Assignment sheet: excerpts from Paradise Lost by John Milton

 

Note:  We will analyze and discuss the events and characters depicted within Paradise Lost as any other piece of literature.  Paradise Lost is not scripture, sacred text; it is one person’s mythological, epic exploration and elaboration of a few lines from Genesis; nevertheless, it represents some of the ways millions of people have historically viewed and continue to view the events and characters depicted, and that in itself is worth understanding.

 

Purposes:

1.                  To study excerpts from Paradise Lost enhances interpretive skills by compelling students to recognize literary elements and explain a difficult text.

2.                  It also enhances students’ understanding of how many people, both past and present, view the plot and characters within. 

3.                  Furthermore, by studying it students will recognize Mary Shelley’s allusions in Frankenstein, and that makes understanding Frankenstein easier. 

4.                  Lastly, students will share and therefore reinforce their own knowledge of the content.

 

Procedures, directions, prompts, and questions for literary analysis:

 

1.                  Rather than divide Paradise Lost into separate sections, each group will instead identify and discuss the big ideas present throughout.  As we read Frankenstein, students will add to their knowledge of both texts and the relevance of Areopagitica.

 

2.                  To assist with interpreting Paradise Lost, look for the following literary elements: plot, topics and themes, symbolism, characterization, oxymoron, tone, binary oppositions, questions and answers within the text, and allusions to scripture and mythology. 

a.       Note these elements to assist the act of interpretation.  Keep a dictionary handy as well; sometimes we cannot determine a word’s meaning from context clues. Since spelling was not standardized in Milton’s time, pronouncing a word aloud may also give clues to its meaning.

b.      Begin by trying to determine the characters and the plot. Who speaks when? Where does the section begin, what happens throughout, and where does it conclude?  The “plot” may include events, thought processes, rhetorical devices, all, and more.  In other words, what occurs to whom on each page?

c.       Identify the topics and themes.  What is each page about, not in terms of what happens, but the “Big Ideas” like ambition, justice, revenge, et. al. What does the tale imply about those topics?

d.      What are some of the key symbols, binary oppositions, and allusions that contribute to the interpretation of the theme?

 

3.                  Discuss the following prompts and questions and use the strategies delineated below for help.

a.       Excerpts from Book I  

                                       i.      In the opening, what purposes does the narrator give for writing Paradise Lost?

                                     ii.      What did “The infernal Serpent” desire and do to cause “the most High” to cast him “To bottomless perdition”?

                                    iii.      What torments “The infernal Serpent?”

                                   iv.      What oxymoron’s does the narrator’s description of the “place Eternal Justice had prepared / For those Rebellious” (Milton I.70-71) employ?  What purpose do they serve?

b.      Excerpts from Books I & IV

                                       i.      Identify several characteristics of evil as Milton personifies them in Satan and cite specific lines to support the interpretation.

                                     ii.      Describe the main purpose of the speech “the lost Arch-Angel” makes to his fallen host in lines I.242-263.

                                    iii.      Why does Milton include the lines “Not Spirits, yet to heavenly Spirits bright / Little inferior; whom my thoughts pursue / With wonder, and could love, so lively shines / In them Divine resemblance, and such grace / The hand that formed them on their shape hath poured” (Milton IV. 361-65).

                                   iv.      Describe how the tone changes from the beginning of Book IV through the end of the excerpt from Book IV.

c.       Excerpts from Book IX

                                       i.      What brings Satan pleasure? Why?

                                     ii.      What are Adam and Eve arguing about?

                                    iii.      What does the “Garland wreathed for Eve” and what happens to it symbolize?

                                   iv.      Interpret what Adam means when he says, “Thus it shall befall / Him to worth in Women overtrusting / Lets her will rule; restraint she will not brook, / And left to her self, if evil thence ensue, / She first his weak indulgence will accuse” (Milton IX.1182-86).

d.      Excerpts from Book X

                                       i.      How do Adam and Eve present themselves to God when he comes to the garden?  Why?

                                     ii.      When God asks Adam to explain what happened, what does Adam do?

                                    iii.      How does God respond to Adam’s explanation?  What gender stereotypes does Milton reflect and perpetuate here and throughout the text?

                                   iv.      What does Adam believe is unjust about the judgment? 

 

4.                  Prepare to share your discussion results with the entire class.

 

Epic. An extended narrative poem recounting actions, travels, adventures, and heroic episodes and written in a high style (with ennobled diction, for example).  Characteristics of the classical epic include these:

  • The main character or protagonist is heroically larger than life, often the source and subject of legend or a national hero
  • The deeds of the hero are presented without favoritism, revealing his failings as well as his virtues
  • The action, often in battle, reveals the more-than-human strength of the heroes as they engage in acts of heroism.
  • The setting covers several nations, the whole world, or even the universe
  • The episodes, even though they may be fictional, provide an explanation for some of the circumstances or events in the history of a nation or people
  • The gods and lesser divinities play an active role in the outcome of actions
  • All of the various adventures form an organic whole, where each event relates in some way to the central theme

Typical in epics is a set of conventions (or epic machinery). Among them are these:

  • Poem begins with a statement of the theme ("Arms and the man I sing")
  • Invocation to the muse or other deity ("Sing, goddess, of the wrath of Achilles")
  • Story begins in medias res (in the middle of things)
  • Catalogs (of participants on each side, ships, sacrifices)
  • Histories and descriptions of significant items (who made a sword or shield, how it was decorated, who owned it from generation to generation)
  • Epic simile (a long simile where the image becomes an object of art in its own right as well as serving to clarify the subject).
  • Frequent use of epithets ("Aeneas the true"; "rosy-fingered Dawn"; "tall-masted ship")
  • Use of patronymics (calling son by father's name): "Anchises' son"
  • Long, formal speeches by important characters
  • Journey to the underworld
  • Use of the number three (attempts are made three times, etc.)
  • Previous episodes in the story are later recounted

Examples: Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, and Milton’s Paradise Lost