English Edward II/Paradise Lost AO3/5

Milton | Time of writing

Written after Civil War, during Interregnum, after restoration of Charles II

Milton | Career

committed republican, supported execution of Charles I, served as Latin Secretary for Cromwell

Milton | Motivations

disillusioned by: failure of the republic, Cromwell’s authoritarian tendencies, return to monarchy

Milton | Purpose of PL

explore the tragedy of lost liberty and misused free will

Milton | central belief

true obedience must be freely chosen; God does not coerce

Milton | Presentation of Satan

represents royalist rebellion (pride, self-advancement"), mirrors failed revolutionaries (Cromwell) who turned tyrannical

Milton | Adam and Eve as England

Adam and Eve’s fall mirrors England’s political downfall (Christopher Hill)

Milton | Treatise on Christian Doctrine

Consequently the issue does not depend on God who foreseen it, but on him alone who is the object of foresight

Milton | Epic purpose

Justify the ways of God to men, addresses the theological problem of theodicy

Milton | Puritan Theology

Strongly Protestant, tended towards radical positions. epic critiques misuse of authority, reason, intellectual pride

Arminianism vs Calvinism

Major protestant debate in 17th century
Arminianism - belief for free will, ability to choose between sin and obedience
Calvinism - belief in predestination

The Great Chain of Being

Early-modern belief in a divine hierarchy

God - Angels - Humans - Animals - Plants

Milton | Marriage

Married Mary Powell who left→ shaped his views
married 3 total

Milton | Divorce

Divorce Tracts - Tetrachordon 1645

advocated legal divorce for emotionally failed marriages

prioritised companionship, reason and virtue in marriage

Milton | Gender and women

Eve is rhetorically skilled, curious and independent
But still establishes a patriarchal order

Areopagitica (1644)

Attacks Licensing Order of 1643
argues that truth emerges from intellectual conflict, not suppression

Literary context of PL

Based on Genesis 1-3, written in Classical verse style

Christianises the traditions of Homer and Virgil

Christopher Ricks “Milton’s Grand Style”

Milton’s style is to make words do more than one thing at once

the words are both innocent and fallen

William Blake

Milton was of the Devil’s party without knowing it

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Satan is pride and sensual indulgence, finding in self the sole motive of action

C.S Lewis “A Preface to Paradise Lost”

the gradual degradation of Satan is very clearly marked

what we see in Satan is the misery of a creature who has become a slave to his own free will

Eve literally condemns Adam to death when she feeds him the apple

Stanley Fish

the reader’s experience is the poem’s meaning

Christopher Hill

Milton’s God is a revolutionary God

Satan is the image of the defeated revolutionary

A.N Wilson

Milton’s God can seem tyrannical

PL | Feminist criticism

Eve is the first to fall and therefore the first to blame

Marlowe | time of writing

early 1590’s elizabethan renaissance

culture of divine right of kings, royal censors

Marlowe | contrast with Shakespeare

Contemporary to Richard II, performed before the Earl of Essex’s rebellion

Marlowe | succession crisis

Elizabeth had no heir, anxieties about succession

play resonated with a failing/weak monarchy

Marlowe | status and authority

hierarchal society: king - nobles - clergy - commoners

nobles expect status to come from birth, lineage, service

Marlowe | homosexuality

considered sinful and disrupts the natural order

love for gaveston viewed as a threat to political stability and order

Marlowe | two bodies

Edmund Plowden’s theory

body natural vs body politic

Marlowe | women and patriarchy

strong patriachal society, women derived status from marriage and family connections

anxiety over succession as elizabeth had no heirs

John Knox - the first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women

Marlowe | Fortune’s wheel

medieval idea symbolising the unpredictability of fate

Marlowe | foreign sentiments

elizabethan england had strong xenophobic attitudes, particularly towards the french and italian

foreign office viewed as moral corruption and political manipulation

Example of royal favourites

Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, for Elizabeth I
George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, for James I

Marlowe | historical sources

Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1587) - Raphael Holinshed

very negative views of Edward II

Marlowe | biography

rumoured to have been a political spy, accused of atheism and potentially homosexual

Baine’s Notes

A series of accusations by Richard Baines before his death
demonstrated Marlowe as a dangerous, radical thinker

Nietzschean Theory of Tragedy

Apollonian Order vs Dionysian Chaos

Edward II | Full title and structural implications

Highlights Mortimer as part of the tragical cycle as well as Edward II, political ambition is also punished