THOMAS HARDY'S THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE

THOMAS HARDY'S THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE

It is Fair Day in the large Wessex village of Weydon-Priors. Michael Henchard, a young hay-trusser looking for work, enters the village with his wife and infant daughter. Seeking refreshment, the three go into a tent where an old woman is selling furmity, a liquid pudding made of boiled wheat, eggs, sugar, and spices. Henchard consumes too many bowls of furmity spiked with rum. Feeling confined by his marriage and spurred by drunkenness, Henchard threatens to auction his family. The auction begins as a kind of cruel joke, but Susan Henchard in anger retaliates by leaving with a sailor who makes the highest bid. Henchard regrets his rash act the next day, but he is unable to find his family. He vows not to drink again for 21 years, his present age.

Exactly eighteen years pass. Susan and her daughter Elizabeth-Jane come back to the fair, seeking news about Henchard. The sailor has been lost at sea, and Susan is returning to her "rightful" husband. At the infamous furmity tent, they learn Henchard has moved to Casterbridge, where he has become a prosperous grain merchant and even mayor. When Henchard learns that his family has returned, he is determined to right his old wrong. He devises a plan for courting and marrying Susan again, and for adopting her daughter.

A young Scotsman named Donald Farfrae enters Casterbridge on the same day as do Susan and Elizabeth-Jane. Henchard takes an instant liking to the total stranger and convinces Farfrae to stay on in Casterbridge as his right-hand man. Henchard even confides to Farfrae the two greatest secrets of his life: the sale of his wife and the affair he has had with a Jersey woman, Lucetta, whose reputation has been destroyed by the affair. Henchard is perplexed about how to make amends to both women.

Henchard remarries Susan, who dies soon afterward, leaving behind a letter to be opened on Elizabeth-Jane's wedding day. Henchard nevertheless reads the letter and learns that his real daughter died in infancy and that the present Elizabeth-Jane is actually Susan and the sailor's daughter. Henchard immediately cools toward Elizabeth-Jane.

Henchard also grows jealous of Farfrae's rising influence in both Henchard's business and in Casterbridge. The two men quarrel and Henchard fires Farfrae, who then sets up a successful competing grain business. Henchard begins rash speculation in wheat in an effort to wipe out Farfrae, but he fails miserably in the attempt. Henchard is rapidly going bankrupt.

Soon after Susan's death, Lucetta Templeman, Henchard's former paramour, comes to Casterbridge to marry Henchard. In order to provide Henchard with a respectable reason for visiting her, Lucetta suggests that Elizabeth-Jane move in with her. Henchard tries to force Lucetta to marry him, but she is unwilling. She has fallen in love with Farfrae and soon marries him.

Henchard's business and love life are failing; his social position in Casterbridge is also eroding. The final blow comes when the woman who ran the furmity tent in Weydon-Priors is arrested in Casterbridge. When she spitefully reveals Henchard's infamous auctioning of his wife and child, Henchard surprisingly admits his guilt. The news, which is harmful to Henchard's reputation, rapidly travels through the town. Henchard is soon bankrupt and forced by his poverty to become Farfrae's employee. Henchard's 21-year abstinence also ends, and he begins drinking heavily again. He moves to the poorest section of town.

Farfrae and Lucetta buy Henchard's old house and furniture. The Scotsman then completes his displacement of Henchard by becoming mayor of Casterbridge. Later, Henchard challenges Farfrae to a fight to the death. Henchard is on the verge of winning when he comes to his senses and gives up.

As the mayor's wife, Lucetta becomes the stylish and important woman she has longed to be. But she fears her secret affair with Henchard, if revealed, might destroy her marriage to Farfrae. She begs Henchard to return the damning letters she had written him years before. Henchard finds the letters in his old house and reads some of them to Farfrae. He intends to reveal their author as well but relents at the last minute. Later, he asks Jopp, a former employee, to deliver the letters to Lucetta. Henchard doesn't realize Jopp hates both him and Lucetta. Jopp shares the letters with some of the lowlife of the town. Excited by the scandal, these people plan a "skimmity-ride"--a mock parade to ridicule adulterers through the town to shame Henchard and Lucetta. Lucetta sees herself paraded in effigy, and the shock kills her.

Henchard reconciles with Elizabeth-Jane, who continues to believe Henchard is her father. He sees his final chance for happiness crumbling, however, when Elizabeth-Jane's real father, the sailor Newson, comes to Casterbridge to find his daughter. Out of affection for Susan, Newson reveals that he pretended to be lost at sea so that Susan, who hated their relationship, could return freely to Henchard. Henchard lies to the sailor, telling him Elizabeth-Jane died soon after her mother's death. Newson leaves, but Henchard worries that the sailor might return to reclaim Elizabeth-Jane.

During the following year, Henchard's life becomes fairly settled. He lives with Elizabeth-Jane and runs a small seed store. Farfrae begins courting Elizabeth-Jane, and the two plan to marry. Then the sailor returns, and Henchard flees Casterbridge.

Henchard appears at Elizabeth-Jane and Farfrae's wedding to deliver a present. Elizabeth-Jane spurns him, and Henchard sees that Newson has taken over as father of the bride--a role Henchard can never play. He leaves Casterbridge broken-hearted. A few days later, Elizabeth-Jane discovers Henchard's present, a bird in a cage. The unattended bird has died of starvation. Touched, she and Farfrae go in search of Henchard. Too late, they learn he has just died in the hovel where he had been living with the humblest of his former employees. The young couple read Henchard's pitiful will, in which Henchard asks that no one remember him.

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CHARLES DICKENS' A TALE OF TWO CITIES

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CHARLES DICKENS' A TALE OF TWO CITIES

A Tale of Two Cities opens in the year 1775, with the narrator comparing conditions in England and France, and foreshadowing the coming French Revolution.  The first action is Jarvis Lorry's night journey from London, where he serves as an agent for Tellson's Bank. The next afternoon, in a Dover inn, Lorry meets with Lucie Manette, a seventeen-year-old French orphan raised in England.  Lorry tells Lucie that her father, the physician Alexandre Manette, is not dead as she's always believed.  Dr.  Manette has just been released from years of secret imprisonment in the Paris prison, the Bastille.

Lorry escorts Lucie across the English Channel to a house in a poor Paris suburb where her father, in a dazed state from long solitary confinement, confusedly works at the shoemaker's trade he learned in prison.  Dr.  Manette has been taken care of by Ernest Defarge, a former servant of the Manette family, now the keeper of a wine shop. Defarge and his wife--a strong-looking, confident woman--appear to be engaged in antigovernment activity.  Lucie is saddened by her father's state and, resolving to restore him to himself, she and Lorry carry the doctor back to England.

Five years pass.  In London, at Old Bailey (the courthouse) we meet Charles Darnay, a French expatriate who is on trial for treason. Lucie Manette and Jarvis Lorry both testify that they met Darnay on their return trip across the Channel five years earlier.  John Barsad, an English spy, swears that Darnay's purpose in traveling was to plot treason against England.  Darnay is acquitted when his lawyer, Stryver, shatters a witness' identification by pointing at Darnay's uncanny resemblance to Sydney Carton--a brilliant but
dissolute lawyer who is wasting his talents in poorly paid servitude to Stryver.

Lucie and her father--who has regained his faculties and returned to medical practice--now live happily in a quiet corner of Soho with Lucie's fiercely loyal companion, Miss Pross.  They are frequently visited by Lorry (now a close family friend), Darnay, and Carton. Lucie imagines hearing "hundreds of footsteps" thundering into her life--a fantasy that in fact foreshadows the revolutionary strife in France.

The scene shifts to France.  Driving in his carriage through the streets of Paris, the cruel Marquis St. Evremonde runs over and kills a poor man's child.  We learn that the Marquis is Charles Darnay's uncle (out of shame for his wicked male forebears, Darnay had changed his name from St.  Evremonde to the English-sounding Darnay).  Meeting the Marquis at the St.  Evremonde chateau, Darnay says he will renounce the family property when he inherits to show his disgust with the aristocracy.  St.  Evremonde expresses his hate
of his nephew, and his continued support of the old, unjust order. The next morning the Marquis is found stabbed to death.  Gaspard, the father of the boy the Marquis ran over, has killed him as an act of
vengeance.

Back in England again, Darnay becomes engaged to Lucie.  Sydney Carton also declares his hopeless, lasting devotion to Lucie, and vows he would give his life to save anyone dear to her.

John Barsad, now a spy for the French monarchy, tips off the Defarges in Paris to the impending marriage of Lucie and Darnay.  Privately and meaningfully, Monsieur Defarge comments that he hopes destiny will keep Lucie's husband out of France.

The marriage ceremony, together with a story Darnay has told about discovering hidden papers in a prison, send Dr.  Manette into amnesiac shock.  For nine days, until Miss Pross and Jarvis Lorry pull him out of it, he reverts to his former shoemaking habits.  We learn later that on the wedding morning, Dr.  Manette secured Darnay's promise not to reveal his true name--St.  Evremonde--to anyone, not even Lucie.

Paris, 1789:  the French Revolution breaks out.  Defarge leads the attack on the Bastille, while his wife marshals the revolutionary women.  In the country rebellious peasants burn down the St. Evremonde chateau.  Gabelle, the property's rent and tax collector, is eventually arrested and thrown into Paris' L'Abbaye prison. Rushing overseas, Darnay is at once seized by the revolutionaries as an aristocrat, and flung into another prison, La Force.  Lucie, her young daughter, Miss Pross, and Dr.  Manette rush to Darnay's aid, lodging in Paris near Jarvis Lorry, who's there on business.

As an ex-Bastille prisoner, Dr.  Manette has sufficient influence to visit his son-in-law in La Force, but he is unable to free Darnay. For fifteen months Lucie stands each afternoon outside of La Force, praying that Charles may catch a glimpse of her.  The Terror is in full swing, the guillotine "shaving" innocent and aristocratic heads alike.

At last Darnay is brought up before the French Tribunal.  He is released through the testimony of Dr.  Manette and the long-suffering Gabelle.  But the very night of his freedom the Defarges and "one
other" denounce Darnay.  On the spot, he is hauled back to the Conciergerie, the scene of his trial.  Ignorant of the disaster, Miss Pross and Jerry Cruncher, Lorry's jack-of-all-trades, go shopping for provisions and encounter Miss Pross' long-lost brother, Solomon. Cruncher recognizes Solomon as the spy-witness John Barsad who once testified against Darnay.

Suddenly Sydney Carton is on the scene (he has come to Paris to help his friends).  Leading Barsad off to Tellson's headquarters for a meeting, Carton informs Jarvis Lorry that Darnay has been rearrested, and forces Barsad to cooperate with him by threatening to reveal the spy's turncoat maneuvers.  Currently in the pay of the revolutionaries, Barsad's job is to spy on their prisoners, and so he has access to Darnay in the Conciergerie.  Carton sets a secret plan in motion, using Barsad.

Darnay's retrial the next morning produces a sensation.  A journal discovered by Defarge in Dr.  Manette's old cell at the Bastille is read aloud to the Tribunal.  In his journal Dr.  Manette blames his arrest on two brothers of the St.  Evremonde family who had summoned him to their country house to treat a young peasant wife the younger St.  Evremonde had raped.  The woman's brother lay beyond treatment, dying from a wound received when he tried to attack the rapist. After both the brother and sister had died, Dr.  Manette received a visit in his home from the elder St.  Evremonde's wife and her small son, Charles Darnay.  The Marquise St.  Evremonde believed the dead woman had a sister, and wished to make reparations to her.  Dr. Manette attempted to reveal the St.  Evremonde brothers' infamy, but they arranged for him to be arrested and put in jail.  Dr.  Manette ended his story with a curse on the whole St. Evremonde clan, and hid the document in a hole in the chimney.  On this evidence Charles Darnay is condemned for his ancestors' evil deeds, and is sentenced to die in 24 hours.

After the verdict, Sydney Carton, drinking in the Defarge wine shop, overhears Madame Defarge announce that she is the missing sister, the last survivor of the family exterminated by the St.  Evremondes.  She swears to complete her vengeance by wiping out all of Darnay's relations--Lucie, her little girl, and even Dr.  Manette himself. Carton goes to Jarvis Lorry's lodgings where both men receive Dr. Manette, who, from the shock of Charles' condemnation has again slipped into his amnesiac-shoemaker role.  Carton warns Lorry of
Madame Defarge's murderous intentions, and they plan an escape from the country.  Carton tells Lorry to keep the proper papers ready, and when Carton appears at two the next afternoon, all--including Lucie
and her child--will ride swiftly away.

The following day, Carton enters Darnay's cell, drugs him, and exchanges clothes with him.  Carton intends to take Darnay's place on the guillotine, and thus fulfill his old promise to give his life for anyone dear to Lucie.  As agreed, Barsad hurries Darnay's unconscious body--dressed as Carton--out of the Conciergerie to the coach where Jarvis Lorry's party awaits.  All flee successfully.

In the meantime Miss Pross, alone in the Manette apartment, has a grim meeting with Madame Defarge, who has come armed with pistol and knife to take her personal revenge.  There is a struggle and the pistol fires, killing Madame Defarge and forever deafening Miss Pross.  Nonetheless, she is able to meet Jerry Cruncher as they have planned, and escape.

Sydney Carton goes to the guillotine with dignity.  (For the first time Madame Defarge's ringside seat is vacant.) He comforts a little seamstress, has a final vision of better times ahead, and reflects: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

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John Milton's PARADISE LOST

John Milton's PARADISE LOST

PARADISE LOST

John Milton's Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost follows the epic tradition in not telling the story chronologically, with one event following another in the sequence in which they occurred.  Instead it begins at midpoint and tells the rest in flashbacks (and flash-forwards).  Before we consider the plot as it actually unfolds in Paradise Lost, it is helpful to have in mind an outline of the story in chronological order.

PARADISE LOST: THE CHRONOLOGICAL SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

God has three aspects, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit.  As creator, God the Father sets everything going, like a clock, so that he knows what is to happen but does not interfere with the running of it.  In Heaven he is surrounded by angels ("angel" comes from a Greek word meaning "messenger").  When he decides to announce the equal status with himself of his Son, one-third of the angels rebel under the leadership of Lucifer, who becomes Satan, the Prince of Hell.  A terrible three-day War in
Heaven ends in the defeat of Satan by the Son, who drives all the rebel angels down to Hell, which God has created for them out of primal Chaos.

To replace the missing angels, God through his Son creates the World, and he puts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Paradise.  Like the angels, they have free will.  They live in pleasure, with frequent visits
from the angels, but they must not touch two trees in the garden, the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.

Satan wants revenge on God for his defeat, so he tempts Eve to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.  She in turn tempts her husband, Adam.  This is the original sin from which all mankind's troubles flow.  The life of pleasure is over:  man must work and woman must suffer childbirth pains.  The two are driven from Paradise to make their home in the rest of the World, comforted by the knowledge that the Son will become man in a later generation and will die for their sins.

Now we turn to the plot as Milton relates it in Paradise Lost.

PARADISE LOST: THE NARRATIVE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

Satan has been in Hell for nine days, lying on a burning lake where he and his companions have been thrown by God and his angels.  He moans to his companion Beelzebub about their terrible fate, but he resolves to continue his fight against God through other means.

He and Beelzebub raise themselves painfully from the lake and gather the fallen angels on the shore, where they build a great hall called Pandemonium.  In it they hold a great council meeting about their next move.

One of the leaders counsels open war.  Two others oppose the idea, saying they've had enough of God's fury and will make the best of it in Hell.  Satan tells them of a rumor he had heard in Heaven that
another kind of being was to be created.  In order to find out how this creature could be corrupted for their purposes, he volunteers to go on a spying mission.

As he leaves, he meets Sin, who is his lover and daughter, and Death, his son and grandson, who guard the gate.  They let him out into Chaos, the fundamental material of the universe from which God has fashioned Hell and the World.

Meanwhile in Heaven God foretells what is to happen and asks which of the angels will offer to die for man.  The Son takes on the task and is praised for his sacrifice.

Satan alights on the top of the World (the universe, not the earth) and looks up into Heaven and down into the concentric spheres of the planets.  He flies down to the sun, where he asks directions of Uriel, the angel who guards the sun.

As Satan watches Adam and Eve in the Garden of Paradise, Uriel flies down to warn the angel Gabriel that Satan has deceived them both and is on earth.  Satan overhears Adam telling Eve that they are forbidden to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.  He conceals himself until night, when he becomes a toad and sits beside Eve's ear.  Two guardian angels, Ithuriel and Zephon, find him and bring him to Gabriel.  Gabriel threatens to drag Satan in chains to Hell if he's found in the garden again.

Eve tells Adam her terrible dream, induced by Satan.  She dreamed that she ate the fruit and became a goddess flying above the earth. She is very frightened and needs Adam's comfort.  When they go out to
their daily chores in the garden, they find that the archangel Raphael has come to visit them.

In a very long flashback, Raphael tells Adam (Eve is sometimes there and sometimes doing her housework) what happened before he was created.  He tells the story for a reason:  he wants to warn Adam against Satan, who, he feels sure, has some evil design in coming to earth.

Satan was originally called Lucifer and was one of the highest angels in the heavenly host.  On the occasion of the Great Year, which comes every 36,000 years, God proclaims his Son equal to him.  Lucifer's
pride is so hurt that he draws away one-third of the angels with him into the North, where they prepare to fight a war against God.  One of the number, Abdiel, is appalled at Satan's rebellion and refuses
to be part of it.  He runs back to the Mount of God, where he finds that the faithful angels already know about the rebellion and are preparing for war.

The War in Heaven lasts three days.  On the first day, the rebel angels don't do well.  They experience pain for the first time, although their wounds are never fatal because they are immortal.  On the second day, they bring out cannons which they have built overnight and introduce gunpowder into Heaven.  At first the heavenly host is bowled over, but they recover and throw hills and mountains as if they were snowballs.

On the third day God sends out his Son in his war chariot.  It is soon over:  the angels are driven over the edge of Heaven into Hell. That brings us back to the point where the poem began.

Raphael continues the story, telling Adam about God's creation of the earth.  Adam reciprocates by telling Raphael about the making of Eve from his own rib and his great love for her.  Raphael cautions him
against worshipping her excessively and then leaves them in Paradise.

The next morning Eve suggests that they should work separately in order to get more gardening done.  Adam reluctantly allows this, despite his misgivings.  In the form of a serpent, Satan tempts Eve to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, using the argument that he, a beast, received the gift of speech after eating it and God hasn't killed him.  She finally eats the fruit and then persuades Adam to eat some as well.  Because he loves her so much and does not want to be parted from her, he eats it.

The Fall has happened.  Adam and Eve copulate like beasts and fall asleep like drunkards.  When they awaken they realize for the first time that they are naked, and they begin to quarrel, furiously reproaching each other.

The universe reacts with groans to the dreadful event.  God sends down the Son to judge Adam and Eve.  Their happiness and immortality are taken from them.  Adam must work and Eve must suffer the pain of
childbirth, and both must die.  The serpent will be punished by always being the enemy of man.

Satan begins his return journey in what he thinks is triumph.  At the top of the World he meets Sin and Death, who have built a road leading from the gate of Hell to the World.  Satan joyfully shows them their prey, waiting for them down on earth.  He returns to Pandemonium, where the fallen angels are waiting for him in council. He announces his triumph, but they all immediately become snakes and the entire hall is filled with hissing.  Although they eventually regain their shape, they must each year become snakes for a time to
remind them that Satan became a snake to deceive man.

As Sin and Death move into their new quarters, drooling at the thought of feasts to come, God causes the angels to make the World as it is now--with extremes of weather, seasons, and bad planetary influences.  Surveying the wreck of the beautiful World they have known, Adam and Eve throw themselves on God's mercy.

He responds to their prayers and the Son's pleas for them by agreeing that Death shall not strike them immediately, but they must leave the Garden of Paradise.  Michael, the warrior archangel, is sent down to
escort them out of Paradise into Eden and to leave a guard on the gate so that no one can enter.

But Michael gives them some comfort.  He shows Adam what is to happen in the generations following, including Noah's flood, the descent into Egypt, the coming into the Promised Land, and the incarnation of
God as Jesus Christ.  Adam is greatly encouraged when he realizes that the great blessing of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit are possible for man only because of what he did.  His sin is a "happy fault," since ultimately it will bring so much good to man.

Calmer but apprehensive, Adam and Eve leave the Garden of Paradise. As they walk away, they look back to see the fiery weapons of the angels guarding the gate.  They look forward to their new life.

PARADISE LOST: THE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE OF PARADISE LOST

The following schematic plan of the narrative structure of the poem makes it easy for you to see the distribution of the events.  Note that the poem is divided into 12 books.

     I. Hell. Satan rallies the fallen angels
    II. Hell. The council in Pandemonium
   III. Heaven. The council in Heaven
        Limbo and the Sun. Satan's journey
    IV. Paradise. Satan spies on Adam and Eve
     V. Paradise. Raphael arrives
        Flashback: War in Heaven
    VI. Flashback: War in Heaven
   VII. Flashback: Creation of the world
  VIII. Flashback: Creation of Adam and formation of Eve
    IX. Paradise. The Fall
     X. Heaven. Judgment
        Chaos. Sin and Death build bridge
        Hell. Fallen angels turn into snakes
        Paradise. Adam and Eve quarrel
    XI. Paradise. Sentence on Adam and Eve
        Flash-forward: The World until Noah's flood
   XII. Flash-forward: The World to the second coming
        Paradise. Adam and Eve leave for Eden


The characterization of Paradise Lost is peculiar.  Only two characters, Adam and Eve, are people.  Even they are different from us because they have not been born in the conventional way and neither is a member of a family.  We don't see them in relation to other people because there aren't any.

All the other characters are immortal and have powers beyond our human understanding.  But to describe them Milton must use human terms.  That works to the advantage of some and the disadvantage of others.

PARADISE LOST: SATAN

Is Satan the hero or the villain of Paradise Lost?  That's the question that has intrigued readers since the poem first appeared. It's too easy to say that Milton intended him for a villain but he turned out a hero.  More probably Satan gets the benefit of the fact that Milton has to use human terms to describe him.  It is
easier--sad to say--to make absolute evil understandable than to do the same for absolute good.

Satan is an endlessly intriguing character.  You will not be able to make up your mind about him even after you've read the poem and written essays on him.  You will find yourself using him to characterize people you know about:  "He's a bit like Satan in Paradise Lost--unbelievably talented but throwing it all away because
he won't accept authority." Such people are fascinating and attractive, but they're infuriating when they waste it all for what they think is freedom.

All the main characters in Paradise Lost are concerned with freedom. Those who understand true freedom know that it consists of obeying God's will without question.  (Abdiel is the best example--look at the discussion of his character further on.) Those who do not understand it think freedom means being free from someone else's will and following your own.  Satan is chief among them.  He is so offended by God's announcement of the Son's equality with him that he wants to be free of what he calls "tyranny."

Satan's essential characteristic is deception.  He deceives himself, he deceives others.  To trick the angel of the sun, Uriel, he changes shape to become a polite young cherub eager to see God's creation. When he approaches Adam and Eve, he changes into whatever animal will get him close to them.  He becomes a toad to squat by Eve's ear and give her a nightmare.  And of course he deceives Eve in the shape of
a serpent.

His seduction of Eve is a masterpiece of persuasion.  He knows exactly which buttons to push--her vulnerability to flattery, her desire for power, her susceptibility to a logical argument.  Milton tells us that he summons up all the orator's art for this final push: his speech is certainly a textbook model.  To his talents as leader and inventor, we can add the deception and polish of a Madison Avenue advertising man.

When we last see Satan he has become the serpent whose shape he borrowed to seduce Eve.  There is little sense that he understands the punishment he will eventually receive.  He thinks he has won.

I am to bruise his heel;
His seed, when is not set, shall bruise my head:
A world who would not purchase with a bruise,
Or much more grievous pain?
(X, 498-501)

Has Satan won his fight against God?  Or is it just not in his character to understand his defeat?

PARADISE LOST: BEELZEBUB

Beelzebub, whose name during the Middle Ages meant simply "devil," is Satan's second-in-command.  He behaves like a foil for Satan, allowing his leader to demonstrate his best qualities.  Beelzebub is quite content with his reflected glory.

PARADISE LOST: BELIAL

Belial appears twice in Paradise Lost, once when he advises the angels not to fight again and a second time during the War in Heaven when he makes bad puns with Satan about the cannon.

PARADISE LOST: MOLOCH

Moloch is the archetype of mindless force.  He fought against Gabriel and was split in two, but since he is immortal he soon recovered.  In the debate in Pandemonium he quite unreasonably counsels open war, without much sense of how victory can be attained in view of the recent devastating defeat.  Where Belial is all charm and acquiescence, Moloch is blind and pointless defiance.

PARADISE LOST: MAMMON

Mammon is the engineer of Pandemonium, the miner who finds the ore for the golden budding.  He is "the least erected spirit that fell" (I, 679), because his mind is on money.

PARADISE LOST: OTHER DEVILS

Nisroc has a single speech, urging the rebel angels on the first night of the War in Heaven to do something quickly because he can't stand pain.  Mulciber has no speeches.  He is the architect of Pandemonium:  Many other devils are named as they slowly move from the bunting lake to the shore for the military parade.  They are all false gods, those who seduced the Israelites away from God in the Old Testament, or the classical gods of Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

PARADISE LOST: THE TRINITY

Christianity is based on a mystic trinity, a three-in-one, one-in-three godhead, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit.  All three have existed since the beginning of time, but the Son is only revealed at the celebration of the Great Year, and the Holy Spirit does not appear in Paradise Lost at all
except in a flash-forward to the time after the Ascension of Christ when the Spirit is sent as a comforter to man.  When speaking of Paradise Lost, by "God" we generally mean God the Father, and "the
Son" means God the Son.

PARADISE LOST: GOD

Like Satan, God is a problem for readers of Paradise Lost.  We like Satan too much and God not enough.  People have suggested that in each case their characters are already given:  we know God is good
and we know Satan is bad, so neither has to be shown in action doing what is expected of him.  But the truth remains that we'd rather have Satan's company than God's.

He elevates the Son without preparing the angels for the news, and indeed without any obvious reason, but that's his privilege.  The rest of the universe must adapt to him, not he to it.

He loses more than one-third of the angels to Satan.  One critic has said a loss of that size would make one question God's management style.  And there is a certain teasing quality to his actions:  if he could so easily order the fallen angels to be pushed out of Heaven, why did he let the war go on for three days?  It seems capricious.

But he has virtues:  he is a just and merciful judge.  He listens to the Son's prayers for Adam and Eve and does not kill them, even though that was the punishment for eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.  He does everything he can to warn Adam and Eve, sending them Gabriel to guard them and Raphael to explain their danger to them.  And he is deeply proud of the Son and what he represents, love of man.

PARADISE LOST: THE SON

As a character, the Son has an important function in Paradise Lost as the exact opposite of Satan.  He is put into parallel situations to demonstrate right behavior when Satan demonstrates what is wrong.  In Book III, when we first meet the Son, he willingly takes on the job of dying for mankind:

Behold me then, me for him, life for life,
I offer, on me let thine anger fall;
Account me man; I for his sake will leave
Thy bosom...
(III, 236-239)

Satan too has willingly taken on a courageous task, but he did it to destroy mankind, to complete his revenge on God.  The Son always obeys God immediately, with a grace that shows his perfect freedom. He is the executive branch and God the legislative branch of the heavenly government.  He can use the power of God, for example when he rides out in his chariot and pushes the rebel angels out of Heaven, but he doesn't abuse it.

His great characteristic is his special love for man.  From the moment that he accepts his position as the future redeemer, he represents man's interests before God.  When he judges Adam and Eve after the Fall, he does so as "both judge and savior sent," and immediately after pronouncing judgment he begins to look after them. He gives them clothes made of the skins of beasts and shields them from God's sight.

In the flash-forward in Book XII, we see the culmination of the Son's devotion to man, when he is born, lives, and dies for man.  To him God gives the privilege of cleaning out Hell on the day of judgment,
when a new Heaven and a new earth are created.

The Son is not blandly acquiescent.  He knows that the sacrifice he will make for man is going to be painful beyond belief.  He is quite capable of reminding God that the force of man's fall will be felt by him--"worst on me must light." The Son has dignity without coldness and obedience without fawning.  It is a great deal easier to like him than God, for his function in the Trinity is to be man's side of God.

PARADISE LOST: RAPHAEL

Raphael is the archangel who spends the most time with Adam and Eve and therefore with us.  He comes down in Book V and doesn't return to Heaven until the end of Book VII.  He is a magnificent figure with
six pairs of wings which drape around him like a many-colored robe. He walks in great dignity to meet Adam and then acts as a gracious guest, obviously enjoying the food and complimenting Eve on it.

Raphael is a great teacher and storyteller.  He explains everything that Adam wants to know--sometimes a little more than we want to know.  Through his eyes we see the War in Heaven and the creation.

PARADISE LOST: MICHAEL

Michael is the warrior archangel.  He leads the heavenly forces in the War in Heaven, with Gabriel as his second-in-command.  It is Michael who engages in single combat with Satan, challenging him first in a speech where he threatens to send him to Hell.  In their battle, which is like a conflict between two planets in its enormous scope, Michael wounds Satan with his great two-handed sword.  It brings the fight to an end, but Satan soon recovers.

God chooses Michael to carry out the judgment that Adam and Eve must leave the Garden of Paradise.  Adam understands the significance of the choice as soon as he sees him:  Michael is armed, dressed in
military splendor.  He has come to carry out a sentence, although with grace and mercy.

PARADISE LOST: GABRIEL

Gabriel has the somewhat thankless job of guarding Paradise.  It is thankless because Satan slips by Gabriel and the guards twice.  After the first occasion, when Gabriel, Ithuriel, and Zephon confront Satan, Gabriel is willing to fight him, but God forbids with a sign in the sky.

PARADISE LOST: URIEL

Uriel is the angel who guards the sun.  Satan deceives him in the form of a little cherub asking his way to the new creation, earth. Despite the fact that Uriel is one of the seven angels closest to the throne of God and is known to have sharper sight than any other angel, he cannot perceive the deception.  This is not a defect of
character but a theological condition.  Only God can see through hypocrisy--neither men nor angels have that power.  Uriel speaks with warm encouragement to the young apprentice angel.

PARADISE LOST: ABDIEL

This is the character Milton identified with.  Abdiel is a rebel against rebels, the one angel who realizes before it is too late that Satan's cause is wrong.  His name means "servant of God," and that he proves himself to be.

He stands in the middle of the rebel angels and tells Satan he is wrong.  Satan does not understand true freedom--the service of God who made him--but calls it tyranny.  Abdiel will not hear God blasphemed (a religious term meaning "insulted").  His impassioned speech shows a clear understanding of a correct relationship to God. It makes us wonder why he came to be among the one-third of the angels who followed Satan to his headquarters in the North.

He receives the praise he deserves from God:
Well done, thou hast fought
The better fight, who single has maintained
Against revolted multitudes the cause
Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms
(VI, 29-32)

The praise from God and his own conviction of right make Abdiel bold enough to challenge Satan on the first day of the war.  He steps out from the army and addresses Satan as a "fool." Satan attempts to mock him and the others by calling them lazy:  they'd rather take the easier path of serving God with "feast and song" instead of seeking their freedom.

Abdiel's last speech is the best exposition of "true freedom" in the poem:  it is freedom to serve the highest, as God and nature both command.  It is not freedom to seek to exercise your own will, but servitude to yourself.  Satan is welcome to reign in Hell; Abdiel will serve "in Heaven God ever blest." And with that he strikes the first blow of the War in Heaven.  It is his privilege as the champion of truth.

PARADISE LOST: OTHER ANGELS

Ithuriel finds Satan squatting next to Eve's ear while she sleeps. As he touches the toad with his spear, it immediately becomes Satan. A slanging match follows.  Zephon accompanies Ithuriel on the mission, and together they bring back Satan to Gabriel.  Zophiel is the cherub who sees the approach of the rebel army on the second day of the War in Heaven and warns the heavenly host.

PARADISE LOST: ADAM

The clue to Adam's character is his relationship to Eve.  It ought to be his relationship to God, but it isn't--and that fact causes Adam's fall.  Adam has to argue with God to get Eve (although it is only a mate he seeks at that point).  When he sees her he falls so deeply in love with her that everything good seems embodied in her.  He knows that Eve is not as close to God as he is, and he realizes that it is her beauty that he worships.  Love is supreme and love "leads up to Heaven."

It is for love and for Eve that Adam eats the apple.  As soon as he sees her with a branch from the Tree of Knowledge in her hand, he knows what has happened--as she does not.  In his soliloquy, he makes his decision:

for with thee
Certain my resolution is to die;
How can I live without thee?
(IX, 906-908)

So his fall is different from Eve's.  He does not directly fall to temptation, but to his desire to be with her, no matter what happens. God the Son puts his finger on the matter right away:  "Was she thy God, that thou didst obey / Before his voice?" (X, 145-146).  Adam has upset the proper order of things.  Nothing must come before God.

He certainly learns from experience, although too late.  Before the Fall, he allows Eve to persuade him that it is all right for her to work in the Garden separately from him--the fatal decision.  But afterward he accepts neither of her suggestions--that they not have children and that they commit suicide.

Following his initial despair after the Fall, Adam's character improves.  He forgives Eve with the sensible idea that they must now be each other's comfort in a world changed from the Paradise to the kingdom of Sin and Death.  It is Adam who suggests that they should plead for God's mercy.  He asserts his leadership by insisting that Eve leave him alone to speak with Michael.  And it is to Adam alone--Eve sleeps under a benign drug--Michael reveals the future.

Adam's relationship to the angels who visit him from Heaven is always courteous and correct, for he knows that he is inferior to them in the hierarchy established by God.  He has no difficulty with that position.  It seems as if Adam was made to be a follower rather than a leader until the Fall brought him face to face with his responsibility.

Finally he has learned.  His last speech, as Michael points out, is "The sum / Of wisdom." In it Adam says that it is best to love and fear God; to depend on him; to work against evil, content with small victories; to stand up for the sake of truth, no matter what it costs; and to die understanding Death is the gate to life.

This is very hard won wisdom.  But Adam is the first man, and like all of us after him, he can only learn through bitter experience.

PARADISE LOST: EVE

Looking at Eve through twentieth-century eyes, we find it difficult to separate her character from our feelings of indignation about the role she is given.  Certainly Milton was sexist; he could not be otherwise given his times and his religion.  He has to tell a story that was itself sexist, because it is a myth with a social purpose.

Poor Eve suffers from Milton's time and place.  She is the "weaker," she was made not directly in God's image but from part of Adam's body, she must worship God through Adam, not in her own right.  She is beautiful, yet her beauty is her downfall when the serpent flatters her, and it is downgraded in value by both Adam and Michael.

When left to herself she acts in no way that could be faulted.  But it is Eve's ear, not Adam's, into which Satan pours the bad dream. And the effects of it cause her to argue with Adam that she should go
separately to work in the garden.  (There is no evidence that she had ever suggested this before the dream.) And of course it is Eve who is tempted by the serpent.

Her behavior during the first exchange with the serpent can't be blamed.  This is the first time she has ever heard another creature speak except for Adam and those angelic but long-winded visitors. She listens with natural curiosity, but when they get to the tree, she says they might have spared themselves the walk.  There is no thought in her mind of doing anything forbidden.

What convinces her are Satan's arguments.  They are based on reason, and reason is a deceiver in Milton's theology.  Right reason is the following of God's law absolutely.  False reason is man's own logic.To trust to logic is to put your powers ahead of God's--the fundamental error.  We have to sympathize with Eve in trusting her own reason.  She's only human.

Her reactions after the Fall make that very clear.  She wants Adam to eat the fruit not for his own benefit but for a self-serving reason: if she dies, Adam will get another Eve.  But she never says that to him.  And she puts the blame squarely on him for allowing her to suffer temptation:

Being as I am, why didst not thou the head
Command me absolutely not to go?
(IX, 1156-1157)

The quarrel is only too true to life.

Yet it is Eve who knows how to get out of the quarrel and on with the rest of their lives.  She falls at Adam's feet, even though he has repulsed her first effort at reconciliation.  Her submission wins him over.  Like Adam, she has become sadder, wiser, and more mature after the Fall.  She is very unhappy at being forced to leave Paradise. It's a bit like a corporate wife being told that she has to leave her home when her husband is transferred.  But just like the wife, Eve realizes the truth of Michael's remark that her home is wherever her
husband is.

When Michael prepares to tell Adam the future history of mankind, his descendants, he puts Eve to sleep with a drug.  Yet when she wakes she knows all that has been said and is comforted by the thought that
her "promised seed," the son of the Virgin Mary, the "second Eve," will redeem mankind.  This symbolizes a different way of knowing--woman's intuition, direct instinctive knowledge rather than explanation and reasoning.  It is another sign that "women are different."

Eve's last words refer to her consciousness of guilt for "my wilful crime." You might think Eve gets a bum rap.  At least reflect that we no longer think that she represents the truth about women.

PARADISE LOST: SIN AND DEATH

Sin and Death are not characters but allegorical figures.  That means they do what their names say they do.  Whenever you see them, try to translate what they are doing into its meaning.  Sin was born from Lucifer's head at the moment of his rebellion; this means that Sin begins with rebellion against just authority.  Death was born as a result of an incestuous relationship between Sin and Satan; the meaning of this should be obvious.

Sin and Death keep the gates of Hell.  When Sin opens the gate, it can never be shut again (another moral for us all).  The mother and son together build the road from Hell to earth, so that while they are causing trouble with all the creatures there, the devils from Hell can easily travel to earth--and the condemned souls from earth will easily slide down to Hell.  One of the horrible figures who keep running in and out of Sin's womb, Discord, begins to make food for her incestuous father Death as soon as they all get to earth.

We still use allegorical figures today.  Our best-known one is Liberty, the statue in New York harbor.  All her features, especially the lamp she carries, are meant to symbolize the freedom offered by this country.


PARADISE LOST: SETTING

There is a built-in problem in talking about the setting of Paradise Lost:  words we normally use, like "world," "universe," and "earth," have different meanings in the poem.  Let's take a tour of the cosmos
so that you can see the differences.

The largest frame of action is what we would call the universe--everything imaginable.  Looking at it schematically, Heaven is at the top and Hell at the bottom.  Both extend infinitely, Heaven upwards and Hell downwards.  Between the two, filling all available space, is Chaos, which, like its name, is shapeless and confused. Chaos must have been the original stuff from which the other places were formed because Chaos (the name for the ruler as well as the place) complains that he has lost territory when God made Hell, and
then lost more when God made a home for man.

Hanging in the center of the cosmos is what Milton calls "the World." We loosely understand by that word the earth on which we live, but Milton means what we call the universe.  Milton's World is a sphere made up of ten concentric circles.  The earth is at the center.  Some of the circles revolving round it contain the planets (including the sun), the heavens, and a watery firmament.

The World (our universe) hangs from Heaven by a golden chain.  At the top there is an opening, where three directions converge:  standing at the opening (as Satan does in Book III), you can look up the golden stairway to Heaven, down through the concentric circles to earth, and out into Chaos.  When Sin and Death build their bridge across Chaos, they begin it at the Gate of Hell and end it at the opening to the World.

The earth for most of the poem does not look like anything we see now.  The features that characterize it--seasons, weather, mountains, and valleys--are all brought into the world after the Fall.  Angels are sent by God to turn the axis of the earth off dead center, thus introducing changes in climate and length of day.  In Paradise, all kinds of animals and plants live together, without distinction of habitat.  Flowers bloom constantly, and roses have no thorns.

Paradise is the name for the garden where Adam and Eve live.  In the Bible, their home is called the Garden of Eden.  Milton has interpreted this strictly.  Paradise is the garden part of Eden. Eden is a land usually identified with Mesopotamia, the region between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates.  But there is a tradition
that Paradise was an island in the South seas, so Milton has it moved there during the flood.

The garden, Paradise, is watered by rivers that run under the boundaries (guarded by the angels) and come up as fountains.  It is a real garden to the extent that it needs pruning and its fruits must be harvested, but there doesn't seem to be any weeding to be done and there is no mention of snails.

The important point to remember is that the entire setting is imaginary.  The familiar terms should not mislead you.  You are looking not at a landscape, but into Milton's mind.

PARADISE LOST: THEMES

Here is a list of the themes in Paradise Lost.  They will all be studied more extensively in the discussion of the poem.

1. JUSTIFYING THE WAYS OF GOD TO MAN

The poem explains an entire theology.  It is about the coming of sin into the world through the temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan after his defeat in Heaven.  If Milton has justified the ways of God to man, all our questions about our relationship to God should be answered by implication from the poem.  The success of the explanation of course depends on whether you accept the Christian world view--even whether you accept Milton's special brand of Christian individualism.  The task of explaining an entire physical and moral system is not one we attempt today.  We divide our systems, believing that the world is too complex for a single theory to explain.

2. GOD'S OMNIPOTENCE, OMNISCIENCE, AND FREE WILL

The poem insists that all events are brought about by choice.  Satan chooses to rebel, Adam and Eve choose to eat the apple, knowing the consequences.  Every man and angel has free will.  At the same time, God knows everything that is to happen.  But his foreknowledge has no effect on choice--the universe is like a clock God winds up and sets going:  each of its parts performs without interference from God.

You will keep puzzling over this explanation throughout the poem.  It sometimes seems that God is callous about his creation because if he is omnipotent, why doesn't he stop evil from happening?  On the other
hand, perhaps God does not have the power to stop the clock or alter it once it's got going.  In that case, there must be something even more powerful than God which programs him.  It's an endlessly fascinating question.  The poem will give you lots of examples for a continuing argument.

3. INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY

Everyone makes his or her own decisions.  That means no one can blame anyone else for what happens.  But there is a great deal of blaming in the story.  Only when people accept responsibility for their own
choices do they find peace within themselves and forgiveness and mercy from God.

4. THE TRUE NATURE OF FREEDOM

True freedom is total submission to God's will and acceptance of what he wants in the world.  It is freedom from self and self-will.  Satan symbolizes the wrong kind of freedom, rebellion against just authority.  You are free when you understand where you fit in relationship to God and in the hierarchy of nature.

5. REASON

The highest exercise of man's reason is to understand and love God--and to trust him.  This means accepting what may seem illogical to human reason.  It also means not trusting human reason.  Human reason may deceive because it is limited and cannot necessarily penetrate God's purposes, which are beyond logic.  It was perfectly reasonable for Eve to conclude that she would not die because the serpent had not died when he ate fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. But she was limiting fallible human reason.  She ought to have gone
beyond the logical argument and trusted true reason--God's word.

6. THE HIERARCHICAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE UNIVERSE

Everything is arranged in an order, beginning with God at the highest point of all, going down through the angels to man, and from man down to beasts and plants.  Each part of the hierarchy has its own order:
in Heaven, the angels are lower than God and must take their orders from him.  On earth, Adam is closer to God than Eve, and she must take her orders from him.  The poem is about the violation of the order, first by Satan, then by Eve, and then by Adam, who puts Eve ahead of God.

7. HISTORY HAS A PURPOSE AND AN END

Although devastating in its results, the Fall is only part of a historical process.  Adam's fall leads through many generations to the incarnation of God the Son as Jesus Christ.  His fall is therefore a "happy fault" ("felix culpa") because it leads to the fulfillment of God's purpose.  When Christ dies for man, he begins
the process of redemption which eventually leads to the Last Judgment and the Second Coming.  This will be the end of history, for then there will be a new Heaven and a new earth.


PARADISE LOST: STYLE: THE POETIC METER

The meter of Paradise Lost is iambic pentameter, the meter in which Shakespeare wrote his plays.  It is often called "blank verse" because it doesn't rhyme.  Each line consists of five heavy stresses and five minor stresses.  In theory a line should read like this:

da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum

It happens to be the almost natural rhythm of the English language, which is why it is easy to read blank verse when you forget your fear of poetry.

Very few lines are strictly regular in the meter.  Even the famous first line reverses the stress in at least two places, where da-dum is replaced by dum-da and dum-dum.  It also has one more syllable than the ten prescribed by theory.

English poetic meter is not the simple matter of counting feet that is often taught.  It is a very complex interaction of stress, length, and quality of sound.  It is better to forget the complications and
read the poetry as naturally as possible.  You will then be able to appreciate how Milton varies his rhythm and the musical quality of the words to fit what he wants to say.  Read it out loud whenever you can, especially in the places where the speeches alternate like those in a play.

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John Milton

JOHN MILTON

John Milton

Americans tend to forget that they weren't the first to have a revolution.  The English had theirs more than 130 years before the Thirteen Colonies rebelled.  The English revolution consisted of a bloody Civil War from 1642 to 1649, the beheading of King Charles I in January 1649, and ten years of Puritan republican rule; it ended finally with the restoration of the monarchy under King Charles II in 1660.

These events aren't merely the background to John Milton's life: they were his life.  We usually think of the war as a conflict between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads.  John Milton was a Roundhead.  The Cavaliers, or Royalists, supported the king and tended toward Catholicism.  They believed in an aristocracy that had the right to special privileges, both in politics and in religion. The Roundheads, or Puritans, believed in a wider distribution of political and economic power and the right of every man to enjoy
direct access to God.

Milton was so strongly committed to the Puritan cause that he accepted a government position under Oliver Cromwell, who ruled as Lord Protector from 1649 to 1658.  Milton was a radical Christian individualist who objected strongly and vocally to all kinds of organized religions which, he believed, put barriers between man and God.

Milton was therefore a rebel because he identified himself with a revolutionary cause.  Paradise Lost, his masterpiece, is about rebellion and its consequences.

One way of looking at the poem is to see it as Milton's working out of his own position.  Although many readers have thought that Milton is really Satan, he probably saw himself as Abdiel, the angel who
refuses to go along with Satan.  Milton was arrogant in his belief that he understood the truth and had a duty to explain it for everyone's good.

The revolution he lived through changed every aspect of English life. When he was born in 1608, Shakespeare was still alive and Queen Elizabeth was only five years dead.  Her influence was still felt.
She had been an absolute monarch who regarded Parliament as a necessary evil in order to get money for her projects.  When Milton died in 1674, Charles II reigned as constitutional monarch without
any real power except that granted to him by Parliament.

Milton's circumstances changed drastically during his life.  His family was reasonably well-to-do.  They lived in London, which was Milton's home for most of his life.  His father was a scrivener, a sort of combined notary and banker, who was wealthy enough to affordprivate tutors for his son, then schooling at St.  Paul's and Christ's College, Cambridge University.  Perhaps just as important for Milton's development was the fact that his father was a musician and composer.  One of the most attractive features of Milton's poetry
is its marvelous musical qualities.

Since Milton had a small private income, he did not seek a profession when he left Cambridge, but stayed at home writing poetry and increasing his already amazing stock of knowledge.  Some people have
said that Milton was one of the most learned men England has ever known.  He wrote poetry in Latin, Greek, and Italian, and read almost all the literature surviving from the Greek and Roman periods.  He
even read the Bible in Hebrew.

Just before the religious and political quarrels in England came to a head, Milton went abroad for fifteen months, meeting and talking with learned and famous men all over Europe.  He met Galileo and looked
through his telescope, a fact Milton mentions more than once in Paradise Lost.

When he returned, he put his learning and considerable rhetorical force at the service of the Puritan cause.  He wrote a series of scorching political and religious pamphlets:  he condemned bishops, not only the Catholic ones but those of the Protestant Church of England; defended the liberty of the press against censorship; even advocated divorce.  Many of the controversies in which he engaged with heat and passion we find difficult to sympathize with now, but  Milton championed them with vigor and made himself not only well known but also well hated.

The Civil War deeply affected his personal relations.  His brother Christopher adhered to the Royalist side.  Milton married into a Royalist family in 1642.  He was swept off his feet by a fun-loving seventeen-year-old, Mary Powell, whose family was originally the source of Milton's private income (they had bought property from Milton's father).  The Powells kept Mary away from Milton, in Oxford where King Charles I made his headquarters, and did not let her travel to London to live with her husband until 1645.

By that time Milton had been extremely vocal publicly on the subject of divorce (he even advocated polygamy at one time) and had had an affair with a Miss Davies.  His was a lively household, for he looked
after and educated his dead sister's three sons.  (One of them became Milton's biographer and the source of most of what we know about Milton's life.) He took his duties as schoolmaster very seriously;
the boys were beaten if they did not learn their Latin and Greek grammar.  The civil disturbances flowed in and out of the house as Milton's pamphlets provoked angry opposition and his supporters cried
for more.

Only six weeks after King Charles I's head rolled from his body (Milton's friend Marvell wrote a famous ode on the occasion), Milton became Latin secretary to Oliver Cromwell.  It was his duty to compose all the government's diplomatic correspondence in Latin, a job probably concerned as much with public relations as with accurate translation.

By this time Milton was blind, probably as a result of a cyst or tumor of the pituitary gland.  For the rest of his life he depended on others to read to him and to write at his dictation.  Because he was not a patient man--he had the arrogance of a person conscious of his talents--reading and writing for him was not easy.  His daughters objected to the tyranny he showed in demanding their time and then complaining when they read incorrectly.

Mary died in 1652, leaving a blind man with three young daughters, the eldest mentally retarded.  Milton married again in 1657, but his second wife, whom he called in a famous sonnet his "espoused saint,"
lived only fifteen months and died after giving birth to a daughter, who also died.  Milton married a third time, to a woman who looked after him for the rest of his life and managed to bring order to a household full of quarreling daughters, relatives, and visitors to the famous writer.

In 1658, Oliver Cromwell had died, leaving England in the incompetent hands of his son, Richard.  The passions that had caused the Civil War had cooled, and the king's son was asked to return, but on the
conditions which brought about the English constitutional monarchy.

The coming of Charles II meant the end of Milton's government job. For a time he was in danger of his life and had to be hidden by friends--one of his pamphlets had argued strongly in defense of Charles I's beheading.  Milton retired from public life and devoted himself to the composition of Paradise Lost.  By the time he had finished dictating it to whoever got up early in the morning, two other events had disturbed Milton's never very tranquil life.  In 1665 he was forced by the Great Plague to leave London and live in a
Buckinghamshire village.  A year later, in the Great Fire in 1666, Milton lost the last piece of property he owned.  He lived the last few years of his life in considerable poverty, quite unlike the comfort of his first pampered years in his father's house.

Paradise Lost (1667) is the culmination of his life's work.  His early poems, the exquisite "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," "Lycidas," the masque Comus, and the sonnets would all secure him a place among
the finest English poets.  But it is Paradise Lost which makes it impossible for you to ignore Milton.  He wrote Paradise Regained afterward, but it has nothing like the stature of Paradise Lost.  (It is not, as you might think, about Christ's sacrifice, but about his three-day temptation in the desert by Satan.) Milton's final work, Samson Agonistes, is a Greek drama as impressive as Paradise Lost in everything except size.

Milton died in 1674, just after the second edition of Paradise Lost appeared.  The poem was for that time a modest best seller.  It sold 1,300 copies in the first eighteen months and earned Milton a total of ten pounds.  By the end of the seventeenth century, the book had gone through six editions, including one published in 1678 with large engraved illustrations.  It has never lost its status as a classic, and it has never stopped being a source of controversy.  People love or hate Paradise Lost, for as many reasons as it has readers.  The
poem has retained its interest because it deals with subjects that will always concern us--good, evil, freedom, responsibility.  And because, like any great work of literature, it's exciting to read.

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Periods of English Literature

Periods of English literature

1500-1600 The Renaissance (Early Modern Period)
1558-1603 Elizabethan Age
1603-1625 Jacobean Age
1625-1649 Caroline Age
1649-1660 Commonwealth Period
1600-1785 The Neo-classical Period
1660-1700 Restoration Period
1700-1745 The Augustan Age
1745-1783 The Age Of Sensibility
1785-1830 The Romantic Period
1832-1901 The Victorian Period
1848-1860 The Pre-Raphaelites
1880-1901 Aestheticism and Decadence
1901-1910 The Edwardian Period
1910-1914 The Georgian Period
1914- The Modern Period
1945- Post Modernism



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The History of English

A brief History of English

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Periods of Amercian English Literature

Periods of American English Literature and Arts

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Robert Browning's the Last Ride Together

Bonala Kondal: Robert Browning's: The Last Ride Together I. I said---Then, dearest, since 'tis so, Since now at length my fate I know, Since nothing all my love av...


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Simile

Simile

Simile is a figure of speech in which a comparison is made between two objects of different kinds, which are alike at least in one point.

In this figure words like, as or so are always used.

Suresh is as strong as a lion.

Helen was like a lovely rose.

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International Conference Global Indian Diaspora: Continuities and Changes

Call for Papers

International Conference

Global Indian Diaspora: Continuities and Changes

6-7 November 2014

CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF INDIAN DIASPORA

University of Hyderabad

The processes of globalization have been undergoing change over time for centuries from silent trade and barter exchange, through international trade and multinational corporations, to a free flow of capital and culture beyond the boundaries of nation-states spanning the globe. The far reaching changes in technologies of transport and communication, that followed the microelectronic revolution, have already impacted immensely on the way people think, work and view the world.

India today is not just a place, space or bounded territory forming a nation-state as it were, but the one for nearly a century long experience of being in Britain, The Netherlands, Trinidad, Guyana, Surinam, Fiji, Malaysia, Uganda, South Africa, USA, Canada and several other nations. It is what India has come to be, as it were dispersed. Under the present regime of globalization, India stretches to all corners of the globe where Indians remain Indians forming Global Indian Diaspora. The proposed International Conference on “Global Indian Diaspora” aims at examining the continuities and changes in the lives of Indians in the diaspora.

Besides discussing the conceptual issues in the study of Indian diaspora in the contemporary context, the conference shall address various themes such as: issues of identity;  transnationalism; and new policy initiatives.

The last date for sending the abstract is 15th August 2014 and the full paper is 15 October 2014. Any communication regarding the Conference, including the title of the presentation, the abstract and the paper may be sent by email to: Dr. Ajaya K. Sahoo, Conference Coordinator. Emails: aksss@uohyd.ernet.in / ajayacsid@yahoo.com

for more details visit: University of Hyderabad Website

ICFLTAL 2015

ICFLTAL 2015 : International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics

London, United Kingdom, January 19 - 20, 2015

Conference Objectives

The ICFLTAL 2015: International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics aims to bring together leading academic scientists, researchers and research scholars to exchange and share their experiences and research results about all aspects of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. It also provides the premier interdisciplinary forum for researchers, practitioners and educators to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, and concerns, practical challenges encountered and the solutions adopted in the field of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics.

Call for Submissions

We encourage you to contribute to and help shape the conference through paper submissions. For the technical research track, we invite high quality submissions of papers describing original and unpublished results of conceptual, constructive, empirical, experimental, or theoretical work in all areas of Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. The conference solicits contributions of full-length papers, short papers, posters and abstracts, that address the themes and topics for the conference, including figures, tables and references of novel research material. Please review the submission and formatting instructions carefully. Submissions that do not comply with the instructions and size limits will be rejected without review. 
WASET

Conference Proceedings

All submitted conference papers will be blind peer reviewed by three competent reviewers. The post conference proceedings will be published in the International Science Index and submitted to be indexed in the Thomson Reuters, CiteSeerX, Google Books and Google Scholar, EBSCO, SCOPUS, ERA and ProQuest. The conference proceedings book & CD and certificate of presentation will be distributed to the conference participants at the conference registration desk. 

Important Dates

Paper submissions Notification of acceptance Final paper submission and authors' registration Conference Dates

July 19, 2014 August 19, 2014 September 19, 2014 January 19 - 20, 2015

For more details visit: http://www.waset.org/conference/2015/01/london/ICFLTAL

Related Conferences

ICFLTAL 2014 : International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, Vancouver, Canada
ICFLTAL 2015 : International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, London, United Kingdom
ICFLTAL 2016 : International Conference on Foreign Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, London, United Kingdom

Here is Conference Flyer

http://www.scribd.com/doc/222732152/ICFLTAL-2015