Paradise Lost Critic Quotes (AO5)

Shelley (1821)

‘Milton’s Devil as a moral being is as far superior to his God’

CS Lewis (1942)

‘We need not doubt that it was the poet’s intention to be fair to evil’

Gibney (2012)

‘God is represented as a vengeful tyrant’

1- Edwards (2018)

Satan’s appearance as the serpent is ‘the condition of the unrepentant fallen creature’

His thoughts consistently circle back to the same thing like the coil of a serpent.

2- Edward’s (2018)

‘I would argue that Milton is neither a misogynist nor a modern feminist. Rather, the very source for his poem, The Bible, gives a mixed message about the status of women, and Milton’s poem reflects these mixed messages’

Gilbert a feminist critic (2018)

Eve ‘implicitly refuses to accept the hierarchy of Eden’

Sartre’s theory of existentialism (20th century)

Freedom is not as liberating as it seems, since it forces humans to bear full responsibility for their choices

1. McEvoy (2013)

‘it is a Christian Epic’

2. McEvoy (2013)

‘Modern heroism is not to fight and kill, but to take responsibility for one’s actions’

3. McEvoy (2013)

‘A fallen, free-thinking world is better than one in which mankind is ‘stupidly good’’

Moore (2012)

‘It is not her presence that undoes Adam, so much as her absence and the prospect of her loss’

Suendson (1949)

Suendsin argued that Adam’s lament was one of the loneliest scenes in literature

How does Evans (1973) interpretation of the fall compare to Milton’s?

‘The ascent of primitive man from ignorance to knowledge' (Evans)

‘Mortal sin orginal’ (Milton)