Tuesday February 9th

Please see the post for Friday, Feb. 5th for the mid-term study guide.

During today's class, we discussed the following:

1. Understanding the Plot

Eve suggests she and Adam venture out separately (“Let us divide our labors” -- Book 9, line 214). However, Adam is hesitant. Why?

2. Literary Conventions

“I now must change/Those Notes to Tragic” (Book 9, lines 5-6).

Definition: Tragedy depicts the downfall of a noble hero or heroine, usually through some combination of hubris, fate, and the will of the gods. The tragic hero's powerful wish to achieve some goal inevitably encounters limits, usually those of human frailty (flaws in reason, hubris, society), the gods (through oracles, prophets, fate), or nature. Aristotle says that the tragic hero should have a flaw and/or make some mistake (hamartia). The hero need not die at the end, but he / she must undergo a change in fortune. In addition, the tragic hero may achieve some revelation or recognition (anagnorisis--"knowing again" or "knowing back" or "knowing throughout" ) about human fate, destiny, and the will of the gods. Aristotle quite nicely terms this sort of recognition "a change from ignorance to awareness of a bond of love or hate."
Source: http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/Tragedy.htm

Explain how this definition applies to Paradise Lost.

3. Theme

Identify one recurrent theme (freedom vs. bondage, the relationship between good and evil, loss & redemption, ambition, etc.), image, or idea in Books 1-9. Find 5-7 quotes in Books I-9 that develop this theme. Note the book number, page number, and line number for each quote.


4. Food for thought for Friday’s reading:

“In Genesis, the story of Adam and Eve's fall is told in a single line: 'she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat' (Genesis 3:6) In Paradise Lost, Adam eats the fruit of knowledge two hundred fourteen lines after Eve. Milton imagines an intervening mental strife unequalled in the history of the world as Adam comes to choose love and death over rational knowledge of God. The story is no longer one of disobedience, but man's disobedience of God in favor of a human relationship. Critics argue that Milton struggles to define the ideal human relationship even as he views such bonds as inherently human flaws that distance the individual from God.”

Luxon, Thomas H., ed. The Milton Reading Room, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton, March, 2008.