![]() ![]() From the opening line, “Of man's first disobedience” etc., to the end, our interest centres around him and we cannot for a moment lose sight of him. Though Adam is a passive agent in the story, though he is more acted upon than acting, he looms large in the whole story. Adam is the real subject matter of the epic. It is the "fall of man," as represented in the earliest ancestor of the human race. Man, in his plan, is the central figure around whom the plot revolves. His mission is to “justify the ways of God to men.” There is little doubt that Milton intended the poem to be an intensely human one. ![]() Johnson, Landor, Stopford Brooke and others. What is magnificent, glamorized and beautiful need not be good, desirable or heroic, especially if it is steeped in hypocrisy and deceit.Ī second view is that Adam is the true hero of the epic. After all, evil has to be attractive if it aims to tempt people away from goodness. For a Puritan, anything flashy and glamorous is necessarily evil. One should always remember that Milton was a Puritan. “To regard Satan as the hero of Milton's epic is to stultify the poet's whole intention if he is the hero then Paradise Lost is a bad poem since Milton will have failed to express its meaning through the hero.” Moreover, Satan's heroic grandeur is not seen so much in action as it is seen in his speeches. Milton had a far different idea of the heroic. It is only ‘a nonsensical paradox’ to say that Satan is the hero. But when the poem is read in its entirety, the conclusion is inescapable that Satan cannot be regarded as the hero of the epic. Thus it is that to the readers who do not go beyond the first two books of Paradise Lost, the title of Satan to the heroship of the poem seems to be undeniable. At the close of the poem, Satan’s degradation is complete”. Surely to take one instance alone, there is little of the heroic in Satan when he takes the form of a toad to whisper in Eve’s ear and is stirred up by the spear of Ithuriel (Book X). But we have not to wait for Paradise Regained to see the steady deterioration in Satan’s character. His character, his power, and his capacity for evil must be exalted in order to show the epic greatness of the coming conflict, in order to rouse the reader’s fears for himself, human sympathy with his first parent and gratitude for his redemption. It is only the reading of the first two books of paradise lost that lends some colour to the theory.” Wyatt and Low have summed up the whole matter: “In the first two books Satan is naturally made a heroic figure he is still an Archangel, though fallen, one of the chief Archangels and king over his fellows. But he “is not only wicked but utterly and irretrievably damned, like Marlowe's Faustus and Shakespeare’s Macbeth.” Besides, “his history in the book is that of a person, in process of degrading change. ![]() No doubt Satan appeals to human feelings as a great tragic character. HFS clients enjoy state-of-the-art warehousing, real-time access to critical business data, accounts receivable management and collection, and unparalleled customer service.But there are other considerations which are fatal to this theory. HFS provides print and digital distribution for a distinguished list of university presses and nonprofit institutions. MUSE delivers outstanding results to the scholarly community by maximizing revenues for publishers, providing value to libraries, and enabling access for scholars worldwide. Project MUSE is a leading provider of digital humanities and social sciences content, providing access to journal and book content from nearly 300 publishers. With warehouses on three continents, worldwide sales representation, and a robust digital publishing program, the Books Division connects Hopkins authors to scholars, experts, and educational and research institutions around the world. With critically acclaimed titles in history, science, higher education, consumer health, humanities, classics, and public health, the Books Division publishes 150 new books each year and maintains a backlist in excess of 3,000 titles. The division also manages membership services for more than 50 scholarly and professional associations and societies. The Journals Division publishes 85 journals in the arts and humanities, technology and medicine, higher education, history, political science, and library science. The Press is home to the largest journal publication program of any U.S.-based university press. One of the largest publishers in the United States, the Johns Hopkins University Press combines traditional books and journals publishing units with cutting-edge service divisions that sustain diversity and independence among nonprofit, scholarly publishers, societies, and associations. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |