1. Paradise Lost Book IX
    1. Themes:
      1. Free will in action--analyzing moral decisions
      2. nature of temptation and testing--resistance vs. yielding
      3. love/power relations of Male and Female
      4. difficulty of distinguishing true and false arguments
      5. persuasion and manipulation, deception and self-deception,
      6. contrast and continuity between [prelapsarian]innocence and [postlapsarian]experience--especially in respect to dominance, love and sex
    2. Proem
      1. Swivel point of poem--tragic notes--tragedy, like Othello, about Fall and suffering--"pain is the note" in heaven and earth
      2. More heroic than traditional epic--"not sedulous by nature tod indite/Wars, hitherto the only Argument/heroic deemed heroic"--27
    3. Satan's soliloquy--as in Book 4
      1. Expression of mood and inner conflict
      2. "Constrained/Into a beast, and mixt with bestial slime"
      3. Pain of seeing others' joys--"only in destroying I find ease" 129--since he lost his
      4. Envy--sight of angels serving men--sees himself fallen and knows that revenge "at frist though sweet/Bitter ere long back on itself recoils" 171-2
    4. The choice to separate
      1. Eve's plan for division of labor--more efficient work by their separating 205
        1. Does she feel crowded by Adam?
        2. Is it her assigned role to suggest innovations in existing arrangements?
      2. Adam's first decision
        1. He compliments her houswifely economy, BUT there's no need for more efficiency, BUT if she needs to be alone, BUT it’s a risky idea, given the threat of Satan
          1. he's hurt and nonplussed
        2. She catches his vacillation and acts slighted for his mistrust
        3. Adam says he'd be vulnerable too
        4. She argues for freedom--need to be tested
        5. He says its dangerous--seek not temptation--but finally lets her go freely
        6. They part hands 385
    5. Satan's come-on--her initial resistance
      1. Another tormented soliloquy seeing her; his serpentine movements
      2. His flattering come-on--first a spectacle and then flattery: Goddess among Gods
      3. She's not impressed, but curious
        1. Shows her mental acuity by marvels at his ability to speak, not his ability to reason 558
      4. His sales pitch on the fruit--first sensuous pleasure, then possession makes other animals envious, then it provides the wisdom of God, which leads her to him
      5. She's sardonic and clever, yet more curious:
        1. "Serpent thy overpraising leaves in doubt/the virtue of that fruit" 615
    6. Satan's appeal
      1. Ancient rhetorics: "as when of Old some Orator renownd/In Athens or free Rome where eloquence flourished/Since Mute" 670
        1. Milton as humanist, republican rebel and author of Aereopagitica
      2. Dont believe what you've been told--look how I've been rewarded
      3. God will "praise...your dauntless virtue"
      4. Knowledge is good, therefore God could not be just if he punished you for seeking it. If he's not just he's not God and therefore not to be feared
      5. God is forbidding you from gaining knowledge for evil motives--"to keep ye low and ignrant/His worshippers" 705
        1. This is what Satan says in Genesis 3.5, but it's later confirmed by God: "The man has become like one of us, to know good and evil, and now lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: " Genesis 3.22
      6. Death may mean death to human life and putting on divine life--714--twisting word meanings
      7. Because "Gods are first" they delude us that they have created the world. "I question it, for this fair Earth I see/Warmed by the Sun, producing every kind,/them nothing"722
      8. "Can envy dwell/in heavenly breasts?"
    7. Eve's Fall
      1. Milton's ambiguous account of her intellectual response: "in her ears the sound/Yet rung of his persuasive words, impregn'd/with Reason, to her seeming, and with Truth."736
      2. She restates Satan's arguments, even more eloquently: "what forbids he but to know/forbids us good, forbids us to be wise?/Such prohibitions bind not." 760
      3. Eve eats
        1. "Earth felt the wound"
        2. "greedily she ingorged without restraint"
        3. "nor was godhead from her thought" 790
        4. will worship the tree and Sapience and Experience
        5. then mocks God, whom she hopes never saw what happened--"Our great Forbidder, safe with all his Spies/About him 815
      4. Eve's second choice:
        1. Thinks about not telling Adam, making herself more desireable, and then more powerful than him 825
        2. Fear intrudes--maybe God did see what happened--if she dies Adam will have another Eve 828--jealousy makes her reverse and decide to share it
        3. Realizes that her "love" for him, mixed with fear, jealousy and possessiveness, not care for his welfare, is more powerful than her pride and ambition. 833
    8. Adam's Fall
      1. He waits in innocence with garland woven for her
      2. She reports enthusiastically the joys of the apple, the arguments of Satan, along with the threat that if he doesn’t join her, she may have to leave him because she's become so Godlike while he remains human 883-5
      3. He's astonished, sees her as lost, lost, but resolves to join her because he cant live without her.
      4. Like Satan and the devils, he now rationalizes the decision --God couldnt possibly punish them because that would gratify his enemy Satan-- and accepts the punishment--"Death is to me as life"954 and reaffirms his choice of her over God [opposite of Abraham]954
        1. Which way would you go given this choice?
        2. What are the benefits and losses?
      5. Her great joy and relief at his proof of love. She claims now that he has passed this test, she would gladly take on the penalty alone rather than share it with him; she would want to protect him from death.
        1. This is is not true, though not clearly false.
      6. He "Against his better knowledge, not deceived/ But fondly overcome with Female charm" 999
    9. Aftermath--fallen lovers, knowing good and evil
      1. They "swim in mirth…in lust they burn" 1015
      2. After sleep they awaken and feel "this newcomer" shame and nakedness 1052
        1. Adam feels like hiding himself, and especially "those Parts…that seem most/to shame obnoxious and unseemliest…"
      3. Full of high passions--regret, reproach and evasion
        1. ..they in mutual accusation spent/the fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning,/and of their vain contest appeard no end" 1189
      4. Compare their relationship before and after the fall
      5. How are the choices shown as free? How is free will displayed and dramatized?
  2. Book X
    1. Back to God's-eye view--comforting the heavenly host; Jesus sent to deal with situation, combining Justice and Mercy 78
      1. Calling them, Adam hides and is surly and then grudgingly comes out claiming he was ashamed of being naked, revealing what's happened, blaming Eve, who blames serpent
      2. Sentence imposed: "to thy husband's will/thine shall submit, hee over thee shall rule." How is this different from "He for god alone she for god in him"?
    2. Satan returns to hell, meeting Sin and Death on their way to taking over earth. Satan's triumph spoiled as applause turns to hisses, the fallen angels turned to serpents, the tree fruit turning to bitter ashes
    3. God foretells eventual victory over sin and death, but arranges for destructive defects in weather and other natural conditions to parallel triumph of Sin and Death
    4. Adam and Eve's drama continued.
      1. Adam's lament about the pains he brings upon future generations
      2. Longs for death to be free of suffering
      3. Goes to conviction of his sin and guilt, but reaches despair instead of contrition
      4. Eve tries to comfort and he lashes out at her 867 "Out of my sight thou Serpent" Repudiates her creation with misogynistic curses
      5. Eve cries and begs his forgiveness; takes greater guilt upon herself
      6. Adam relents and raises her up--saying he'd try to spare her before God, and reasserts her "frailty and infirmer Sex" 956
      7. She's grateful but comes up with another bad plan: dont reproduce and commit suicide 1005-6
      8. Adam approves the self-discipline in this idea but rejects the idea as more rebellion and disobedience. Adam insists on repentance and sorrow and humiliation and passive acceptance and she accedes.
        1. through correcting her, he corrects himself --his dominion now assured as it wasnt before the Fall, fulfilling the command in Genesis, she shall submit to him.
  3. Book XI
    1. Michael comes to kick them out of paradise--lamentation
    2. Eve sleeps and Michael gives Adam the prophetic view of all future human history to the Flood--stories of rebellion and punishment
  4. Book XII
    1. Future history including history of the Israelites, Christ's coming and sacrifice and resurrection, and the future history of the Church with its growth and corruptions and splits, until the last judgement when the elect shall be saved.
    2. 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
      1. Overthrowing tyranny here is implicitly condemned--repudiating Milton's earlier revolutionary apology for regicide.
    3. Adam responds to this prophecy of the ultimate positive outcome of the Fall and of tragic human history--orthodox doctrine of felix culpa/the fortunate fall
      1. O goodness infinite...That all this good of evil shall produce/and evil turn to good; more wonderful/than that by which creation first brough forth/Light out of darkness! Full of doubt I stand/Whether I should repent me now of sin/By me done and occasioned, or rejoice/Much more, that much more good thereof shall spring." 469
    4. 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..." 561
    5. Angel concurs: following this "then wilt thou not be loath/to leave this paradise, but shalt possess/A paradise within thee, happier far" 585
    6. Eve concurs and together they leave Paradise: "The World was all before them, where to choose/their place of rest, and Providence their guide/they hand in hand with wandering steps and slow/Through Eden took their solitary way." 645
      1. What's tone and significance of this ending? They have knowledge of good and evil, they've learned from experience; their relationship is thoroughly stratified, they have a job to do; they have freedom, they have each other; they are alone.