Lecture Literary criticism - Lecture 11: Samuel Johnson on paradise lost

SAMUEL JOHNSON ON
PARADISE LOST


PROBABLE AND MARVELLOUS
•
•
•
•
•

In this case the probable is marvellous and Marvellous is probable.
The subject matter absolute truth.
The main fabric is supported.
Its subject is universally and perpetually interesting.
All mankind has the same relation to Adam and Eve and all are
involved in this battle of Good v/s Evil.


MACHINERY
•
•

Here is no room to speak because everything is done under the
immediate and visible direction of Heaven.
However no part of action could have been accomplished by any other
means.


EPISODES
•

There are two,one was used as a warning and the other as a
consolation.


INTEGRITY
•
•
•
•
•

It cannot be objected.
It has a proper beginning,middle and end.
Nothing is superfluous.
The short digression of 3,7,9 book are super flows but they are so well
and beautifully written that no one would want to take them away.
Purpose of poetry is pleasure.


IMPORTANT QUESTIONS
•
•
•

Unity of action.
Who is the hero?
Is it heroic?

SENTIMENTS
•

Are expressive of manners or appropriated to characters,are for the
greater part unexceptionably just.


MILTON’S IMAGINATION
•

•

Milton’s imagination is of highest degree of fervid and is very active and
the thoughts that are brought forward during the progress of the poem
can be produced only by such an imagination.The heat of Milton’s mind
may be said to sublimate his learning.The material was supplied by his
incessant study and unlimited curiosity,
His imagination and sublimity of his learning threw in his work the spirit
of science.


MILTON’S POWER
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Sublimity
Descriptions are learned.
Imagination accustomed to unrestrained indulgence.
Conceptions are extensive.
Gigantic loftiness instead of grace.
Can provide pleasure when pleasure is needed but his particular power
is to astonish.
The power of displaying the vast splendid,darkening the
gloomy,aggravating the dreadful.


•
•
•
•
•

Nature and life did not satiate his appetite of greatness.
Reality was a scene too narrow for his mind.
He sent his faculties to discover the worlds where only imagination can
travel.
He furnished sentiment and actions to superior beings.
When he cannot raise wonder by the sublimity of his mind,he gives
delight by its fertility.


•

Milton’s images descriptions and scenes or operation of nature do not
seem to be always copied nor do they have the energy of immediate

observation.


•
•
•
•

Milton’s similes are numerous.
However he does not confines himself within the rigors of comparison.
His great excellence is amplitude.
He expands the adventitious image beyond the dimensions which the
occasion required.


MILTON’S MORAL SUPERIORITY
•
•

It is hardly a praise to affirm that his moral sentiments excel those of all
other poets.
A reader will be able to carry away precepts of justice and mercy unlike
other epic poets who were very unskillful teachers of virtue.


DEFECTS AND FAULTS OF PARADISE LOST
•

Johnson find it an abhorrent task to find faults in “Paradise Lost” as he
thinks that lessening the reputation of Milton would mean lessening

reputation of England.


•
•

The plan of Paradise Lost has this inconvenience that it comprises
neither human action nor human manners.
The man and woman who suffer are in such a state that no man and
woman would ever be in that state,so have little natural curiosity or
sympathy.


•

We do feel what Adam felt after he disobeyed,we have our enemies
among the fallen angels and we have allies among the blesses
spirits.We want to be redeemed and we are interested in the
description of Heaven and Hell.


•

•

But these truths are too important to be new we have been taught since
our infancy.They have mingled with our solitary thoughts and familiar
conversation.
Being therefore not new they raise no unaccustomed emotion in the
mind what we know before we cannot learn,what is not unexpected

cannot surprise.


•
•

From the ideas suggested by some of these awful scenes,from some
we receed with reverence and from others we shrink with horror,
We admit some of them as unpleasant impositions or as counterpoises
of our interest and passions.


•

•
•

Pleasure and terror are genuine source of poetry,but the pleasure
should be so that human mind and conceive and poetical terror such
which human passion can combat.
The good and evil of eternity are too heavy a subject for the wings of
wit.
So we feel humble adoration,calm belief and passive helplessness.


•

So these known truths are conveyed by a new train of images.There is
very little given to us by the scriptures but Milton has expanded it to
such an extent and branched it of so variedly that it seems like a

miracle that he managed to save the reverence of his subject from the
lewdness of fiction.


•

•
•

Paradise Lost is a display of study and genius.He took from nature,from
story from fable,from modern science.Whatever could adorn his
thoughts.
An accumulation of knowledge impregnated his mind,fermented by
study and exalted by imagination.
That is why it is said that in reading “Paradise Lost” we read a book of
universal knowledge.


•
•
•

But the original deficiency cannot be overlooked.We admire it and all
but we lay it down and then do not feel the urge to pick it up again.
No one ever wanted it to be longer than it is.It seems like a pursuit of
duty rather than that of pleasure.
We read Milton for instruction,we look elsewhere for recreation.We
desert our master and seek companions.

•
•
•
•

Another inconvenience in Milton’s design is that it requires a description
of something that cannot be described.
He had to show Angels as material kings.This he could defend.
But he is unhappily perplexed his poetry with philosophy.
His infernal and celestial powers are sometimes pure spirit and
sometimes animated body

e.g
-When satan walks upon “burning mark”with a lance he has a body.
-On his journey between Hell and Earth he has a body.
-When he animates the toad he is more spirit.
-When he is ready to fight Gabriel he has a spear and a shield..
-Number of the inhabitants of Pandemonium but when they were
overwhelmed by the mountains their armors crushed them.


•
•
•
•

It has always been the right of poetry to invest abstract ideas with
form,and animate them with activity has always been the right of poetry.
But for the most part they only do their active part and retire.
To give them any real employment is to make them not allegorical but

to shock the mind by ascribing effects to nonentity,
This has been done before but no precedents can justify absurdity.


•
•

•

Milton’s allegory of sin and death is undoubtedly faulty.
Sin is indeed the mother of death and may be allowed to be portress of
hell,but when they stop satan’s journey and when death offers him
battle the allegory is broken.
Nothing speaks for this allegory but the author’s thought of its beauty.