by clearly stating that Eve could have become something totally different than what she has become removes any doubt that humanity was fated to fall.

At a superficial sight this introductory passage of Eve makes obvious that nothing is clear. Eve is an example of perfection and new innocence, her hair is depicted as “wanton” (Book IV.306). Her hair is messy, however it signifies her obedience. At first glance, the reader is tempted to question ’s skills as a poet by seeing this inappropriate description. Christopher Ricks highlights in his “’s Grand Style”, the criticism of other scholars’. The problem they discuss stands in the same objection that he is inconsistent, still he debates that the one who “notices the contradictions…but fails to see how they are part of ’s purpose” (“Milton’s Grand Style” : Oxford U.P. 1963. Print). Stanley Fish considers that “Paradise Lost” is a “dialectical experience” (Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost. 2nd ed. Harvard U.P.:

, 1998. Print), involving that the reader only understands the relationship and the differences they have. On the topic of Eve’s introduction in Book IV, probably the best way to uncase the meaning of is to suppose that she puts his gainsaying on purpose.

The fragment in Book IV introducing Eve Talk about one specific physical aspect: Eve; hair and the scholar Catherine Belsey thinks that the hair of women to helps “both a glory and a snare” (John Milton: Language, Gender, Power.” : Basil Blackwell, 1988. Print.), and the lines from Book IV highlights these contradictory aspects. tell us that Eve’s wild, “wanton”, hair involve curiously “subjection” and “submission” (Book IV .306, 308, 310). But how come Eve’s hair describes submission? Stanley Fish asserts in his “Surprised by Sin”: ““the scarlet woman of so many sermons and moral harangues”, and the question is why a description of a pure figure uses words so reminiscent of.. Another reason for these dissimilarities is that Eve has many possible selves and further on fragments show which one has chosen.

Eve’s curls can implicate frivolity or they implicate conformity to her part as Adam’s subject, this depending on the fact that she accepts or she does not accept the role God has given her. helps the readers, later in the epic, when he does not hold back to use the description of Eve’s hair, to know when se become wild than tame. Her hair is “discompose’d” after hearing Satan’s whisper in her ear (Book V, 10), and in her immoral state before she humiliate before Adam, the “tresses” are all “disordere’d”, (Book X, 911). Eve’s hair reverberates her decision when she chooses levity in stead of subjection.

The comparison of the vine brings up more implication because the decorative and climbing plant is evoking opposed images. A gardener cherishes a plant like the ivy or grapevine because of it ability to cling and climb its surroundings and gives beauty to its host. The function of the host plant is to help the vine reach full potential, at the same time having problems in reaching sunlight if it has not something to climb on. It is exactly what happens to Adam, he is Eve’s means to approach God, “and her beauty enhances his life by giving him great joy” (Book IX, 490-94). So, Eve chooses Adam to cling to permitting her to remain connected to God, this decision would help her to keep away from troubles of roving and trying to live without his help. The vine, if it is not checked, it can become a parasite, suffocating the host, gaining control over it, same happens to Adam saying that her beauty suffocate his ability to think wisely, and Eve distanced Adam from God by making him eat the apple and fall with her.

“ and unmov’d, here onely weake
Against the charm of Beauties powerful glance.
Or Nature faild in mee, and left some part
Not proof enough such Object to sustain,
Or from my side subducting, took perhaps…” (Book VIII, 532-36)

In exploring the comparison of Eve’s hair as a veil, the functions of the veil should be taken in consideration. At a wedding, the veil symbol come from property transfer as the critic Catherine Beley shoes in her: “John Milton: Language. Gender, Power” (69), the nuns say that the veil and all about coverings represents modesty, but also the veil can twist what you see without a cover, it may hide the truth, so Eve’s hair seen as a veil represents her modesty or it can represent her over general reasoning, that depending on how Eve develops.

Eve’s modesty is strongly relates to her pride. In one of ’s seemingly-contradictory lines he states that Eve has “modest pride” (Book IV, 310). This is best acknowledged in the context as of Eve’s hair as a veil, her beauty is dangerous, and because she is so beautiful she is also charming and could swerve the men, angels and Devil, too.

“And from about her shot Darts of desire
Into all Eyes to wish her still in sight.” (Book VIII, 62-63).

If Eve would have chosen modesty, welcome the holy symbol of the veil maybe she would have been more resistant to Satan’s techniques to convince her in Book IX. Satan flatters Eve by telling her that she does not need a veil and nominates her as the one that “shouldst be seen” exposed, (Book IX, 539-42, 46).

The word “pride” can represent many things in Book IV because it is similar with a lot of words, for Eve it is neither good nor bad until it evolves. Pride can develop in two ways, the inborn pride can flourish into a good knowledge of one’s person place in the world, or it can become immoral vanity and presumption. If we want to know if Eve evolved into arrogant or into modest pride, his place in the world has to be clear. Trying to highlight Eve’s purpose, uses a form of the word “yield” twice, which is a repetition that should not be ignored.

In Book IX she believes herself as being wiser than Adam and even God. Satan quickly manages to convince Eve that she looks like a deity (Book IX, 547), Making Eve culpable of the most conceited idea a human being can posses and in the end instead of take her part as being inferior to Adam, she shows her egotistic pride by telling that she wants to be render[ed] more equal” to Adam. (Book IX, 823).

Down to here, this study has been about word and their meaning in the poetic structure of , to gain a better understanding of the potential of Eve, the poetic structure of must be concede, as well. ’s sentence structure is rather difficult; the relation between verb and subject is unusual. For example, the lines introducing her, “Eve” and “wore” are the subject and the verb of the sentence but there are twelve words between them, asserts that putting the verb late in the sentence serves for rhetorical purposes.

Through the epic, Eve’s description from the beginning and her future development leads to the same conclusion. It is hard to know is she was made to fall, after seeing the ways in which Milton describes her, she could have become something else than she is now. Following one path would have made her obedient, submissive and modest and instead she evolves into a manipulative and presumptive person, making her an easy pray for Satan.

4. ’s style in Lost

4.1. Miltonic style

’s style was first criticized by T. S. Elliot. He boasted John Milton in "A Note on the Verse of John Milton" (Martz 12-18), saying : "[W]hat he could do well he did better than anyone else has ever done." ; "Milton's poetry could only be an influence for the worse, upon any poet whatever". The universal shove of the criticism of Elliot is that Milton’s deliberately embraced grand style is so both so hard to achieve and so complex to understand that leads to a deterioration in the poetic style of those who has an impact on and it can not encounter its demands. Elliot first example is from Book V as Satan talk to his followers concerning the Son:

“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 anointed, for whom all this haste
Of midnight march, and hurried meeting here,
This only to consult how we may best
With what may be devis'd of honors new
Receive him coming to receive from us

Knee-tribute yet unpaid, prostration vile,
Too much to one, but double how endur'd,
To one and to his image now proclaim'd?” (Book V, 772-784).

Can not be denied that the point of Satan in the passage is obscure and that the readers can be confused and do not realize a question is being asked until they see the question mark at the end of the line. The meaning can be confusing, but is difficult to call this writing good not to mention great. Many readers, from exploited high critics to skilled critics took the criticism of Elliot to heart. Many times, they fail to notice the fact that Elliot was not telling was a bad poet, but he hinted that the grand style could cause bad poetry, especially the ones who used the style of as the model of great English poetry.

Defenders of appeared very quickly to respond to Elliot, like C. S. Lewis who writes “A Preface to Paradise Lost” and also Christopher Ricks who writes “’s Grand Style”, both of them mounded bouncing defenses of ’s style. Lewis especially maintained that John Milton needed this peculiar style for his “secondary epic”, the word “epic” implied to be read than the “primary epic”, which was introduced orally in an official setting and meant to be heard. The basic point of Lewis was that the grand style giving the formality of setting that the secondary epic lost, by the essence of it’s composition.

Both writers, Ricks and Lewis, provided numerous contra examples to prove that the writing style of was sublime. It is a fact that no other writer could manipulate language like , beside Shakespeare. ’s famous portrayalof Mulciber falling raises:

“Sheer o're the Chrystal Battlements: from Morn
To Noon he fell, from Noon to dewy Eve,
A Summers day; and with the setting Sun
Dropt from the Zenith like a falling Star…” (Book I, 742-745)

Or think about the enthusiasm, bitterness and hopefulness that replenish the last lines of the epic:

“Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and their guide.
They hand in hand, with wand'ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.” (Book XII, 645-650)

The first feature the readers observe are the numerous allusions and hints and most of them seem unclear, along with the mysterious and obsolete vocabulary. In the first lines of the poem the allusions to "Oreb" (7), "That Shepherd" (8), "chosen seed" (8), "Siloa's Brook" (10), and "Aonian Mount" (15) occur. The scope of these allusions is that the reader expands his understanding through comparison. Some readers will understand some of these allusions and others will understand all of them. The question is that realizes his effect or it’s the opposite. Moreover, words like "Adamantine" (48), "durst" (49), "Compeer" (127), "Sovran" (246) and others, more or less colloquial, add a remarkable tone to the epic poem.

Apart from references and vocabulary also uses Latin word and constructions. The English language is a syntactical one using words organization to make sense. Latin is the opposite, being an inflected language in which words final indicates the function they have in a sentence, so making the order of the words less important. For example the Latin verbs stand at the end of the sentence or the direct object may forego the subject. In Paradise Lost seem intentionally to struggle for atypical English syntactical models. He mostly write in complicated sentences, not in simple ones’. To a certain extent, this type of reverse, at times complex, syntax is necessary for the poetics to keep the correct meter, but sometimes the strange syntax seem to be Milton’s purpose. In this passage from the poem is shown the evasive meaning of the words because of the Latin syntax:

“First found me, and with soft oppression seis'd
My droused sense, untroubl'd, though I thought
I then was passing to my former state
Insensible, and forthwith to dissolve: …” (Book VIII, 288-291)

The critics who admire the grand style of Milton motivate that in passages like this the exact meaning does not matter that much than the impressionistic effect, that the images of doze off, insensibility and dissolution happening to display the collapse of a conscious mind, in this case the mind of Adam, as God constructs a dream hallucination for him. Unquestionably, this quote is not bad writing, even though it is hard to understand it literary. The readers understand what Adam is facing, still in other hands than ’s, less gifted, the writings like this become nonsense.

A part from ’s style is the extended simile. Using the simile take us to Homer with the “Iliad” and “Odyssey”, but the similes uses are more detailed. One of ’s similes can develop into the subject of a book. The similes of lead a range from those that seem constrained (he compare the arrival of Satan in with the smell of fish [Book IV, 166]) and of those which are perfect ( is resembled to a field where Proserpine picked flowers [Book IV, 268]). A censorious scan of the similes uncover insights of unexpected meaning about the characters and objects being compared. Again, realizes his purpose with his highly implicated vocabulary and similes.

More than similes, tracks some images in the epic poem. One of the most ostensible is the one with the labyrinth. Throughout the poem are mentioned over and over mazes, like Eve’s curls which are tangled, and finally the snake challenging Eve on a "Circular base of rising folds, that tow'r'd / Fold above fold a surging maze" (Book IX, 498-499). runs many images in the poem, a sort of “tour de force” of creative power and structure. Every single image unlocks new methods of understanding the ideas of John Milton.

Certainly, specific features of ’s style could be introduced at great extent, but these are enough. He tried to write in a “grand style” . The technique assumed the form of a lot of allusions and references, elaborate vocabulary, complex grammatical constructions and enlarged images and similes.

John Milton created a factitious style that not many writers could have hoped ti imitate, even though a lots of them tried. He’s style unique, it can not be imitated, and the writers who tried that provided the original with a bag name, has it’s on style, for sure, the items in it can be judge, but concerning the achievement in Paradise Lost, it is hard to perceive how such an epic could be written in any other style.

4.2 Epic language in Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost is considered the greatest accomplishment in the English epic literature and it tries to do the impossible, to supply an account of the book of Genesis through the average of epic, a genre describing, between other things, the religious practices and theological imperatives of the Ancient Greek and Romans. As we know that ’s classic education about the ancient languages and later artistry of classic genres remains and he makes use of it. Nothing perhaps arise as large as ’s question about political and religious associations in in the tempestuous seventeen century, where problems of the Church, State, were in the front line of religious and political debate. Have traditionally been regarded as separate areas of investigation the questions surrounding ’s classicism, theory and politics. In Paradise Lost, ’s masterpiece, these discussions emerge together in the circumstances he chooses, and the history about its receptions in the antique world especially in the evolution of Greek mind. The Neoplatonist thinker Hermias noticed “mythology is a kind of theology”, admitting the part of stories in reverberating the history of religious thinking in the Greek world, from homer to Hesiod until the Christian period. (Hermias, “In Phaedrum”, 1989, 31)

Simultaneously, questions toward a particularly Christian theology cannot turn a blind eye in discussing the study of a poet who unambiguously claimed celestial inspiration in his commitment to “justify the ways of God to man” (Book I, 26). ’s story of nightly visitations of the Holy Spirit may seem amusing to the reader now-a-days, a self-elevation best left away from serious Miltonic criticism and textual review. The effort to stay away from these questions has resulted in endeavors to read the poem as a political allegory by a poet who, by the Restoration, has establish an uncomfortable peace in “Horatian” retirement from the politics of the royal court.(Radzinowicz, 1987, 204-230). In their seeking for epic allegory, modern critics of are not so dissimilar from the early commentators (Lamberton, “Quaest. Hom.” 1989, 32) Homer has, as they assert that Milton, a sustainer of Oliver Cromwell, is making a hided political assertion beneath the theological imperatives of his epic schedule.(Lewalski, “The life of John Milton: A Critical Biography”, 2003, 460 and Radzinowicz , “The politics of Paradise Lost”, 1987, 205-6).

In ’s context, post-Reformation, the epic divinity of Paradise Lost deliver a powerful contrast of that of Dante’s epic reckon of the hero’s “spiritual pilgrimage” with its poetic referring to Roman Catholic hell, inferno and heaven making a humanized view dyed by the experience of the man. (Lewis, “Preface to Paradise Lost”, 1944, 128). Asserting a personal relation with divinity, situates himself among the ancient poets, for whom the divine inspiration was extremely important for formulating protocol to begin his act of composition.

To the beginner reader the poem may seem overwhelming because of the complexity and wealth, omits to look at the poem extreme concern of the tradition; all we can do for an epic like Paradise Lost pulls at the same time a large number of conventions – Biblical, theological, epic, hexameral, dramatic, historical – is to determine a scholar climate or atmosphere.

is writing within a language scheme so temporally build as English, controlling language to suggest certain ideas of time in his poem. He does that clearly, as with particular large types of imagery connected with time, as the system of being, the cosmic dance, the scheme of correspondence, the temporary and diurnal revolution and the scene of cosmic chaos after the Fall; and of course by more insidious linguistic forms implying verb tenses, figures of speech, key word and motifs which are being applied in considerably distinct ways before and after the Fall. Because of this it can be asserted that it is partly for the difference between pre- and post- lapsarian time that language can reach in Paradise Lost a major channel of poetic irony. For example God’s speech patterns are differentiate by a simplicity, almost incantatory iteration of certain words, with detached tone and an inclination to escape figurative poetic language an using a more theological and Scriptural one. It is noticed an extreme constriction, like it were a drawing from human temporal language. Milton has a tendency to use word of theological or moral nature, the speech is full of ancipital terms: “fruit”, “moral”, “taste”, “blind”, “fall”, “light”, “seed”, “grace”, “inspire”, “root”, “head”, “illumine”, “decree”, “elect”, “ordain” – these words being use only in moral and conceptual sense, different from the angles, Adam or the narrator used them.

One of the features that demonstrate that Paradise Lost is a Christian epic is the language the characters are using: as God, unlike the other participants on the epic, uses language in a typological way. He is conscious and makes use of it this ethic involvement of word which Adam and Eve use it in an explicit sense. These words are metaphors, themselves which gave a double meaning: many times a characteristic of the unfallen Garden as observer of the large number of clerical figures God is using and the later moral implications in the following Scriptural and informative tradition. Adam and Eve speak the language of the creatures, unconscious of the moral implications.

Above all characters in the poem, Satan is the inventor of false observation and false language. The language he and his rebel army use is a decayed variant of unfallen angelic perception. So, his consequent use of language in an purely literary style point both mocks and denies God’s theologically usage.

The language of humans begins with Adam’s story still in the Garden of Eden, before he ate the apple and before he loses his immortality. “His pioneering work in the field of linguistics amounts to a second creation: God has created the Earth and Adam has festooned it with a web of words”. (Jacobs, “Naming-Day in Eden”, 1958, 2). The parts of the poem which show the unfallen Eden are full of wonder and savage in “inexperienct tought” as Adam “first of men” says to Eve “first of women [who]….thus moving speech/ Turn’d all ear…(Book IV, 408-410).

Adam is the creator of language and umpire of tastes in the on Earth as God is in the Heaven Paradise. He symbolically establish this comparison by naming the birds and the beasts “the sportful Herd/ Of those fourfooted kinds (Book IV, 396-397). By giving the animals a name, Adam applied a priori fundamentals not entirely coming from his pastoral experience. The names he picked for the inferior creatures asserts the truth because he is the master over the lower creatures on the scale of existence and because of his instinctive understanding of their natures: “thou thir Natures know’st and gav’st them Names/ Needless to thee repeated”, says Raphael to Adam.(Book VII, 493-494).

English literature is grateful to Milton for providing a remarkable and admiring piece of literature; Milton following the classic tradition and using Christian elements correspond to his purpose to justify the way of God, He converted the classical secular epic into a theological, universal and also Christian one. The epic supports a universal view on Christianity and of man’s life; the subject of the epic is ancient, solemn and superior the any other epic.

Conclusion

John Milton’s great poem, Paradise Lost, was written in a moment of sudden change in the occidental world. , as a Puritan, sticked to the traditional Christian beliefs throughout the epic poem, but he also mixed marks of the changing modern period with antique epic style to create a masterpiece. The subject the he chose is the fall of man, from Genesis, a very captivating and popular story to debate and to retell at the same time. He spent his entire life thinking about writing a great and fascinating epic, and he spend almost twenty years and almost as many years of study and travel to create a timeless classic. The favorable outcome of his poem stands in the fact that he skillfully merged classic epic tradition with powerfully maintained Puritan Christian beliefs.

Paradise Lost has all the features of an epic and it is a Christian one because chose the greatest subject of all with cosmic importance, the fall of man, the way the world was created. He retold the story of Adam and Eve, how they were tempted by Satan who took advantage of their weakness for each other, in such an artistic way.

The steadiness with which often accommodates to principles of epic structure makes his casual variations on the epic traditions all the more surprising by contrast. The most important deviations from epic decorum – the denial of a martial theme and the selection of an argument that highlights the hero’s wrongdoing and defeat instead of commemorating his virtues and victories – are paradoxically constrained by the worry for the ethical and religious decorum of the epic genre. Altogether, has maintained the formal motifs and devices of the heroic poem but he has invested them with Christian significance.

In my work on Paradise Lost, I tried to emphasize the way used the traditional elements of an epic, like natural and supernatural settings, a hero that represents a culture, mixing Classical tradition with Christian beliefs. also uses the alternation between narration, dialogue and description. We cans see that in the conversations between Satan and the other fallen angels, obeying him, or in the ones between Adam and Eve.

In my opinion, the most interesting aspect of the poem, and one beneficial for Christians to observe, is that Adam and Eve have personalities. attaches several books about their pure life in the Garden of Eden before the Fall, and the readers can feel a bit their emotions: temptation, pleasure, lust.

Paradise Lost is a precious literary work, particularly a Christian one, as it speaks about the age-old battle between good and evil, it questions if free will exists or not for the humans created by God to live in . Even though the poem is challenging and a bit difficult to read, as Milton intended to be, the ones who read it have created themselves another perspective about the Christian classic story about the great Fall of man.

But what makes Paradise Lost a Christian epic? Because the story about the Fall of man was already known. He certainly elaborated and expanded this story, for example Satan is presented in a subtler way than his general representations, but the main points of the story were taken from the Bible, Christian scriptures and church traditions. It is a poem written in effusive, majestic verse with a somber tone. It is a long poem and approaches the collective imagination of his culture – the recognition of Christians with their own foundation myths depicted in the Hebrew Scriptures. The 17th century Christian finds himself able to understand through the facts contained in Paradise Lost; it asserts the reasons behind the contemporary morality and retells the history so that the readers feel like they were part of the events that happened long time ago, this is part of what makes ’s poem a Christian epic.

Bibliography

Baxter, John and Atherton Patrick eds. “Aristotel’s Poetics”. : McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997

Belsey, Catherine. John Milton: Language, Gender, Power.” : Basil Blackwell, 1988. Print.

Bennett, Joan S. “God, Satan and King Charles: ’s Royal Portraits” Publications of the Modern Language Association 92.3 (1977): 441-457.

, Millicent. "The Fallacy of the Fall in Lost." PMLA 68.4 (1953): 863-883. Print

Bloom, Harold. “Bloom’s Modern Critical Views – John Milton”, Chelsea House Publishers, 2004

Clarck, Ira, “A problem of knowing Paradise in ”, Milton Studies 27, 1991

Carnes, Valerie, “Time and Language in Paradise Lost”, Dec. 1970, The Press

Danielson, Dennis Richard. “’s good God”: a study in literacy theodicy. : Press, 1982.

Dobranski, Stephen B. and Rumrich John P. “ and Heresy”, , Press, 1998

Entzminger, L. Robert, “Epistemology and the Tutelary Word in Paradise Lost”, Studies 27, 1977

Elliot, T. S. “A note on the verse of John Milton”, Martz, 1936

Empson, William. “’s God”. : Chatto and Windus, 1965. Print

Fish, . “How Works. ”: Harvard U.P. 2001. Print.

Fish, . “Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Lost”. 2nd ed. Harvard U.P.: , 1998. Print

Frye, Roland Mushat. God, man and Satan; patterns of Christian thought and life in Paradise Lost, Pilgri’s progress and the great theologians. Princeton: Press, 1960

Frye, Northrop. "Children of God and Nature." The Return to : Five Essays on 's Epics. By Northrop Frye. : U of Press, 1965. N. pag. Print.

Frye, Northrop. "The Garden Within." The Return of : Five Essays on 's Epics. By Northrop Frye. : U of Press, 1965. 60-72, 98-103. Print.

Grossman, Marshal, “Milton’s Dialectical Visions”, Modern Philosophy 1984, University Chicago Press

Gross, Kenneth, “Satan and the Romantic Satan: A notebook”, re-membering : Essays on Texts and Traditions, :, 1987

Herminas, “In Phaedrum”, cited in Lamberton, 1989

Lieb, Michael, “Paradise Lost and the Myth of Prohibition”, Studies 7, 1975

Lewis, C. S. “A Preface to Paradise Lost”, , 1961, Press

Lewalski, Barbara. “The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography”, , Mass: Blackwell 2000

Milton, John. “Christian Doctrine” Complete Prose Works of John Milton, Ed. Hughes, Merritt. : Macmillian P, 1957.

Milton, John. “ Los”t. Ed. Teskey, Gordon. : Norton, 2005

McColley, Diane. "Shapes of Things Divine: Eve and Myth in Lost." The Sixteenth Century Journal 9.4 (1978): 46-55. Print.

Revard, Stella Pruce. “The War in Heaven: Lost and the Tradition of Satan’s Rebellion”. : Cornell UP, 1980

Revard, Stella P. "Eve and the Doctrine of Responsibility in Lost." PMLA 88.1 (1973): 69-78. Print.

Ricks, Christopher. “’s Grand Style”. : U.P. 1963. Print.

Rogus, John. “The Matter of revolution”, 1998, Cornell University Press

Radzinowicz, Mary Ann. “The Politics of Paradise Lost” in Kevin Sharpe and Stephan Zwicker, eds. “Politics of Discourse, The Literature and History of the Seventeen Century ”, : Press,1987

Rumrich, John P. “ Unbound – Controversy and Reinterpretation”, Press, 1996

Schwartz, M. "'Yet Once More': Re-Creation, Repetition, and Return ." Remembering and Repeating: Biblical Creation in Lost. : UP, 1988. 94-103. Print.

Stein, Arnold . Answerable Style: “Essays on Lost”. : Press, 1953

Waldock, A. J.A. "The Fall (II)." Lost and Its Critics. : Peter Smith, 1959. 17-19, 20-21, 22-24, 61-64, 75-79, 81-83. Print.

Bibliography

Baxter, John and Atherton Patrick eds. “Aristotel’s Poetics”. : McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997

Belsey, Catherine. John Milton: Language, Gender, Power.” : Basil Blackwell, 1988. Print.

Bennett, Joan S. “God, Satan and King Charles: ’s Royal Portraits” Publications of the Modern Language Association 92.3 (1977): 441-457.

, Millicent. "The Fallacy of the Fall in Lost." PMLA 68.4 (1953): 863-883. Print

Bloom, Harold. “Bloom’s Modern Critical Views – John Milton”, Chelsea House Publishers, 2004

Clarck, Ira, “A problem of knowing Paradise in ”, Milton Studies 27, 1991

Carnes, Valerie, “Time and Language in Paradise Lost”, Dec. 1970, The Press

Danielson, Dennis Richard. “’s good God”: a study in literacy theodicy. : Press, 1982.

Dobranski, Stephen B. and Rumrich John P. “ and Heresy”, , Press, 1998

Entzminger, L. Robert, “Epistemology and the Tutelary Word in Paradise Lost”, Studies 27, 1977

Elliot, T. S. “A note on the verse of John Milton”, Martz, 1936

Empson, William. “’s God”. : Chatto and Windus, 1965. Print

Fish, . “How Works. ”: Harvard U.P. 2001. Print.

Fish, . “Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Lost”. 2nd ed. Harvard U.P.: , 1998. Print

Frye, Roland Mushat. God, man and Satan; patterns of Christian thought and life in Paradise Lost, Pilgri’s progress and the great theologians. Princeton: Press, 1960

Frye, Northrop. "Children of God and Nature." The Return to : Five Essays on 's Epics. By Northrop Frye. : U of Press, 1965. N. pag. Print.

Frye, Northrop. "The Garden Within." The Return of : Five Essays on 's Epics. By Northrop Frye. : U of Press, 1965. 60-72, 98-103. Print.

Grossman, Marshal, “Milton’s Dialectical Visions”, Modern Philosophy 1984, University Chicago Press

Gross, Kenneth, “Satan and the Romantic Satan: A notebook”, re-membering : Essays on Texts and Traditions, :, 1987

Herminas, “In Phaedrum”, cited in Lamberton, 1989

Lieb, Michael, “Paradise Lost and the Myth of Prohibition”, Studies 7, 1975

Lewis, C. S. “A Preface to Paradise Lost”, , 1961, Press

Lewalski, Barbara. “The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography”, , Mass: Blackwell 2000

Milton, John. “Christian Doctrine” Complete Prose Works of John Milton, Ed. Hughes, Merritt. : Macmillian P, 1957.

Milton, John. “ Los”t. Ed. Teskey, Gordon. : Norton, 2005

McColley, Diane. "Shapes of Things Divine: Eve and Myth in Lost." The Sixteenth Century Journal 9.4 (1978): 46-55. Print.

Revard, Stella Pruce. “The War in Heaven: Lost and the Tradition of Satan’s Rebellion”. : Cornell UP, 1980

Revard, Stella P. "Eve and the Doctrine of Responsibility in Lost." PMLA 88.1 (1973): 69-78. Print.

Ricks, Christopher. “’s Grand Style”. : U.P. 1963. Print.

Rogus, John. “The Matter of revolution”, 1998, Cornell University Press

Radzinowicz, Mary Ann. “The Politics of Paradise Lost” in Kevin Sharpe and Stephan Zwicker, eds. “Politics of Discourse, The Literature and History of the Seventeen Century ”, : Press,1987

Rumrich, John P. “ Unbound – Controversy and Reinterpretation”, Press, 1996

Schwartz, M. "'Yet Once More': Re-Creation, Repetition, and Return ." Remembering and Repeating: Biblical Creation in Lost. : UP, 1988. 94-103. Print.

Stein, Arnold . Answerable Style: “Essays on Lost”. : Press, 1953

Waldock, A. J.A. "The Fall (II)." Lost and Its Critics. : Peter Smith, 1959. 17-19, 20-21, 22-24, 61-64, 75-79, 81-83. Print.