Critical Analysis Of Paradise Lost

The Great chain of being is a concept provided to display the hierarchical order of matter within the universe. God ranks on top, and succeeding him are angels, humans, animals, vegetative life, inanimate objects, and crud. The great chain of being 's premise originated from the Classical era, but it expanded and developed, becoming a major theme in the works of Renaissance thinkers. The Great Chain of being not only served as a metaphor that described all the parts of the universe, but it also depicted the shift from the theocentric mindset of the medieval era to the anthropocentric mindset of the Renaissance era. Works like John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, Marlowe’s tragic play The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, and the medieval poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” all implement ideas of the Great chain of being.

In Dante’s Inferno, Dante Alighieri's depiction of Satan at the bottom of hell reveals the theme that in Hell the punishment is always befitting of the due to the fact that the lower you go, the farther that person is from god. The picture of Satan satisfies the reader because he shows that he is the opposite of god and that he is full of evil. Lucifer is the demon in the circles of hell which he has three faces, and bat like wings in which he creates the cold wind where the sinners suffer. “The face in the middle was red, the color of anger. The face on the right was white blended with yellow, the color of impotence. The face on the left was black, the color of ignorance,” (34). Lucifer is pictured as a terrifying demon to give a better

Dante meets people through his journey of the many circles in the Inferno that lead him down into the center of hell, where Satan is. Satan is seen as being monster-like with three heads, representing a mocking of the Trinity and blowing his wings around the cocytus river. The final thing seen here is the fact that Dante’s description of Satan is a bit disappointing compared to the other descriptions he has written about the inferno. Dante’s portrayal of Satan is paradoxically empty and monstrous; it captures Satan in his true form and speaks of who he truly is.

called Lucifer and was the greatest of all angels l, rebelled against God over his jealousy of man. Turning evil and fighting the Almighty, he was destined to lose and thrown out of heaven, along with his army. In Dante’s Inferno, he resides in the deepest bowels of hell, where he tortures the three worst traitors in human history: Judas Iscariot, betrayer of Jesus of Nazareth, Cassius and Brutus, slayers Julius Caesar. In hell, contrapasso rules, and the appearances of the fallen angel Lucifer agrees with it.

Communication is key in every aspect of life. It is necessary for politicians to communicate with society, and it is necessary for a family to communicate to function. In Paradise Lost, John Milton writes speech after speech to force the importance of that communication between characters and with one’s own conscience. By taking the potentially blasphemous risk to speak for God, Milton reiterates to readers in a single speech that even if God knows every outcome of every conversation, there is still necessity in communication between Him and His followers, so that even as the almighty and all powerful, He can one day be the benign god He wishes to be.

In the nineteenth century gothic novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley uses numerous allusions within her novel that can easily be interpreted by the reader. These allusions make it easier for readers to understand the characters and compare their circumstances throughout the story. The most significant and most used was from John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost. It is known that, “…Paradise Lost stands alone in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries atop the literary hierarchy, and Milton’s epic is clearly rooted in the history of Puritanism and in the bourgeois ideal of the individual, the ‘concept of the person as a relatively autonomous self-contained

In Duong Thu Huong’s Paradise of the Blind, Hang has been placed on a path of self-sacrifice and duty by her family. Her life unfolds in stages- childhood, young adulthood, and her eventual role as an exported worker in Russia. With each of these shifts in her life comes a shift in setting and a shift in her emotional state. Hang’s changing emotional state depicts her “coming of age” and her growth as a character. Setting is important to creation of shift in the novel, and is often described in detail. Color imagery is often prominent in Hang’s description. Between settings, there are significant shifts in color imagery. In Paradise of the Blind, setting and the colors with which it is associated reflect Hang’s emotional state and create shift

“The creature is bitter and dejected after being turned away from human civilization, much the same way that Adam in “Paradise lost was turned out of the Garden of Eden. One difference, though, makes the monster a sympathetic character, especially to contemporary readers. In the biblical story, Adam causes his own fate by sinning. His creator, Victor, however, causes the creature’s hideous existence, and it is this grotesqueness that leads to the creature’s being spurned. Only after he is repeatedly rejected does the creature become violent and decides to seek revenge” (Mellor 106). This creation allegory is made clear from the beginning with the epigraph from John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), which begins the novel.

The main character of a story is oftentimes the one who receives the title of the hero, yet the protagonist in this case is Satan. Labeling him as such typically yields controversy, as one side struggles with moral and religious connotation, while the other applies a more literary interpretation. If this is construed as being the character at the center of Campbell’s monomyth, then Satan would be the hero, as his journey greatly parallel’s that of the Hero’s Journey. Therefore, outside of religion, many may agree that throughout this poem, Satan acts as the hero–regardless of one’s standard definition of that word. The separation stage of the monomyth is marked by Satan’s banishment to Hell, and his decision for revenge towards God. His attempts at bringing about the downfall of Adam and Eve, as well as his encounters and interactions with the rest of God’s creation, address the initiation stage. The return is depicted in Satan’s venture back into the underworld, as well as the consequences that fall on everyone, following his actions

The classic novel Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley in 1818, displays the use of literary devices, foreshadowing, allusions and figurative language, which aid the reader in understanding the authors opinion on scientific exploration. These techniques are used to arouse anticipation within the reader, therefore engaging them throughout the text. Along with providing a greater understanding of the novel, by referring to other books, and using the novel to portray the authors own perspective on scientific exploration. All these devices are effectively used within the novel to provide a deeper understandings of Mary Shelley’s work.

The eighteenth century brought substantial change in England regarding people’s view of science, religion, and literature. Stoic scholars and lower class farmers alike began to shift their thoughts from “why does a specific event happen” to “how does said event happen?” Instead of sitting idly wondering why the river floods, architects and engineers shifted their focus towards possible solutions regarding how to manage the flooding. Three famous works in particular during the Restoration period provide obvious examples of the changing literary style. Paradise Lost by John Milton questions Lucifer’s fall from heaven in a new, unconventional way; “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift uses satire to alleviate some suffering and loss during

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel This Side of Paradise was his first book that he published that sparked his stardom in the world of authorship. Thomas Jefferson once said, “If you find yourself constantly trying to prove your worth to someone, you have already forgotten your value.” Life is quite a journey. There are numerous things that will forgo in life that will cause people to change their thinking or beliefs. The friends’ people hang out with, their hobbies, interests, schools and universities they attend. They are all part of the equation in finding your identity and your purpose in life. For Amory Blaine, it started all the way back from his childhood when his mother was raising him. After that came the countless, un-meaningful relationships,

Rita Felski’s view of tragedy being the failure “to master the self and the world” is at the heart of Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Both texts are concerned with the incapacity of defining and accepting one’s identity and the characters’ attempts to resolve this identity crisis by isolating themselves. This essay will argue that the fundamental cause for this tragedy is the lack of emotional connection from one’s family, which in turn prohibits one to sympathize with anyone, including oneself.

There were several lines that the word "followers" has been used by Milton, for example, line 37, 50, 76. Although most of them did not appear as the word "followers" we know today, some of them even had substituted by other spellings such as crew and host. For example, in line 76 of book 1 of the Paradise Lost, it addressed that "There the companions of his fall, o'rewhelm'd" (Book 1, 76), which is translated as "This is where he saw all his defeated followers." in Modern English. Milton did not mention the word “followers” but the word "fall". In modern English, the word "fall" is used oftentimes, which normally means an object descends from a high position to a low position. Nevertheless, it was meant to the group of people dropping down in the original text, it implied that people rebel against God will eventually go to the hell. It is clear that "fall" in the poem may not be directly referred to what we know about “followers” today; it has the mutual meaning of a group of people with the similar sight of view. If they rebel against God, they will receive a penalty and fall into the hell. Why the writer wrote the word “fall” instead of “folgere”? Scanning the text, Milton usually mentioned the words related to followers when he wanted to indicate that group of people rebelling against the god. The original words not only had the meaning of a group of people having the similar view, it

To compare the epics a gauge is to be set. Action being the first of criteria as percolated by Aristotle to every form of literary criticism the comparative study between epics may also began from the same. Action should have following three qualifications: first it should be one action, second it should be an entire action and third it should be a great action. Aristotle himself imputes that the unity of action is missing from the epics because of the very nature of an epic poem. Epic should be an entire action consists the dimension of a beginning, middle an end. Joseph Addison while analysing the same point points that we find the birth of Achilles’s anger, it’s continuance, and effects; same for Aeneas’s settlement in Itly and it’s result but Milton is considered to have excelled his predecessors on this ground.