Paradise Lost vs Pilgrim's Progress

Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée, 2016

This paper aims at exploring John Milton's poetic style in his epic poem Paradise Lost, and the internal and external influences that shaped it. The ingredients of the grand style generally are: the greatness of the conception which inspires the poem; the exercise of a rich imagination; the employment of dignified words arranged in an impressive and harmonious order; and the use of certain technical devices which add to the interest and the dignity of the language employed. The grand style produces an impression of bigness, or enormity, or vastness, or loftiness in the reader's mind. And all these characteristics can be applied to Milton's style in the writing of Paradise Lost. The researcher adopts the analytical approach by examining the first two book of the poem: Books I and II. The researcher finds out that Milton's style in Paradise Lost, whether attaining grandeur or overwhelming us with its weight and sublimity, or not, has never been, and never will be a " popular " style. It is a scholarly style, and only scholars will admire or appreciate it. The average reader of poetry finds this style too heavy, cumbersome, and often bewildering because of its obscurities. It is impossible to understand Paradise Lost, including Books I & II, without copious annotations, though there certainly are many passages written in a lucid style that charms us (such as the brief portraits of Moloch, Belial, and Beelzebub in Book II, and the celebrated speech of Satan on surveying the infernal regions in Book I).

Poetry, irrespective of its language, culture, land, is basically Philosophy which introduces us early to life and gives us the pleasurable instruction in reference to character, emotion and action. The excellence of a poet is bound up with that of a human being. The two poets taken for study namely John Milton from English literature and Bammera Pothana from Sanskrit literature belong to two different cultures, languages and regions. But their works of art, grand Epics, "Paradise Lost" and "Bhagavat" respectively represent the kindred throb of the human heart which because human is neither Indian nor European. Milton's Paradise Lost has the loftiest theme, "to assert external providence and justify the ways of god to men. The Epic Bhagavat depicts the earnestness of King Parikshit to attain Moksha in seven days since he is aware of his own destined day. Purity of mind and concentration are the prime qualities of a Yoga or seeker of God. God is Omniscient, Omnipotent and Omnipresent as is viewed by both Milton and Pothana. A deeper study of these two Epics would be beneficial to the present society in reinforcing the moral values which are steeply decreasing. The younger generation in the East and the West due to the impact of films and television develop negative attitude towards life resulting in the attempts of suicides and they are standing directionless. The study helps mankind to develop an ideal and positive attitude towards life. In this materialistic World, a spiritual bent of mind is essential to face the challenges of life.

Milton's writing is an interaction between three forces. An aesthetic force plunders the past, creating huge structures of myth coherent even down to the workings of syntax. But an iconoclastic force breaks through these images, revealing their provisional quality and their potential to tyrannize by fixating us; this force is conscious of those disruptions to traditional, power-infected ways of representing the world which are necessary for revolutionary action. Milton's writing is a “process” of continual disruption, “processing” forms, realizing that no one form of representation is good enough. Thus Milton will use images which turn out not to be images, similes working against epic simile, a syntax suggesting that things have already happened before they have even begun to be represented, and languages which purport to dissolve back into the very objects they describe.

This paper aims at exploring John Milton's poetic style in his epic poem Paradise Lost, and the internal and external influences that shaped it. The ingredients of the grand style generally are: the greatness of the conception which inspires the poem; the exercise of a rich imagination; the employment of dignified words arranged in an impressive and harmonious order; and the use of certain technical devices which add to the interest and the dignity of the language employed.

Pakistan Languages and Humanities Review, 2021

Poetic diction is very important to understand a writer's literary style, and this unique poetic diction separates it from prose. The writer's selection of graphic words and other stylistic devices not only affect the reader's attitude but also convey his feelings toward the literary work. The researcher chose the Invocation [the opening lines: l-26] from Paradise Lost Book-1 for many reasons. These reasons are the outstanding status of Paradise Lost in English literature, its complex narrative ingenuity, its grand style, its religious theme, its graphological, phonological, grammatical, lexical and semantic features, and the use of these features collectively to enhance the religious theme of this epic poem that is the relationship of man and God. This research tried to explore different levels of stylistic deviations, Milton's lexical choices from the Bible and the Quran, his religious and historical references. It focused on analyzing the unique stylistic features of the Invocation, levels of deviation, lexical choices and features through Milton's literary work, the King James Bible Online (1611) and the Corpus of the Quran for deeper understanding of this outstanding narration and the religious theme.

Milton Quarterly, 2016

RICHARD STRIER Dr. Johnson was surely wrong that no one ever wished Paradise Lost longer. Many readers, including myself, and probably Gordon Teskey, have done so. Teskey's book on Milton is a big one. Few readers would wish it longer, but the question is whether its length is justified. I do not think that it is, even given the ambition of covering all of Milton's poetry. Books covering Milton's whole oeuvre, including the volumes of prose that far outweigh the poetry, have not been as long (one thinks, preeminently, of Tillyard's Milton, or of the even shorter overview of David Daiches). If Teskey's book worked in detail with the poetry, that might justify its length-anyone who has done detailed explication knows how many pages such work consumes-but Teskey does not, for the most part, do such. Although the book does include some interpretive analysis, its basic modes are generalization and appreciative description. This might make it a book aimed at students-it reads, in many ways, like a series of well-oiled undergraduate lectures-but it is hard to imagine an undergraduate making her way through it. And while undergraduates might be charmed by the author confessing that he is "a little bored by discussions of Satan as a problem" almost as much as he is "with discussions of the frigidity, or the wickedness, or the goodness of Milton's God" (xiii), scholars and critics who are deeply interested in these matters might not be so charmed, and might think such nonchalance merely irresponsible. Similarly, the lack of engagement with existing criticism and scholarship, while certainly not total, is more likely to commend itself to students or general readers than to scholars and critics working in the field. Perhaps the curious and patient adult general reader is the target, which, I suppose, is fair enough. The Introduction is quite promising. It presents Milton as "a traditionalist in aesthetics and a radical in politics" (1), though Teskey will modify the first in a serious way by arguing that in some contexts (the Restoration), "traditionalist" aesthetics could themselves be radical (see 401-03). It recognizes the strangeness of Paradise Regained, with its presentation of the temptation in the desert rather than the Crucifixion as Jesus's key redemptive act. Teskey somewhat demurely notes that "Humility and charity are perhaps not among the Christian virtues most saliently exhibited by Milton," and that Milton was not "particularly moved" by "the two most important images of Christianity, which are images of helplessness. .. the infant in its mother's arms and the naked man hanging on the cross" (9). This is all helpfully on target, if rather tentatively expressed. Teskey even and quite bravely, takes on the issue of whether Milton actually believed that there was an Adam and an Eve, etc. His answer to this is a bit tricky-he wants to defend Milton as both a literalist and a fabulist. This trick can perhaps be done, though it 189

Cambridge Companion to English Poetry: Donne to Marvell, ed. Thomas Corns, 1993

It would be difficult and indeed absurd to approach Milton's poetry without an awareness of his revolutionary commitment. One of the foremost polemicists against the bishops, the monarchy, and the rest of the baggage of the old order, he became Latin secretary to the republican Council of State and official propagandist of the new regime with his great Defences of the English people. After the Restoration his life was in danger, he was imprisoned and some of the books that he wrote were burned. 1 Yet when we turn to his first book of Poems, the political, the revolutionary are not the immediate impression we receive. 2 Certainly the volume includes early work dating from before the revolutionary years. Yet the collection was published in 1645, after the conclusion of the first phase of the Civil War and at a point when Milton had already published polemical and increasingly radical prose tracts-Of Reformation in England (1641), Of

Academey publication, 2020

Paradise Lost has become a controversial epic in misrepresenting characters especially among pious critics and religious scholars. Based on applying the deconstruction theory analysis on Paradise Lost, this paper discusses three main purposes about the Miltonic exaggerations in Paradise Lost: the infringement of God divinity, the high power position of Jesus Christ, and Oliver Cromwell; as the intended symbolic political figure by Milton.In fact, the Bible and the Holy Quran are considered two main sources to the paradise story, so they apparently deconstruct the Miltonic thoughts in this epic poem. According to deconstructionism in Paradise Lost, Milton consecrated the ideology of the Trinity concept which is not explicitly mentioned in the New Testament. He also exceeded the reasonable limitation of divinity by ignoring the role of the Great God and overstating the role of Jesus Christ as the whole mercy and justices. In addition, Milton came out with Paradise Lost after Oliver Cromwell's death in order to express his grief about Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth fall as well.