PL x DOM Context

Both

  • Great Chain of Being - cannot be disrupted or transgressed, God at the top, underneath Kings and men above women - disruption causes disorder

  • Protestants > Catholics were hunted and severely disliked, often demonised - idolatry of Eve  

Paradise Lost 1667

  • Milton’s belief in free will and that God did not force us to worship him to prove that we need him → freedom of speech as well, the government tried to censor his pamphlets on marriage

  • PL was banned by the church when it was first made

  • post-English civil war - a time of division & lack of faith in God (1642-1651)

  • Puritan values of P.L. - working hard, being austere, sex for recreation not enjoyment 

  • Marriage should be an intellectual relationship, couples should have the right to divorce to enable this - Milton’s much younger wife - Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce

  • vast settings of an epic

  • ‘justifying the ways of God to man’

  • Minister of foreign tongues

  • Milton believed a monarch should serve the people otherwise they do not deserve that title → Milton signed the death warrant of Charles I, divine right of kings

  • John Dryden received permission to put P.L. into rhyme → in Dryden’s reinterpretation, Satan is projected as similar to Oliver Cromwell who killed the King (Dryden was a royalist)

  • King James Bible was first published in English in 1611, P.L. is one of the first epics in English 

  • Romantics interpreted Satan as a tragic hero, an isolated genius. Emotional intensity of Satan and his struggle to submit 

  • Milton believed the Church should not have the power to impose any religious interpretations on the people

  • Puritans suggest men should rule over their wives, women should be domestic and subservient

  • not monarchy but group of elders should make decisions? and not the church

  • 7 deadly sins - gluttony, lust, sloth, wrath, avarice, pride, envy/vanity

  • retelling of story Genesis

  • Epic heroes/ Satan as a Byronic hero

  • education is very important - even for women

  • everyone should have their own relationship with God 

  • Initially was a play but Milton didn’t want to have to cast God

  • Revised version changed it from 10 to 12 books 

  • replacing the monarchy with a free commonwealth

  • Conventions of the form:

    • vast settings

    • begins in media res

    • invocation to a muse

    • formal long speeches

    • epic hero central to the plot

    • epic journey to overcome problem

    • epic similes

    • transcends logical boundaries

Duchess of Malfi 1623

  • Climate of espionage/betrayal - post-Gunpowder plot, instability 1605

    • unity = stability

  • Based on Giovanna d’Aragona who married Antonio Becadelli in secret and bore 3 children in 1510, murdered by her brother the Cardinal

  • primary source was Painter’s The Palace of Pleasure , in which Antonio is reluctant to leave the Duchess, caring for her safety, Cardinal has no mistress, the Duchess’s hamartia was her lust

  • Elizabeth I’s reign 9 years prior, often remembered as ‘Elizabeth the Virgin Queen’ 

  • Performed indoors at Blackfriars, enables the lighting changes

  • Jacobean revenge tragedy form, lots of gore, lack of justice, metatheatricality, ghosts (Duchess’s haunting voice), → exploring human agency and our use of it

  • Malcontents disenfranchised by society - overly educated like bosola

  • Machiavellian leaders - means justify the ends, villains exploit the power they have

  • public executions and torture were common forms of entertainment

  • the four humours - Ferdinand: yellow bile/anger, Duchess: blood, Bosola: melancholy 

  • Hippocrates thought hysteria was caused by the womb 

  • body politic - duchess divorces her political body from her natural one

  • body natural - duchess’s own emotions etc

  • lusty widow - women who remarried for love were lustful & should remain chaste

  • lack of knowledge about female body

  • Book of Common Prayer - ‘love honour obey’    

  • Conventions of the form: 

    • desire for revenge

    • murders, lust

    • order restored at the end

    • ghosts, skulls, madness

    • anti-hero (malcontent)

    • stock characters

    • playing with light and dark

    • espionage

    • masked identities

    • dumbshows/meta theatre

    • soliloquies