L1 Lit: Week 5 Milton

If you would like to write a preparation for this week, you can choose one of the following questions. You can also do a practice commentary following one of the models I gave in class on Tuesday, February 9th. Remember, your preparations are to be between 250 and 500 words and that you are concentrating heavily on how the poet's language creates certain effects in the poem. If at all possible, I would prefer you type your responses.

1. Follow up question for Shakespeare: There are 154 sonnets in Shakespeare's sonnet cycle. We studied one of them in class today. If you are interested in Shakespeare, I encourage you to read several more of the sonnets to get an idea of how reading them together can create a more complex picture of Shakespeare's exploration of love. For this question, choose another sonnet that interests you and analyze how this second sonnet presents a different experience of love from the insomnia in "Sonnet 27".

E-book of Shakespeare's sonnets

2. Paradise Lost is John Milton's poetic adaptation of the story of the fall of man found in the book of Genesis.

We will concentrate on the passage where Eve hesitates and then finally eats the the forbidden fruit of knowledge. In this passage she has just heard the serpent present the merits of this fruit. Genesis describes this moment very briefly. "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat" (Ch. 3).

Milton has expanded this moment considerably in his poem. If you would like to write a preparation for Milton, identify several things that Milton adds in his poetic adaptation. Once you have identified several added elements, analyze how these additions contribute to Milton's presentation of the fall of man. When Eve says "thy," "thou," and "thee," she is addressing the fruit.

Great are thy Vertues, doubtless, best of Fruits,
Though kept from Man, & worthy to be admir'd,
Whose taste, too long forborn, at first assay
Gave elocution to the mute, and taught
The Tongue not made for Speech to speak thy praise:
Thy praise hee also who forbids thy use,
Conceales not from us, naming thee the Tree
Of Knowledge, knowledge both of good and evil;
Forbids us then to taste, but his forbidding
Commends thee more, while it inferrs the good
By thee communicated, and our want:
For good unknown, sure is not had, or had
And yet unknown, is as not had at all.
In plain then, what forbids he but to know,
Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise?
Such prohibitions binde not. But if Death
Bind us with after-bands, what profits then
Our inward freedom? In the day we eate
Of this fair Fruit, our doom is, we shall die.
How dies the Serpent? hee hath eat'n and lives,
And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discernes,
Irrational till then. For us alone
Was death invented? or to us deni'd
This intellectual food, for beasts reserv'd?
For Beasts it seems: yet that one Beast which first
Hath tasted, envies not, but brings with joy
The good befall'n him, Author unsuspect,
Friendly to man, farr from deceit or guile.
What fear I then, rather what know to feare
Under this ignorance of Good and Evil,
Of God or Death, of Law or Penaltie?
Here grows the Cure of all, this Fruit Divine,
Fair to the Eye, inviting to the Taste,
Of vertue to make wise: what hinders then
To reach, and feed at once both Bodie and Mind?
So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the Fruit, she pluck'd, she eat:
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost. Back to the Thicket slunk
The guiltie Serpent, and well might, for EVE
Intent now wholly on her taste, naught else
Regarded, such delight till then, as seemd,
In Fruit she never tasted, whether true
Or fansied so, through expectation high
Of knowledg, nor was God-head from her thought.
Greedily she ingorg'd without restraint,
And knew not eating Death: Satiate at length,
And hight'nd as with Wine, jocond and boon,
Thus to her self she pleasingly began.