To Lucasta; on going to the wars

Tell me not, sweet, I’m unkind

That from the nunnery

Of thy chaste breast and quite mind

To war and arms I fly

True, a new mistress now I chase,

The first foe in the field

And with a stronger faith embrace

A sword, a horse, a shield.

8.2. John Milton. «Paradise Lost”.

John Milton overshadows all other poets of the 17^th century and stands as one of the greatest figures of the English literature. He is known as the foremost representative of English Puritanism in literature, and he was brought up in a home where the culture of the Renaissance was combined with the righteous life of the Puritans. Following his mother’s wish, John was preparing for the religious career, and at the age of 16 he went to Cambridge.

John Milton’s life seems to have revolted around three great decisions. At the university he gave up the idea of taking orders in the Anglican Church. He always remained religious, though, and for him poetry was a sacred calling. In the 1640’s Milton was forced to make a second decision – his role in the Civil war. He joined the Puritans in Parliament and became a pamphleteer on behalf of church reform and Crowmwell’s. Latin Secretary a third decision had to be made when Milton found himself threatened by blindness. If he had given his political work, he might have saved his sight, but the call of duty was powerful. Thus, at the age of 41 he went completely blind.

It was during the last 10 years of his life that Milton, totally blind, completed his great long poems: “Paradise Lost” and “Paradise Regained” – often dictating them to his daughters. Of these two “Paradise Lost” is the most famous speaking of these works one should not forget the conditions of the time when they were created. They were written when the bourgeois revolution ended unsuccessfully. The powerful voice of the poet rang through the triumphing reaction. Milton, with the pathos of a biblical prophet, declared that the spirit of the puritan revolution was not dead, that was still living in the hearts of its faithful supporters. Milton’s poetry was a challenge to the victorious reaction. It served to express an uncompromising revolutionary spirit.

Ii is the epic drandeur in “Paradise Lost” which strikes the reader. The place of action is the universe and the personages of the poem are also different by their remoteness from ordinary and everyday people.

The revolutionary subject matter is manifested with great power in presenting the struggle of Satan against God. According to the biblical legend one should be impressed by the mercy and the greatness at God and meanness of Satan.

The objective of “Paradise Lost” is staped in the opening of the poem:

“Of Mans first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, all our were

With loss of Eden, till one greater man

Restore us and regain the blissful seat,

Sing heav’nly muse.”

In Milton’s poem God is the severe Puritan God, punishing all those spirits and people who do not obey him. He is the Almighty monarch of the universe, and the angels call him “heavenly king”; archangel Raphael even makes it more exact by using the term sovereign. God rules the world autocratically. He exacts of his heavenly and earthly subjects unconditional obedience. And not always a divine wisdom is seen in his orders. It is not be mere chance that when Satan speaking of him says that he reigns alone as a despot in Heaven:

‘High on a throne of royal state

Sole reigning holds the tyranny of heav’n”.

Satan is given as much more attractive figure. He possesses more humaneness and inner greatness. As Dryden says: Satan is the hero of the poem. His proud, disobedient, spirit, not willing to yield even to God. Slavish obedience is incompatible with his nature. The revolt against God deprived him of blessedness of heavenly life, but though the memory of that life gives him pain, he prefers his present state, for notwithstanding his suffering and his torments, he feels free not having over him any ruler:

“Farewell happy fields

Where joy forever dwells, Hail honours, hail

infernal world, and thou, profoundest Hell

Receiver thy new possessor; one who brings

A mind not to be changed by place or time

the mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven,

What matter where, if I be still the same

And what I should be, all but less than he

Whom thunder hath made greater?

Here at last we shall be free; the Almightly

Hath not built Here for his envy, will

not drive us hence:

Here we may reign secure, and in my choice

To reign is ambition though in Hell:

Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven”.

Satan’s heroic spirit is seen everywhere. He addresses the fallen angels proudly and uncompromisingly:

“ … what though the field be lost?

All is not lost; the unconquerable will,

And study of revenge, immortal hate,

And courage never to submit or yield:

And what is else not to be overcome?

That glory never shall his wrath of might

Extort from me. to blow and sue for grace

With suppliant knee, and defile his power

Who from the terror of this arm so late

Doubted his empire, that were low indeed,

That were ignominly and shame beneath

This downfall”.

He declares that he doesn’t submit but is going with his companions to continue the war:

“In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,

We may with more successful hope resolve

To wage by force or guile eternal war,

Irreconcilable, to our grand foe,

Who now triumphs and is in excess of joy”

In spite of the suffering he thinks that:

Peace is despaired

For who can think submission!”

But besides this spirit of pride and courage, Satan possesses a sense of compassion which the severe Puritan God does not know at all. He feels sorry on seeing around himself adherents, those who shared his guilt, who lost eternal blessedness and are doomed to everlasting suffering on account of him. Satan and his followers are bound by the ties of loyalty and unanimity. The poet stresses that the fallen angels remained in their dire state loyal to Satan.

Such a thing cannot be seen in Heaven. When God asks the angels who would consent to become mortal in order to atone by his suffering the sin of the first human beings, then the host of the heavenly spirits remain in silence. No one wants to become man’s intercessor.

From the very beginning one can see that “Paradise Lost” is far from expressing the orthodox religious views of the period. It was very popular among English romanticists of the XIXth century. Shelley says emphatically that Milton’s poem itself contains a philosophic rejection of the very system it was intended to support.

Nothing surpasses the greatness and energy of Satan’s image in “Paradise Lost”, according to Shelley, who thinks that it would be wrong to say. It was designed to be a popular illustration of incarnated evil. Milton didn’t give his God any moral superiority over his Satan.

In “Paradise Lost” God and and the Angels are as material as men. In depicting God Milton deviates from the Christian spiritualism and returns to the naïve materialism of the ancient epics. His God is material though deprived of those features that make the gods of the antiquity so attractive. this is stiff, severe Puritanic thunderer of the Olympus.

Milton takes the features of his characters from his surrounding reality from the life of his stormy Epoch. Being a contemporary of the great historical struggle of the two class forces, he himself was full of the spirit of this struggle. Presenting the fight of Satan against God Milton rather unconsciously than intentionally depicts it under the influence of his memoirs of the Civil War in England of the 17^th century.

Satan and his associates were imbued with the desire to crush the unlimited authority of God. It is characteristic that Satan, heading the revolt of the angels against God doesn’t depress his associates with his power.

The portrayal of Adam and Eve is full of the tremendous power which is characteristic of the humanists. When Adam is informed of Eve’s fall, he tastes of the forbidden fruit in order to share her punishment and to perish with her.

Adam and Eve are pictured as beings that are thirsty for knowledge. With Adam, however, it is simply a calm curiosity. With Eve it is like outbursting passion, springing up under the influence of the words of Satan who convinces her in the possibility of likening the human being to God, by knowing good and evil. Contrary to the biblical legend in which Eve yields to Satan’s flattery, her temptation, according to Milton, lies in the possibility of attaining unusual power.

This Eve is shown not as a thoughtless woman, who by folly and weakness commits the fateful crime, but as a great incarnation of humanity aspiring at knowing the world. This points out to the close spiritual kinship of Milton with the men of the Renaissance.

Lecture 9.

9.1. The Enlightenment and the English literature of the 18^th century.

As several of the most brilliant writers of the 18^th century were Irishmen, notably Jonathan Swift, Oliver Goldsmith Richard Sheridan. it is important to say a few words about Ireland. unlike Scotland, which shared the monarchy on equal terms with England 9in 1707 they were officially united to form the United Kingdom), Ireland was a country that had been conquered by the English. the genuine Irish, mostly peasants, were Catholics and still spoke their own language, Galic. But most of the landowners and the professional class came from families of English settlers; and it is these Anglo-Irish, unusually gifted, witty people, who gave English literature so many brilliant writers, from Jonathan Swift to Bernard Shaw.

This century also saw the change of the ruling dynasty: after William and Mary, came Mary’s sister, Queen Anne, the least of the Stuarts, who reigned from 1702 to 1714. After her death a difficult situation arose: the direct succession to the throne belonged to the line of the deposed James II, his son and then his grandson, who, supported by the “Jacobites”, were waiting in France.

In order to avoid the Stuart succession, the Crown was offered to a cousin of Queen Anne, the ruler of a small German kingdom of Hanover, who took the trone in 1714. After her death a difficult situation arose: the direct succession to the throne belonged to the line of the deposed James II, his son and then his grandson, who supported by the “Jacobites”, were waiting in France as George I. he was followed by his son, George II, and grandson, George III. The Hanovers were not a very happy choice, but two attempts to restore the Stuarts were failures.

From now on the two-party system, later adopted in America, came into being. The Whigs represented chiefly the financial and mercantile interests, the cities and the towns, the progressive element, and, were strongly opposed to any interference in politics by the monarchy. The Tories, many of them Jacobites, represented the country squires and their folk, those who favoured old traditions. There was no real political democracy in the modern understanding, but, on the other hand, the ordinary people of the 18^th century were public-spirited and often expressed their dissatisfaction by violent rioting that could be calmed down only by military force.

The 18^th century could also be called a century of Wars. From the beginning to the end of the century the great rival, the enemy was France. At first the struggle was for European supremacy, but by the middle of the century the struggle with France was for overseas empire. Here Britain had an advantage because she had better Navy and knew how to use her sea – power. It was during these years that the huge British Empire, ranging from Gibraltar to India and Canada was built up.

But though it was the century of wars, they were completely different from what we understood by “a war” in the 20^th century: these were usually fought by small professional armies, and the daily lives of the most people were affected hardly at all. Even when Britain and France were at war, trade and cultural exchanges continued between the two countries.

In this period Britain was free from the revolutionary heated atmosphere of the 17^th century and the growing doubts and dark divisions of the 19^th century. The upper classes and the middle classes in Britain during this age felt more complacement than they had ever felt before or since. They felt that they lived in the in the best of all possible worlds. The 18^th century complacency was due partly to the work of the scientists and philosophers who really belonged to the previous century. They had announced in their various ways that the universe was a smoothly running machine, first set in motion by a benevolent deity and that so long as man understood the working of this machine he could be said to be the master of it. This rational religion was known as deism. Human reason and “common sense” played so large and significant a role in this period that it is often referred to as “the age of reason”.

The same key-word “reason” can be found in the definition of the term “Enlightenment”: “the period in the 18^th century in Europe when certain thinkers taught that science and the use of reason would improve the human condition”.

The writers and philosophers of this age thought that man was virtuous by nature, and vice was due to ignorance only. So they started a public movement for enlightening people. To their understanding, this would do away with all the evils of society, and social harmony would be achieved.

But the 18^th century in England was also an Age of Elegance. Real civilization not unlike but superior to the old classical civilization of Greece and Rome, to which the 18^th century compared itself had been achieved at last; and now society (by which was meant persons of position, wealth and influence) could settle down to enjoy it. Never in European history we see men and woman of the 18^th century.

And it was for this small and compact society of important and influential people that literature at the beginning of this period was chiefly created. It was very much a public literature, not representing the deeply felt impressions, hopes or fears of one individual, but the outlook and values of this limited society. It was literature that could be read aloud in a drawing room, enjoyed in a theatre or discussed in a coffee-house. Naturally, the atmosphere of this kind encourages comedy, satire in both verse and prose, pleasant little essays, and criticism, but it is fatal to poetry.

Shakespeare’s sonnets would have seemed absurd to this society, which did not expect from literature anything private or intimate.

But very soon the situation changed drastically. Readers were no longer confined to a small class: the new middle class, especially its women members took to buying and reading books. If they couldn’t afford to buy them, they borrowed them from libraries run by shopkeepers.

The fact that young women borrowed so much fiction shows that by 1770s the novel, though a comparatively new literary form, had won great popularity.

English literature of the period may be characterized by the following features:

• this period saw the rise of the political pamphlet and essay, but the leading genre of the Enlightenment became the novel. poetry and the heroic age of Shakespeare gave way to the prose age of the essayist and novelists. The prose style became clear, graceful and polished.

• the hero of the novel was no longer a prince, but a representative of the middle class: that was new, because so far the common people had usually been depicted as comic characters.

• literature became very instructive: writers tried to teach their readers what was good and was bad from their own point of view.