Summary
Today, in class, we discussed how Milton was blind when he wrote Paradise Lost and his daughters had to write the words down as he dictated to them. We talked about how Milton's style in Paradise Lost contained a lot of long sentences and enjambment Today's class covered three main topics, the invocation,themes, and similes. We talked about how it starts by invoking a Muse to help tell the story. The same Muse that inspired Moses on Oreb and Sinai i.e. the Holy Spirit. Milton's two themes of the poem: man's first disobedience and justfying the ways of God to man. In Book 3 God speaks to Jesus saying that he lets man commit sins because he gave them free will, saying there has to be an opposition of good and bad. With this free will, man learns how to love like God loves. Allowing man to experience this emotion sets a tone for general human relationships in an imperfect world. According to God, the free will he gave man allows them to be free to fall but sufficient to have stood. We then went on to discuss how the poem is an allegory and is a pedagogy that teaches the commandment/punishment structure of Christianity. We wrapped up the class by discussing some similes in Paradise Lost which are one of the conventions that characterize it as an epic poem. The similes we discussed in class (seen below), provide good examples of similes derived from nature and ones that stem from things like the Bible.
Word Count: 260
Passages
Book One, Lines 1-24 (Norton Edition):
"In the beginning, how the heav'ns and earth
Rose out of chaos. Or if Sion hill
Delight thee more and Siloa's brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my advent'rous song
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th'Aonian mount wihle it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
And chiefly thou, O Spirit, the dost prefer
Before all temples th'upright heart and pure
Instruct me, for thou know'st, thou from the first
Wast present and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast abyss
And mad'st it pregnant. What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support,
That to the heighth of the great argument..."
-Here, Milton claims that he wants to go beyond the greatness of th'Aonian mount, which is sacred to Muses and Apollo. By searching for somethings far greater than gods or spirits, Milton pronounces the immensity of God's power compared to any other. This exert is the first claim of Milton's desire to search for that power of God.
Book One, Line 26 (Norton Edition):
"An justify the ways of God to men"
-This short passage opens up an interesting question concerning the justification of man's sin. More importantly, however, it emphasizes the question of why does God do what He does. We discussed in class that many common views are that God dictates while man obeys and accepts. Without finding reason for God's actions, the obediance of mankind doesn't fully complete the relationship between God and man.
Book One, Lines 301-311 (Norton Edition):
"His legions, angel forms who lay entranced
Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks
In Vallombrosa where th' Etrurian shades
High overarched embow'r, or scattered sedge
Afloat when with fierce winds Orion armed
Hath vexed the Red Sea coast whose waves o'erthrew
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry
While with perfidious hatred they pursued
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore their floating carcasses
And broken chariot wheels..."
-This passage gives examples of two similes which is one of the conventions that this poem shares with other epic poems. The first simile compares the fallen angels to leaves that are lying on a molten lake. This simile stems from a comparison to nature. The second simile compares the angels to the reeds scattered on the Red sea after the Hebrews escaped from Egypt. This simile comes from the Bible.
Terms
enjambment-the running on of a thought from one line, couplet, or stanza to the next without pause.
Grace-having acces to Christ's sacrifice
invocation- the act of invoking or calling upon a deity, sprit, etc. for aid, protection, or inspiration
Pedagogy- commandment punishment structure; allegory of our lives
Comments (1)
Brian Croxall said
at 11:42 pm on Oct 23, 2009
On occasion I glance at the history of a wiki page, and I was glad to see that every member of the group contributed in some way to these notes. Some people are doing much more of the heavy lifting, however. If that doesn't sound like you, be sure that you're contributing.
On the whole these notes seem less polished than the other ones you have done to this point. For one thing, there are a number of typographical errors throughout. More importantly, the summary reads like minutes of a meeting: lots of "Then we talked about...," which isn't an ideal way to approach these things. We discussed three main things on Tuesday: the invocation, the themes, and the simile. Isolating those three topics and then spending time expanding on them (rather than reporting on every thing said or done in class) would be the better way to proceed. As far as the themes go, I think that you could have stated them more clearly.
You picked good passages, but more could have been said in all of the explanations. In particular, I was surprised that your first and third passages don't say anything about the relationship that Milton establishes between his poem and the classical tradition. It would have been fine for you to have combined the first and second and just said more in that explanation of why the first 26 lines are important.
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