bJohn Milton and Paradise Lost

Class 5

Student’s Number 10157136

Name 黄希茜

Abstract: This passage mainly talk about the excellent poet John Milton and the selection of his masterpiece“Paradise Lost”. Concisely analyzed the features and the influence of Milton’s poems which are concluded by appreciated this specific section of “Paradise Lost”.

During the period of British bourgeois revolution, there were many distinguished poets, writers or artists appeared. John Milton is the most typical one as a poet. He is the greatest English poet after Shakespeare. And as a firm revolutionary, he had written a lot of works to motivate the revolution. In order to defended republic, he exerted his utmost effort to written a lager number of works from day to night which caused he blind at last. Even so, he decided to go on his work. Under the bad revolution situation, he accomplished three masterpieces with the help of his daughters and friends, “Paradise lost” is one of these three, and the others are “Paradise Regained” and “Samson Agonistes”.

“Paradise lost” mainly describe two stories, one is Fallen Angel Satan resist God, another is Adam and Eva were the driven out of the Eden because they didn’t resist the temptation by Satan then ate the fruit of the Forbidden Tree. I would like to discuss about one part of epic which represent Satan’s angry and faith to defeat God after he failed the war between he and God.

This selection primarily tell us how Satan to encourage his soldiers and warriors after the fiasco. “Paradise lost” belongs to the blank verse, and the whole section is pentameter. It has no rhyme, but the rhythm still exists. Every line has ten syllables, and then we can read cadence, harmony and rhythm from these lines. Milton is especially a great master of blank verse. Otherwise, there are a lot of powerful and vivid languages in this section. Some passive words, such as “immortal, wrath, extort”

expressed the impudence and unfeeling of God. Some positive words, such as “unconquerable, grace, empyreal” described the strength and courageous of Satan. It’s obviously represent author’s feeling on these two figures. Satan is expressed to be a fallen hero. He led on his followings to pursuit freedom and the real world without any fear to God. He is the rebel who dares to resist the authoritative God. While God was showed to be a tyrant who controlled everything and prohibited other creatures to own their independent minds which block their way to freedom. Readers obtain those views from the language of the section.

Anther feature of the poem is the grand Latinized style. Some of the lines are not quiet simple to understand because the special sentences structure. For example, the 110th line “that glory never shall his wrath or might extort from me”, actually it’s hard to figure out the meaning of this sentence immediately, but after analyzed the subject、object and predicate, this sentence can be simplified to “his wrath or might never extort the glory from me.” Then, it’s much easier than before.

For the characters, not only in the section, but also in the whole poem, Satan is the most vivid figure who has the rebel spirit. He opposed God firmly and never gave up his determination even in a loser’s situation. In the section, he encouraged and motivated his companions to keep fighting. This is a lively and powerful character of bourgeois revolution warrior. From him, readers catch a glance on the fighting spirit and the heroic spirit of those revolutionaries during that period and also can be impressed by their noble qualities to adhere to their position. Milton criticized Satan’s haughty in thought but sympathized his situation in emotion. Satan suffered the punishment from God finally which is similar to the capitalist class suffered the oppression from the feudal aristocracy. It is reasonable to say indeed that the revolutionary enthusiasm and incredible imagination of poet made the characters in this epic full of vitality especially Satan. At least, I was deeply impressed by this dramatic character “Satan”.

In addition, the purpose of John Milton to write down the long poem is the explanation of the source of sin upon human beings. He thought that human are wake-willed and yielded to temptation from outside, so they lose the Eden because of

the impulse of emotion then stepped on the wrong way. It implied that English bourgeois revolution had to suffer the fiasco result from their moral degeneration and material dissipation by the encounter of Adam and Eva.

This great epic “Paradise lost” is called the three biggest western poetries with “Homer Epic” and “The Divine Comedy”. It inherited the good tradition from the ancient Greek and Roma epic. What’s more, It emphasized that ration control emotion, also advocated the coordination between the affirmation of life from humanism and morality of Puritan. It is an indelible record of English bourgeois revolution and a remarkable art achievement of English literature. The language of “Paradise lost” is very beautiful so that it has been regarded as the poetry of the template. Its structure, expression, lots of metaphors and symbols make it covered with a kind of pagan color. After learned the selection of this masterpiece, there are many thoughts occur to my mind and I really learned a lot from it.

 

第二篇：John Milton and Paradise Lost PPT的演讲稿

Before my presentation of Paradise Lost, please allow me to ask you some questions about the Bible. How much do you know about the Garden of Eden?

First question: Satan appeared to Eve in the form of what creature? Serpent

Second: The Bible says Satan is the father of what? Father of Lies（谎言之父） Third: What happened when Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit?

They committed the first sin and are led out of the Eden.

We all know that the forbidden fruit is the apple from the Tree of Knowledge.

After eating the apple, Adam and Eve were led out of the Eden, the paradise, and thereafter they lived a life full of hardship.

Now, let’s get down to the subject, the Paradise Lost.

Paradise Lost is Milton’s masterpiece. It’s the only generally acknowledged epic in English literature since Beowulf, and a long narrative epic poem in blank verse, consisting of 12 books.

The story in the book was taken from the Old Testament of Bible, the Genesis（创世纪）. And the main characters are God/ Satan/ Adam and Eve. We will focus on the characterization of Satan and God later.

Now, let’s look at what happened in this book.

In the first part of the book, Milton tells us that because of man’s disobedience, people lose their paradise. And that’s the theme of this book – Fall of Man.

Satan and his rebellious angels discuss how to fight against God. At the same time, they hear about the creation of the earth and Satan decides to visit the new world.

Meanwhile, God foretells how Satan will bring about Man’s Fall and the Son of God decides

to sacrifice himself for the Fall of Man. Then God sends the angel Raphael to warn Adam and Eve to be wary of Satan. Raphael tells Adam about Satan’s revolt against the God and urged him not to eat the apple on the Tree of Knowledge.

However, Satan disguised himself as a serpent and succeeded in tempting Eve to eat the apple. Adam knows that Eve has eaten the apple. And he would rather die with Eve than live without her, so he eats the apple, too.

As a result, they are led out of Eden, and face a new life in a new world. And Satan and his angels would be in shape of snake forever as a punishment.

Now, the story is ended. God and Satan as the 2 main characters in this epic, what do you think of them.

Let’s look at the first image — God. God is described as the creator of the universe with unlimited power. He is always praised as a true, good and kind image. But in Paradise Lost, God is a typical image of selfish despot. On the surface, God has given human free will; in fact, he has suppressed the true freedom. Let’s back to the background of this book, it was the 17th century, the revolution and the restoration began, in that time, monarchy and parliament stand for opposite class interest. In this epic, God is the representative of an absolute monarch, or we may say the king of Britain. But Satan is portrayed as a brave hero, to stand for the Parliament.

In traditional concepts, Satan is the devil from hell. However, in Paradise Lost, he is someone in whom evil is mixed with good. He is good because he is the real hero who dares to revolt against the despot, preserving but not discouraged after the failure. He is the representative of the Parliament.

But if the God represents the despot in this book, how do you understand this sentence: to

justify the ways of God to man（向世人昭示天道的公正）. Its original meaning is that God is just, and we should obey him completely. It’s one of the purposes of this epic.

As we have mentioned, Milton was a puritan poet. As a pious Christian, he had to justify God, so he said “to justify the ways of God to man”. But under the surface, the poem is to praise the rebellion spirit against the despot.

God is just! But from the perspective of politics, he thought God is a despot and Satan is a real hero.

Now, let’s come back to John Milton. As we can see, Milton is a great literary giant since Shakespeare, and is considered as one of the most important poet in his era.

He is a great master of the blank verse, first used blank verse in non-dramatic works. In Paradise Lost, he acquires an absolute mastery of blank verse.

He is also a great stylist. He is famous for his grand style. It’s art attained by definite and rhetorical device.

But, though as a great poet, his works are rather dull reading for modern readers because of his writing style, the long and involved and sometimes seemingly interminable sentence constructions.

His works are also difficult to read because of the extreme variety of pauses. In Paradise Lost, Milton’s pauses may come almost anywhere in a line of verse.