Paradise Lost Critical Quotes

Milton

William Blake - Milton was

'of the Devil's party without knowing it'

Samuel Johnson - misogyny

'a Turkish contempt of females, as subordinate and inferior beings'

C. S. Lewis - why Eve fell

'Eve fell through pride'

C. S. Lewis - Eve persuading Adam to eat the fruit is

'Murder'

J. G. Turner - love

'Milton has succeeded in bringing to life... two quite different models of the politics of love' (equality vs hierarchy/male supremacy)

Charles Williams - Adam

Milton depicts Adam's 'passion so intensely as to make us almost wish that it could be approved'

Northrop Frye - Adam is an anti-hero

'What happens when Adam eats the forbidden fruit, then, is not an act, but the surrendering of the power to act'

David Loewenstein - Adam and Eve virtuous

'It is important to notice that Adam and Eve remain unfallen until the fall itself... though fallible and capable of sinning'

Waldock - Milton's presentation of Satan

'He will put some glorious thing in Satan's mouth, and then... will pull us gently by the sleeve saying "Do not be carried away by this fellow; he sounds splendid, but take my word for it..."'

Caroline Moore - Satan's persuasion

"The final assault on Eve's virtue is a flurry of half-formed metaphysical and theological arguments"

Barbara Lewinski - Satan's persuasion

"He confronts Eve with a barrage of definition, false syllogisms and rhetorical powers"

Barbara Lewinski - logical reasoning vs faith

"he leads her to analyse the prohibition she once knew to be outside the province of reason"

Caroline Moore - Satan's method of persuasion

"Pure slick advertising"

Anna Baldwin - Women's reason

"we see that [Satan] is exploiting [Eve's] lack of reason, winding her in a rational yet absurd chain of self-contradicting arguments"

Anna Baldwin - admiration for Satan in place of Eve

"invite us to feel not pity for her but contempt, not contempt for him but pleasure in his skill"

Stanley Fish - logical reasoning vs faith

Eve "substitutes the law of reason and the evidence of things seen for the law of God"

Diane K. McColley - presentation of Eve

"He broke the stereotypical scapegoating of Eve as essentially a temptress and uniquely gave her responsible motives"

Caroline Moore - presentation of Eve

"Milton shifts his interpretation of Genesis away from conventional misogyny to give Eve more sympathy, and more equality"

Caroline Moore - Satan on the Chain of Being

We see the "progressive degradation of Satan"

Anna Baldwin - admiration for Satan

"We can also admire his cleverness"

Anna Baldwin - presentation of Satan debate

"tragic hero", "destructive villain", or "absurd"

John Carey - Satan's evilness

"Milton's effort to encapsulate evil in Satan was not successful"

John Carey - presentation of Satan

"the character of Satan is essentially ambivalent"

Stella P Revard (Eve)

‘how innocent, how beautiful and yet how unprotected she is’

Burden

‘The tragedy is more his failure than hers’

Stella P Revard - Eve

‘Is Eve as the lowliest rational creature in the hierarchy of the poem to be regarded as not fully in control of her fate’

Stella P Revard - responsibility

‘She [Eve] accepts her responsibility’

‘It is Adam... who attempts to implicate Eve in his crimes...unlike Eve, to avoid independent responsibility’

Stella P Revard - Milton

‘Milton's intent to show us that the wife should not function independently of the husband’

Diane Kelsy McColley

‘Men fell by choice’