Paradise Lost - Critics

PJR - BtM, ALiMoLCoRU

Professor John Rogers: Before this moment, all language is more or less ceremonial or ritualistic utterance

PJR - AR…tNVotPO…ERtQV

Professor John Rogers: Adam represents…the nervous voice of the poem’s orthodoxy…Eve represents the questioning voice

PJR - TND…StbtRotU,CAtRtNO

Professor John Rogers: This new disorderliness… seems to be the result of the unnatural, cultural attempt to restrain that natural order.

PJR - TWSLaO,NNttF

Professor John Rogers: [Eve suggesting that] there was something like an organic, natural necessity to the Fall

PJR - EIaPCoWSTtbAAoC

Professor John Rogers: Eve issues a powerful critique of what she takes to be Adam’s act of censorship

PJR - ICtSotFFtMM, SiOEaEIotM

Professor John Rogers: In comparing the smell of the forbidden fruit to mother’s milk, Satan is offering Eve an embedded image of the mother

PJR - TNFoK, TNS-C, IaE, IaD

Professor John Rogers: This new form of knowledge, this new self-consciousness, isn’t an enlightenment: it’s a darkening

MC - SI…WNMtt’PotMoC’

Megan Caines: sexual intercourse…was nothing more that the ‘prostitution of the members of Christ’

JS - ItDOE, tDAWNA

John Steadman: In the devil’s own eyes, the divine adversary was not almighty

JS - ObDPiHAtPtAR

John Steadman: Only by divine permission is he allowed to play this active role

JS - HAM, RtTG

John Steadman: He achieves mastery rather than true glory

JS - V,V,aD

John Steadman: Victorious, vicious, and damned

JS - AIoPW

John Steadman: [paradise lost designed as] an instrument of psychological warfare

C -tIS,tAoE,WWRRiHtSiH

Coleridge: The intense selfishness, the alcohol of egotism, which would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven’

W - HiAI

Williams: Hell is always inaccurate 

W - SDND, HiD

Walkdock: Satan does not degenerate: he is degraded

R - IDEA

Rajan: Satan, sin, and death parody the trinity - NOT A QUOTE

PKE - QBitVToE

Professor Karen Edwards: ‘Qualities built into the very texture of experience.’

PKE - OoSAitDE, tMETtEiQaStG

Professor Karen Edwards: ‘One of Satan’s achievements is to devalue experience, to make Eve think that experience is quick and simple to grasp.

PKE - WNRoC, aHTtaaMoHH. IF, iaHT

‘Professor Karen Edwards: [satan] will never repent or change, and he takes that as a mark of his heroism. In fact, it’s a half truth.

PKE - TC,CBotS…PEtMoS

Professor Karen Edwards: The coiling, circling body of the serpent…perfectly expresses the mind of Satan

PKE - WHFtiGaB, HHtD. HBDbWHH

Professor Karen Edwards: ‘Whatever he finds that is good and beautiful, he has to destroy. He becomes defined by what he hates.’ 

PKE - PiPLiS

Professor Karen Edwards: ‘Perfection in Paradise Lost isn’t static.’

PKE - AMWiWBaSaU

‘Professor Karen Edwards: A mechanistic world in which body and soul are unified.

PKE - HtDtEoD, EGAtF

Professor Karen Edwards: Hoping to destroy the ‘evil’ of division, Eve gives Adam the fruit

DNP - ESLitOW-LSiWODNDbSaW

Don Norford Parry: "Eve still lives in the oceanic womb-like state in which one does not distinguish between self and world’

Z - MLWSFaVaS,awaIaD

Shari. A. Zimmerman: [Eve viewed through] male lens which sees femininity as vain and seductive, as well as infantile and dependent

Z - tbBSFaUwAPWLOiEIoF

Shari. A. Zimmerman: [Eve desires] to be both separate from and united with another person without losing oneself in either isolation or fusion

Z - RoaPV, EiCiBaEfA

Shari. A. Zimmerman: Robbed of a personal voice, Eve is coerced into becoming an echo for Adam

Z - HIWHFiRoHO,NPWS-AWaPAoI

Shari. A. Zimmerman: Her involvement with her flowers is reminiscent of her original, narcissistic position wherein self-absorption was a positive affirmation of identity

Z - TEoSRttUhBCoET,RtID

Shari. A. Zimmerman: the emphasis on Satan reveals that their union has become contingent on external threats rather than internal desire

Z - TS…AEtaWBA

Shari. A. Zimmerman: The serpent…alerts Eve to a world beyond Adam

Z - WHPNO,AWLHC,asHQAtEEA

Shari. A. Zimmerman: Without his perfect narcissistic other, Adam will lose himself completely and so he quickly agrees to emulate Eve's actions

Z - PFUADaAaERJHStHG

Shari. A. Zimmerman: Perfect fusion undergoes absolute death as Adam and Eve realise just how separate they have grown

AB - tRIWS,tRRG

Anna Beer: The reader identifies with Satan; the reader resents God.

JC: True God (IDEA)

John Carey: praise-hungry God of Paradise Lost, who laughs at his helpless enemies, is one of the poem’s successes. For this God, who seem morally repellant to us, was the true God, or so Milton believed.

E - HFiPI, HiM

Her failure is primarily intellectual, his is moral - Evans