Milton probably around this time, around the time that he was writing and finishing the regicide treatises, began to lose his eyesight. He had not only written really quite daringly on behalf of the execution of this particular king, but he wrote another pamphlet, Eikonoklastes (which is included in the Hughes edition), which is a shocking defense of just regicide in general – not just in England, but as a kind of political principle. He had been the foremost propagandist for the Puritan side. Milton participated with extraordinary enthusiasm and considerable zeal in the establishment of England’s new, non-monarchic government, initially a commonwealth and then what we can think of as a republic. The radical Puritan Parliament voted to execute the tyrant – what they considered to be the tyrant, King Charles I – and to establish its own government. A minority government of revolutionary Puritans had effectively taken control of the state. In 1649, the great Puritan Revolution reached an unspeakable climax. A lot has happened since the exuberant optimism of the political spirit that we see in a tract like Areopagitica. Milton had devoted nineteen years to the world of politics. So the reasons for this really enormous shift in plans, and the enormous shift in subject matter, are worth exploring. But by the time Milton begins writing his epic, he abandons his plan for a nationalistic poem, a nationalist poem, and decides instead to use the subject matter that he had been intending for that prospective tragedy, Paradise Lost. Actually all of these early drafts – these notes, these outlines for this tragedy that actually never seems to have gotten written – are included in the Tyco packet. That was supposed to be a tragedy that, in some manuscript drafts that we still have today – in some manuscript drafts, he titled this prospective tragedy Paradise Lost and in other drafts Adam Unparadised. Now Milton at the same time – we’re talking about the 1640s – had been contemplating writing a play. In this respect it would resemble Spenser’s Faerie Queene, or perhaps more importantly, Virgil’s Aeneid – other nationalist epics. Milton’s would be an epic demonstrating the origins and the heroic achievement of his own nation, England or maybe he’d be thinking a little broadly of Britain, which is England, Scotland and Wales. Milton – and we know this – Milton was a political revolutionary, and when he anticipated writing the great poem, he consistently imagined that it would be a poem on a nationalist theme. But as late as the 1640s, this was not at all the epic subject that Milton was intending to use. After all, this is an extremely pious Puritan. The story of Adam and Eve and of the fall of Satan may strike us – having read or about to read Paradise Lost – may strike us as a natural subject for Milton to have chosen for his epic poem. Areopagitica, you’ll remember, was written in 1644. He was long in choosing the subject of his heroic song and, as we know from all of – and we’ve encountered a number of them – all of those protestations of delay Milton began his epic late. We know very well Milton decided to write an epic poem at a very early age, but his decision to write an epic poem, some epic, long predated his sense of what exactly that epic was going to be about. He explains that the subject for his heroic song – and of course, we’ll be getting to Book Nine later, but it’s relevant for our discussion today – Milton explains that the subject for his heroic song, the subject of the Fall of man, “pleas’d me long choosing, and beginning late…” – pleased me long choosing and beginning late. Professor John Rogers: In the invocation to Book Nine of Paradise Lost, Milton describes – and it’s wonderful to see this representation of this process that, I think, we’ve been wondering about – he describes the process by which the heavenly muse inspires, and he says inspires nightly, the composition of his epic. Milton ENGL 220 - Lecture 9 - Paradise Lost, Book IĬhapter 1.
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