Lecture Literary criticism - Lecture 12: Paradise regained

Of “paradise regained” the general judgment seems to be right,that is in many parts elegant and everywhere instructive. It was not to be supposed that the writer of “Paradise Lost” could ever write without great effusions of fancy and exalted precepts of wisdom. The basis of “Paradise regained” is narrow a dialogue without action can never please like a union of the narrative and dramatic powers. Had this poem been written not by Milton but by some imitator it would have claimed and received universal praise.

PARADISE REGAINED

• Of “paradise regained” the general judgment seems to be right,that is in many parts elegant and everywhere instructive.

• It was not to be supposed that the writer of “Paradise Lost” could ever write without great effusions of fancy and exalted precepts of wisdom

• The basis of “Paradise regained” is narrow a dialogue without action can never please like a union of the narrative and dramatic powers

• Had this poem been written not by Milton but by some imitator it would have claimed and received universal praise

SAMSON AGONISTS

• Was published with “Paradise Regained”

• Unlike “Paradise Regained” it received a lot of admiration

• Milton’s bias for classics against French and English theatre

• It is the name of Milton because of which a drama can be praised in which the intermediate parts have neither cause nor consequence neither hasten nor retard the catastrophe

• In this tragedy are many particular beauties many just sentiments and striking lines but it wants the power of attracting the attention which a well connected plan procedures.

• Milton would not have excelled in dramatic writing,he knew human nature only in gross.

• He knew what the books could teach but he had mingled little with the world and was deficient in the knowledge and experience must confer

• Through all his greater works there prevails a uniform peculiarity of Diction that bears no resemblance to any past writers.

• So unlearned reader when opens his book finds himself surprised with

a new language

• Addison says “Our language sank under him”.

• He uses English with a foreign idiom which in his prose is condemined but the power and beauty of his poetry is so that criticism sinks in

admiration

• Milton’s style was modified by his subject.

• “He wrote no language”

• Butler called it “Babylonish Dialect”

• Made by exalted genius and extensive learning

• We find grace in its deformity as it provides so much learning and pleasure

• From his book alone “The Art of English poetry” may be learned.

FROM COWLEY

• The metaphysical poets are men of learning and to show their learning was their whole endeavor.

• Unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme instead of writing poetry they only wrote verses

• The modulation of whom was so imperfect that they were only found to

be verses by counting the syllables

• As Aristotle has called poetry an immitative act,these writers will lose their right to be called poets.

• They seem to have imitated nothing they neither copied nature nor

life,neither painted the forms of matter,nor represented the operation of intellect

• They may be called wits as Dryden also confesses the Donne was

superior to him in wit

• Wit defined by Pope” that which has been often thought but was never before so well expressed”

• They endeavored to be singular in their thoughts and were careless of their diction

• Johnson however disagrees with this definition.He thinks Pope has depressed it below its natural dignity and reduced it from strength of thought to happiness of language.

• The thoughts of metaphysical poets in are often new but seldom natural.

• They are not obvious but they are not just wither.

• And a reader wonders why were they even formed.

• Wit in their case may be called discordia concors.A combination of dissimilar images or discovery of occult resemblance in things

apparently unlike

• The most heterogeneous ideas are yolked together by violence.

• Nature and art are ran socked for

ideas,allusions,comparisons,illustrations

• They instruct and surprise ,but it comes at a high cost

• The reader admires them but is seldom pleased.

• They were not successful in moving or representing affection.

• As they were wholly employed on something unexpected and surprising they have no regard to that uniformity of sentiment

• They do not care what they should have said or done.

• They are beholders of human nature.

• They are beings looking upon good and evil.

• Impassive and at leisure.

• As deities making remarks on the actions of men and on vicissitudes of life without interest and without emotion

• Their courtship has no fondness their lamentation had no sorrow.

• Their wish was to say what has never been said before.

• These writers who lay on the watch for novelty could have little hope of greatness for greater things cannot have escaped former observation.

• Their attempts were always analytic.They broke every image into

fragments and could no more represent by their selender conceits,the prospects of nature or the scenes of life,then a sun beam dissect with a prison

• What they wanted of the sublime they endeavored to supply by

hyperbole;their amplifications had no limits,they left not only reason but fancy behind them and produced combinations of confused

magnificence that not only could not be credited but could not be

imagined

• Yet great labor is never lost,if they frequently threw,their wit upon false conceits,they likewise sometimes struck out unexpected truth,if their conceits were far fetched they were often with the carriage.