WHO WAS JOHN MILTON?

1608-1674

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) and The New Reform

Army

Aeropagitica 1644

Paradise Lost 1667

Blank Verse and Religious Traditions

The Verse “The Measure is English Heroic Verse

without Rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; the Rhyme being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age…”

Poetry and Theodicy

Instruct me for thou know’st; Thou from the first/ Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread/ Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast Abyss/ And mad’st it pregnant: What in me is dark/ Illumine, what is low raise and support;/ That to the heighth of this great Argument/ I may assert Eternal Providence/ and justify the ways of God to men.

Milton’s Satan

Heav’n calld Satan, with bold words Breaking the Horrid Silence thus began.“If thou beest hee; but O how fall’n! how chang’d”

“Awake, Arise or be forever Fallen!”

Satan: Imagination and Freedom

“…Hail horrors, hailInfernal world, and thou profoundest Hell Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.The mind is its own place, and In itself Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.…And what Should I be, all but less than heeWhom Thunder hath made Greater? Here at least We shall be free;…Here we may reign secure, And in my choice To reign is worth ambition though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.”

Satan’s Cohort Beelzebub Moloch “Horrid King besmear’d with

blood/ Of human sacrifice, and parent’s tears…” Chemos (Heathen Deity) “th’obscene

dread of Moab’s Sons…” Rimmon (Syrian god) “Whose delightful

Seat Was fair Damascus…” Baalim and Astaroth “Astarte, Queen of

Heav’n , with Crescent Horns.” Ashtaroth (plural of the gods prefixed by

Baal, and of the forms of the goddess Ashtoreth.)

Satan’s Cohort… Cont. Thammuz “Whose annual wound in

Lebanon allur’d/ The Syrian Damsels to lament his fate.”

Rimmon (Syrian god) “Whose Delightful seat was in Fair Damascus.”

Dagon “Sea Monster” Belial “….came last, than whom a

Spirit more lewd Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love Vice for itself: to him no temple stood or Altar smok’d; yet who more oft than hee in Temples and at Altars, when the Priest Turns Atheist…”

The Romantic Obsession with Paradise Lost

William Blake: Engraver, Poet, Painter, Visionary 1757-1827

Milton’s Satan and the “Fortunate Fall”

All Bibles or sacred codes. have been the causes of the following/ Errors. 1.That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body and a Soul./ 2.That Energy. Called Evil. Is alone from the Body. & that Reason./ calld Good. is alone from the Soul./3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Ener-/gies.

Blake’s Illustrations of Milton’s Paradise Lost

Newton’s Rainbow

"Poetry is true in that it corresponds to a Reality transcending the world of sense. According to Blake, poetry is the vehicle of Vision, and 'Vision or Imagination is a Representation of what Eternally Exists, Really & Unchangeably,' outside 'the things of Vegetative & Generative Nature.'"- MH Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp.

Innocence vs Experience

The Text-Image & Laocoön

Blake’s God & Popular Culturehttp://Johnny Depp- William Blake

Blake and Allen Ginsberg

http://Blake and Ginsberg

http://Nurse's Song

http://Howl