ENGLISH 3310 THIRD ESSAY ASSIGNMENT

GRADY FALL 2019

Essays should be in 12-point type, double-spaced with one-inch margins, and 1700-2000 words on one of the topics below. Be sure to refer as helpfully and specifically as possible to the texts upon which you're basing your argument--and be sure to have an argument or thesis. Your essay should have an original title, and it should not use the word "mindset.” Essays are due in on Friday, December 6.

When you submit your essay electronically, please indicate whether you would like to receive it back on the day of the final exam with a grade and no marginal comments, or whether you would like to receive it later on—probably after the end of the semester-- with the usual set of comments.

1. Design your own topic, of suitable specificity and sophistication, about something that interests you in Milton’s Paradise Lost or Pope’s Rape of the Lock. Consultation with the instructor is required for those of you intending to use this option; talking with one another is highly recommended, too. Please inform me by Monday, December 2 about the topic you propose to pursue.

2. Use the remark of a critic to get some leverage on Milton’s Paradise Lost.

(a) William Blake wrote of Milton in 1793 that "The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it." Discuss Blake's claim. Some questions to ask:

· What poetic effects is he referring to?

· What in Paradise Lost would make Blake think Milton was "of the Devil's party"?

· How do you think would Milton have reacted to this assertion?

(b) The critic William Empson, in writing about Paradise Lost, claimed that "the central problem about the poem" is "how Milton can have thought it to justify God." Empson suggested that because Milton was saddled with the insoluble problem of "why God had to procure all these falls for his eventual high purpose," Milton himself, when he began writing the poem, "was exactly in the position of the Satan he presents, overwhelmingly stubborn and gallant but defending a cause inherently hopeless from the start."

o Is Empson on to something? How successfully does Paradise Lost "justify the ways of God to men?" (Remember--this means Milton's God, God the character in the poem.)

· One way to approach this topic would be to count up how many times in the poem God (and Milton, and other characters) must remind us all that his foreknowledge did not make the Fall inevitable.

(c) C.S. Lewis explains the causes of the Fall quite simply: "Eve fell through pride," he writes, while "Adam fell through uxoriousness." Reaffirm your own fallen state by entering once again into the "vain contest" over the cause or causes of the Fall, and be sure to refer to the text to support your position (even if your position is “it’s complicated”).

· Is Lewis right, or mostly right, or vastly oversimplifying?

· An alternate approach to the topic of the Fall would be to ask not why it happened, but exactly when it happened—is there an event or moment in the poem that makes the Fall seem inevitable?

3. In Books II and III of Paradise Lost, Milton deliberately contrasts the Parliament in Hell with the proceedings in Heaven long before we ever get to see the earth; again in Book X, he shows us scenes in both Heaven and Hell. Write an essay about these paired scenes. Some questions you might consider:

· Is hell fundamentally like heaven, or only superficially similar to it—and how do we know?

· What is the effect on the reader of these juxtapositions?

· How do these paired scenes satirize, comment on, or explain one another?

· How do they point to the larger ways in which good and evil manifest themselves or perform their operations in the poem?

3A. In Books II and III of Paradise Lost, Milton deliberately contrasts the Parliament in Hell with the proceedings in Heaven, and he does it by showing us the scene in Hell first. It’s not the last time that Milton shows us Satan imitating God or the Son or other heavenly creatures—the epic voice is constantly commenting on the practice--but it seems like we are often shown the imitation before we see the real thing. Discuss some of these incidents, and the effect Milton achieves (or tries to achieve) by working, as it were, backwards.

4. Discuss Satan's transformations in Paradise Lost, from brightest of angels to fallen angel, from youthful cherub to cormorant to lion to toad to mist to serpent to devil and back to serpent again.

· Does Satan degrade himself, or is he degraded by some other force--God, or Milton, or evil?

· What different voices speak about his transformations, and what are the moral or poetic perspectives is on his character that those voices have

5. Pausing for another soliloquy before he enters the sleeping serpent, Satan muses “But what will not ambition and revenge / Descend to?” (9.167-8). There’s a lot of language about rising and falling in Paradise Lost, right from the very beginning. Some if it is meant literally and some metaphorically; some of these motions are done for evil purposes, some for good; some is entirely hypothetical. Discuss some of this language in the context of an argument about the significance of rising and falling in Milton’s poem (a poem about the Fall, with a capital F).

6. Epic poems are typically heroic poems--think Beowulf--but although Milton models Paradise Lost on the epic poems of Homer and Vergil, his subject requires him to develop a different account of heroism than that usually found in the epic tradition. What is it?

o What sort of actions does Milton portray as heroic in Paradise Lost?

o What is his attitude toward the traditional notion of heroic behavior described in other poems?

o Does Paradise Lost even have a hero? Does it have more than one?

7. Does it matter—is it significant—that Milton gives Eve the last speech of Paradise Lost? If so, why? If not, why not? (It’s highly likely that this topic, if done well, will require you to revisit other passages in the poem in which Eve features significantly.)

8. Other potential topics: the role of the epic voice in the poem (does it offer a consistent perspective on the action?); Adam and Eve and Milton and marriage (what is his ideal, and do they live up to it?)