Paradise Lost

1. All: Read Books 1-3
2. All: Write a very brief summary of each book for 1-3
3. Answer questions for books 1-3
4. Antonio: Present your Book 1-3 summaries to the class.
5. Judah: Lead the class in answering questions 1-8 for Book 1.
6. Johnny: Lead the class in answering the questions for Book 2.
7. Kiara: Lead the class in answering the questions for Book 3. 
   1. Examine the narrator’s invocation (lines 1-25) and his epic question and answer (lines 26-49).

        a) What is the source of the narrator’s authority?

        b) What kind of persona would you say is established when one puts all three elements — the invocations, question, and answer — together? Characterize             this poet – narrator — comparing him to the narrators of Spenser and Chaucer would be helpful.

   2. What purposes do the lines (50 – 83) serve that immediately follow the invocation and question and answer?

   3. Examine the first speech that Satan makes, the one he makes only to his arch – lieutenant, Beëlzebub. Also examine the latter’s response to this speech as well as Satan’s counter – response to Beëlzebub’s words. (84 – 124, 128 – 55, 157 – 91)

        a) Work out what the arguments of these two speakers are.

        b) Is Satan a skilled rhetorician? How so?

        c) Try to explain some of Satan’s errors in logic.

        d) Does Beelzebub know something Satan doesn’t; or does he admit something that Satan will not admit?

   4. From lines 195 – 210, we are treated to Milton’s first major extended simile. Actually, it is a series of similes, and a complex one at that. Examine these lines — in what way are they relevant, even vital, to the task of Milton and his narrator in describing heavenly things that really are not describable from a fallen      human perspective?

   5. Examine Satan’s primal poetic elegy — lines 242 – 55. What purpose/s does it serve? What resolution or statement does this elegy lead Satan to make?

   6. Read Satan’s speech to his whole army from lines 622 -62.

        a) This speech is in part a “revisionist” history of the bad angels’ fall — explain how this is so. Why is Satan’s version in error?

        b) What is Satan’s basic plan for the “future?”

   7. What human impulse do lines 670 – 738 describe?

   8. Observe the end of Book One, the assembling of the council (752 – 98). Concentrate especially upon lines 777 – 98. In what way is Milton having some fun at the angels’ expense here? What is he saying about the degree of “reality” that one can attribute to them?

   Book Two

   1. The great consult begins. Observe the opinions and rhetorical shifts of the following”debaters”:

        a) Satan (11 – 42)

        b) Moloch (43 – 108)

        c) Belial (108 – 225) and the narrator’s lines, (226 – 28)

        d) Mammon (229 – 83) and similes about angels’ applause, (284 – 91).

        e) Beëlzebub (310 – 416)

        f) Satan again (416 – 67)

   2. From lines 522 – 628, a very interesting dispersion of devils occurs. What do the devils do? (Characterize the behavior of the different “bands.”) What drives them to do these things?

   3. Now to Satan’s encounter with Death and to the allegory of the birth of Sin and Death. (629 – 726, 727 – 814) This is a long episode. Why is the subject so

   important to Paradise Lost? What does it tell you about Satan’s understanding of the consequences of his behavior?

   4. At line 917, Satan beholds the abyss into which he must plunge. Observe his plunge and progress from lines 927 – 961. What would you say is the narrator’s attitude toward Satan’s enterprise?

   5. Examine lines 1034 – 55, the end of Book Two. What dramatic purpose does this birds eye view serve?

   Book Three

   16. Read the invocation (1 – 55) carefully — observe the narrator’s tone and the basic rhetorical structure of the passage: “Hail. . .but thou. . .but not. . .So much the rather. . . .” What would you say Milton is trying to achieve by making the narrator speak these lines?

   17. Examine lines 80 – 143. Characterize God’s “personality,” his manner of speaking. Also, describe the theological argument that God makes in this speech. Moreover, what prediction does he make about the future?

   18. Follow the dialogue between Christ and God from lines 144 – 216 as well as the narrator’s characterization of the pause for a reply to God’s question, lines 217 – 26. Find some clue or clues in these lines as to why we are hearing this dialogue. (Lines 167 – 72 and 217 – 26 are especially helpful.)

   19. “Meanwhile upon the firm opacous globe. . ./ Satan alighted walks” (418,422). Here, we pan back to Satan, almost cinema – style. Observe lines 418 – 501 — why do you think that Milton’s narrator is made to describe this “location” so carefully? What effect does it have on our perspective of Satan’s enterprise?