- Some
final observations on Paradise Lost
- What
happens?--Satan and Eve, tragic hero-villains, exercise their freedom to rebel
against established authority and order they view as tyranny--asserting individualistic
self-assertion and a hunger for knowledge and power which is briefly rewarded.
- They
are then punished with just the opposite of what they wanted. Eve is subordinated
to Adam, Satan is humiliated, the harmony of the world is destroyed and they must
pay in pain. Difference--Adam and Eve repent, Satan doesnt.
- Moral
of the story: this is the cost of rebellion
- The
moral of the story: "Henceforth I learn, that to obey is best/And love with fear
the only God...with good/Still overcoming evil, and by small/Accomplishing great
things..." XII.561
- Michael
says the Fall lost humanity true liberty and therefore tyrants arise who take
outward political liberty: "God in Judgment just/Subjects him from without to
violent Lords/Who oft as undeservedly enthrall/His outward freedom: Tyranny must
be,Though to the Tyrant thereby no excuse." 92
- Overthrowing
tyranny here is implicitly condemned--repudiating Milton's earlier revolutionary
apology for regicide.
- Argument
for acceptance of rule and human limitation of possibility--will lead to felix
culpa, paradise within
- What's
it mean to have lost paradise
- The
innocent harmony of a perfect beginning--a stable rule in which pain, conflict
and confusion dont exist--and only love, trust and obedience to the higher authority
is required
- The
discovery that that harmony in fact is unstable and contains built-in contradictions
and tensions and problems
- The
thrill of rebellion and self-assertion in the hope that a better world can be
created by human-beings themselves--that subordination to the higher power is
not necessary
- Both
Brave old world and Brave new world are not possible, but knowledge of good and
evil remains
- Critique
of Renaissance and early modern aspiration--time of overthrow of traditional church--Reformation--and
state--the Monarchy--in hopes of making something better.
- But
how does that aspiration appear to us? To Milton? Who is Milton? --ambivalence
about aspiration and rebellion and overthrow
- Final
lines of poem--interpret and relate to the beginning of the "Enlightenment"--end
of childhood of human race.