Lecture Literary criticism - Lecture 10: Samuel Johnson on paradise lost

A greater work calls for greater care. A poem, which considered with respect to design may claim the first place and with respect to performance may claim the second place among the productions of human mind.

SAMUEL JOHNSON ON

PARADISE LOST

• A greater work calls for greater care.

• A poem,which considered with respect to design may claim the first place and with respect to performance may claim the second place among the productions of human mind

• History,virtue vice,dramatic nature,discriminations of

character,tendency of passion,illustrations and images

• To put all these together an imagination capable of painting nature and realizing fiction is required

POET’S FIRST DUTY:CONVEY A MORAL

• The poet’s first duty is to find a moral which has fable will illustrate later on

• This holds true for Milton.The morals of other poems is incidental and consequent;in Milton’s only it is essential and intrinsic

• His purpose was most useful most arduous:

-To vindicate the ways of God to man

-To show the reasonableness of religion

-Necessity of obedience to divine Law

FABLE TO CONVEY THE MORAL

• To convey the moral there must be a Fable which should be

constructed so as to excite curiosity and surprise expectation

• Milton has done very well in this regard.

• He has involved in his account of “Fall of the man” the events which preceeded it and the events that will follow it

• He has woven the entire system of theology that every pair seems necessary

• And we don't wish for any recital to be shorter for the sake of

quickening the progress to main action

SUBJECT OF AN EPIC

• Subject of an epic has to be an event of fundamental importance and for Milton it was not the destruction of a city or the foundation of an empire

• He focused on:

-Fate of worlds

-Revolutions of heavens and earth

-Rebellion against the supreme king by the highest order of the beings.-The punishment of their crime

-The creation of a new race

-Its fall and restoration to hope peace

GREATNESS IN PARADISE LOST

• Before the greatness displayed in Milton’s poem all greatness shrinks away

• The weakest of his agents are the highest and noblest of human

beings,whose actions effect the fates of the worlds

• Other agents in the poem are so high and lofty that we cannot take their name lightly and the lower powers those which are restrained by God

or they will destroy everything and cause chaos everywhere,

• Such might task this might poet has undertaken and performed

CHARACTERS OF PARADISE LOST

• Character which admit of examination are those of angels and of man,of angels good and evil;of man in his innocent and sinful state

• Good angels

-Raphael who is mild and placid

-Michael who is regal and lofty

-Abdiel solitary fidelity

THE BAD ANGELS

• Characters are most diversified.

• Satan given such sentiments which suit the most exalted and most

depraved being

• Milton had to be very cautious about Satan’s speeches.It was a difficult task to make a rebel speak without offending the sensibilities of the pious

• The language of rebellion cannot be same as that of the obedience

• So his language has haughtiness obstinacy-expressions are general otherwise offensive than as they are wicked

ADAM & EVE (STATE OF INNOCENCE)

• During their innocence,sentiments are such as innocence can generate and utter

• Their love is pure based on mutual respect.

• Their repasts are without luxury.

• Their diligence without toil.

• Their addresses to their maker have little more than admiration and gratitude

• Fruition left them nothing to ask and innocence left them nothing to

fear

ADAM & EVE (STATE OF SIN)

• With guilt enter

-Distrust

-Discord

-Mutual accusation

-Stubborn self defence

• They regard each other with alienated minds and dread their creator as avenger of their transgression

• At last they seek shelter in His mercy

• Before and after the fall Adam’s superiority is diligently sustained

PROBABLE AND MARVELLOUS

• In this case the probable is marvellous and Marvellous is probable.

• The subject matter absolute truth

• The main fabric is supported

• Its subject is universally and perpetually interesting

• All mankind has the same relation to Adam and Eve and all are involved in this battle of Good v/s Evil

• Here is no room to speak because everything is done under the

immediate and visible direction of Heaven

• However no part of action could have been accomplished by any other means

• There are two,one was used as a warning and the other as a consolation

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

• Unity of action.

• Who is the hero?

• Is it heroic?

• Are expressive of manners or appropriated to characters,are for the greater part unexceptionably just

MILTON’S IMAGINATION

• Milton’s imagination is of highest degree of fervid and is very active and the thoughts that are brought forward during the progress of the poem can be produced only by such an imagination.The heat of Milton’s mind may be said to sublimate his learning.The material was supplied by his incessant study and unlimited curiosity,

• His imagination and sublimity of his learning threw in his work the spirit

of science

MILTON’S POWER

• Sublimity

• Descriptions are learned

• Imagination accustomed to unrestrained indulgence

• Conceptions are extensive

• Gigantic loftiness instead of grace

• Can provide pleasure when pleasure is needed but his particular power

is to astonish

• The power of displaying the vast splendid,darkening the

gloomy,aggravating the dreadful

• Nature and life did not satiate his appetite of greatness.

• Reality was a scene too narrow for his mind

• He sent his faculties to discover the worlds where only imagination can travel

• He furnished sentiment and actions to superior beings.

• When he cannot raise wonder by the sublimity of his mind,he gives delight by its fertility

• Milton’s images descriptions and scenes or operation of nature do not seem to be always copied nor do they have the energy of immediate observation.

• Milton’s similes are numerous.

• However he does not confines himself within the rigors of comparison

• His great excellence is amplitude

• He expands the adventitious image beyond the dimensions which the occasion required

MILTON’S MORAL SUPERIORITY

• It is hardly a praise to affirm that his moral sentiments excel those of all other poets

• A reader will be able to carry away precepts of justice and mercy unlike other epic poets who were very unskillful teachers of virtue