Lecture Literary criticism - Lecture 11: Samuel Johnson on paradise lost

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.

SAMUEL JOHNSON ON

PARADISE LOST

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

DEFECTS AND FAULTS OF PARADISE LOST

• Johnson find it an abhorrent task to find faults in “Paradise Lost” as he thinks that lessening the reputation of Milton would mean lessening reputation of England

• The plan of Paradise Lost has this inconvenience that it comprises neither human action nor human manners.

• The man and woman who suffer are in such a state that no man and woman would ever be in that state,so have little natural curiosity or sympathy

• We do feel what Adam felt after he disobeyed,we have our enemies among the fallen angels and we have allies among the blesses

spirits.We want to be redeemed and we are interested in the

description of Heaven and Hell

• But these truths are too important to be new we have been taught since our infancy.They have mingled with our solitary thoughts and familiar conversation.

• Being therefore not new they raise no unaccustomed emotion in the mind what we know before we cannot learn,what is not unexpected

cannot surprise

• From the ideas suggested by some of these awful scenes,from some

we receed with reverence and from others we shrink with horror,

• We admit some of them as unpleasant impositions or as counterpoises

of our interest and passions

• Pleasure and terror are genuine source of poetry,but the pleasure should be so that human mind and conceive and poetical terror such which human passion can combat.

• The good and evil of eternity are too heavy a subject for the wings of wit

• So we feel humble adoration,calm belief and passive helplessness

• So these known truths are conveyed by a new train of images.There is very little given to us by the scriptures but Milton has expanded it to such an extent and branched it of so variedly that it seems like a

miracle that he managed to save the reverence of his subject from the lewdness of fiction

• Paradise Lost is a display of study and genius.He took from nature,from story from fable,from modern science.Whatever could adorn his

thoughts

• An accumulation of knowledge impregnated his mind,fermented by

study and exalted by imagination

• That is why it is said that in reading “Paradise Lost” we read a book of universal knowledge

• But the original deficiency cannot be overlooked.We admire it and all but we lay it down and then do not feel the urge to pick it up again.

• No one ever wanted it to be longer than it is.It seems like a pursuit of duty rather than that of pleasure

• We read Milton for instruction,we look elsewhere for recreation.We desert our master and seek companions

• Another inconvenience in Milton’s design is that it requires a description

of something that cannot be described

• He had to show Angels as material kings.This he could defend.

• But he is unhappily perplexed his poetry with philosophy

• His infernal and celestial powers are sometimes pure spirit and

sometimes animated body

e.g

-When satan walks upon “burning mark”with a lance he has a body

-On his journey between Hell and Earth he has a body

-When he animates the toad he is more spirit

-When he is ready to fight Gabriel he has a spear and a shield

-Number of the inhabitants of Pandemonium but when they were

overwhelmed by the mountains their armors crushed them

• It has always been the right of poetry to invest abstract ideas with

form,and animate them with activity has always been the right of poetry

• But for the most part they only do their active part and retire.

• To give them any real employment is to make them not allegorical but

to shock the mind by ascribing effects to nonentity,

• This has been done before but no precedents can justify absurdity

• Milton’s allegory of sin and death is undoubtedly faulty.

• Sin is indeed the mother of death and may be allowed to be portress of hell,but when they stop satan’s journey and when death offers him

battle the allegory is broken

• Nothing speaks for this allegory but the author’s thought of its beauty

• Some objections can be made about the narration.

• Like satan is brought before Gabriel with great expectation and is suffered to go away unmolested

• The creation of man is represented as the vacuity in heaven by the expulsion of rebels yet satan mentions it as a report “rife in Heaven” before his departure.

• Sentiments of innocence must have been difficult to find.

• When Adam was reproached for his curiosity his answer lacks propriety

it it’s the speech of a man acquainted with many other men

• Some philosophical notions especially when the philosophy is false might have better been omitted.The angel in comparison speaks of a

“timorous deer” before deer were yet timorous and before Adam could understand the comparison

• Dryden remarks that Milton has some flats.This is only to say that parts are not equal.

• In every work every part must be for the sake of others.

• Milton when he has expatiated in the sky may be allowed sometimes to visit the Earth

• His play on words,his equivocations his unnecessary and ungraceful use of term of art can be ignored as they are little in number,they scarcely deserve the attention of critic.