Paradise Lost critics

William Blake

‘‘a true poet and of the devil’s party without knowing it’’ he was a romantic and belived Satan had qualities of a byronic hero as he is more emotional but this came after PL and authorial intent is that he is the villain especially as romantics didnt believe much in the 7 deadly sins as much as Milton

→perhaps he is such eloquent rhetoric to highlight his temptation as human like to demonstrate evil within human beings

Robert Klimt

‘‘foster intellectual freedom rather than blind obedience’’ 

→link to free will and Milton writing arepaggitica linked to human agency and Eve’s temptation 

C.S Lewis

against Eve and believes she ‘‘fell from pride’’ and tried to manipulate Adam into eating the fruit is ‘murder’

→links to Milton’s ideal of marriage and compatibility

→links to puritan belief that women were deemed as susceptible to sin

Gabriel Roberts

‘‘a tyrannical ruler contradicts this divine order’’

1491 ‘‘snake woman’’

1491 Snake woman painting links eve to sin

demonsrates the traditional view on how women deemed tempted easily

Gilbert

‘‘patriarch of patriarchs’’

feminist reading and how Eve is almost blamed

instead believes:

‘‘Eve is a vessel for futurity’’ -either she is punished with childbirth or in that she is the mother of humanity and offers hope

Mcvoy

‘‘evil exists not because God wants it but because humans always have a choice’’

‘‘he calls foolish to those who complain God ‘suffered’’’→ another critic but supports this argument in that it was part of his plan and that all of humanity are flawed.

Gilbert about Adam

‘‘Adam’s [sin] is his uxorious passion for Eve’’ 

→equally flawed like Eve and shows his cowardice as he blames eve later on

Middleditch

believes like Pullman’s dark material which draws inspiration from PL about relationship with God and criticism of forces of repression

‘‘not religion itself but the hypocrisy and reoression exercised in religion’s name’’

Masculinist reading of Adam

Mcvoy criticises Adam has having a ‘‘lack of identity’’ as he should have exericised more control over his weaker partner ‘‘crooked rib’’

→links to Milton’s view of roles in a marriage and how men have a duty to exert authority over wives and the fact he allows to ‘‘divide their labour’’ challenges this but restored at the end where she ‘‘fell humbly’’

Beth sims says ‘‘she is crucially not Adam’s equal’’ about Eve

Hazilitt

‘‘the most heroic subject’’ links to Blake

→ Milton could be criticising the integrity of hierarchies and highlighting the seductive nature of pride and rebellion which he himself was fallible towards but only to reveal the tragic consequences of his choices through his folly