Paradise Lost Notes

v     Paradise Lost is a biblical epic, written by John Milton (1608-1674).

v     At over 10,000 lines, it’s one of the longest poems in the English language, and is arranged into 12 books, like Virgil’s (the famous Roman poet) Aeneid.

v     It’s written in blank verse, meaning it doesn’t rhyme, but it still has a regular rhythm.

v     Paradise Lost tells the story of Adam & Eve, the Garden of Eden, and the fall of the angel Lucifer (Satan) in an epic war between heaven and hell.

Pandæmonium, the capital city of hell, by John Martin 

v     The purpose of the poem was to explain why God acts the way he does, to, “justify (oprávniť) the ways of God to men,” as Milton wrote in Book I. Throughout the poem, God explains to his son why he does what he does.

Jesus casting Satan into hell, by Gustave Dore

v     The story begins with the defeat (porážka) of Satan. Heaven and hell fight for three days, and at the end, Jesus himself defeats all the demons and banishes them to hell, called Tartarus. Satan then plans with his fellow demons, Mammon, Beelzebub, Belial, and Moloch, to travel through the Abyss up to the human world, to poison it.

Satan's Council, by John Martin

v     In the Garden of Eden, Adam & Eve live together. Though deeply in love, Adam is needy and always wants to be with Eve. She complains that she wants some time alone. While alone, Satan tempts (pokúša) Eve with an apple from the Tree of Knowledge. She takes it because of vanity (márnivosť). Adam then agrees to eat from the tree as well, so he and Eve can die together.

v     After eating from the tree, Adam & Eve lay together, and then have terrible nightmares. When they wake, they feel guilt and shame for the first time, and beg God’s forgiveness.

v     Adam and Eve are expelled (vyhnaní z raja) from the garden, but first the archangel Michael shows Adam a vision of human history, from the killing of his son Abel by Cain up to the Great Flood. He also tells about the coming of Jesus, and mankind’s possible redemption (vykúpenie).

v     In this poem, Milton argues against the building of temples and altars as idolatry (modlárstvo). He also felt the idea of a king having “divine right” was also idolatry.

v     Scholars note it’s funny that Milton would support the Parliamentarians in the English Civil War, while defending God’s monarchy in the poem. He wasn’t against a monarchy in general, but he objected to the current king Charles I. The writer C.S. Lewis explained, “Milton believed that God was his 'natural superior' and that Charles Stuart was not.”

v     Milton wrote a sequel to this poem titled Paradise Regained. Four books long, this mini-epic tells of the temptation of Jesus

Famous Quotes from the Poem:

“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven” – Satan

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.” - Satan

English Civil War (1642-1651)

v     The English Civil War was actually three wars happening one after the other.

1^st war (1642-46)

2^nd war (1648-49)

3^rd war (1649-51)

v     These wars were fought between Royalists, (also called Cavaliers) who supported the king versus Parliamentarians (called Roundheads because of their short hair).

v     The Parliament was angry at king Charles I for several reasons:

1. Charles I wanted lots of money to fight the 30 Years War. And his commander, the Duke of Buckingham, was incompetent.

2. Charles also married a Catholic princess from France. Many Englishmen worried that his children would be Catholic.

King Charles I with his wife Henrietta Maria and their children.

3. Charles dissolved parliament for over ten years. It was called the “Eleven Years’ Tyranny”. Without parliament, Charles couldn’t raise taxes normally, so he started issuing fines and taxes for things that hadn’t been used in centuries.

4. Charles introduced a strict religion called High Anglicanism, fining Puritans for not attending Anglican churches, and cutting off the ears of anyone who complained. When he tried to extend these rules to Scotland war broke out, called The Bishop’s War, and the Scots won. They occupied most of Northern England and demanded money, daily, or they’d start burning cities.

5. When Charles’s advisor Thomas Wentworth suggested raising an Irish army to crush both the Scots and English, parliament found out, and had him beheaded for treason. King Charles let it happen, fearing for his own life.

6. He gave business contracts to certain people that hurt thousands of average citizens.

v     In 1642 Charles I fled London, fearing for his life. Cities and towns across Britain chose sides.

v     The Parliamentarians won The English Civil War at the Battle of Worcester.

v     There were three results to the English Civil War

1. King Charles I was executed.

2. His son, Charles II was exiled to France.

3. The monarchy was replaced by:

                        1649-53 The Commonwealth of England, controlled by parliament.

                        1653-59 The Protectorate, with Oliver Cromwell as dictator

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658)

v     Cromwell’s Protectorate was very strict, closing theatres, and banning music and writing, except for those authors that he liked, for example John Milton.

v     When Cromwell died in 1658, he tried to have his son continue the Protectorate, but he was unpopular. England was falling into chaos, so people decided to bring back Charles II from France, to be king. This is known as the Restoration.

John Milton Biography

John Milton (1608-1674)

The son of a composer, he was a hard-working, but problematic student, going to Christ’s College, Cambridge. It’s debated whether he was suspended, or stayed home due to the plague (mor). He could speak Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, Italian, and Old English. Upon graduation, he continued studying privately five years, then traveled in Europe. As conflict began in England, he returned home. He began writing political pamphlets (letáky), and, at 35, he married a 16 year-old girl, who left him six weeks later, causing him to write several essays in favour of divorce. This got him in trouble for heresy (kacírstvo), and he continued to live with the girl until she died, age 27, after giving birth to their fourth child. When Cromwell came to power, Milton got a job in government, where he wrote many essays in defense of regicide (kráľovražda), democracy, and Puritanism. He also went blind, possibly due to all that writing. When King Charles II was restored, Milton was arrested and imprisoned, until influential friends could free him. He remarried and devoted himself to poetry, writing his magnum opus (majstrovské dielo) Paradise Lost, with the help of his daughters. Based on the format of Virgil’s Aeneid (an epic poem from ancient Rome), it tells the story of the temptation (pokúšanie) of Adam and Eve, and their expulsion (vyhnanie) from the Garden of Eden. Milton died poor but famous, and is considered one of Britain’s finest poets.

 

The Fireside Poets

v     Also known as the Schoolroom poets or Household Poets. These were a group of American poets that were very popular both in America and Europe.

v     The group included Longfellow, Bryant, Whittier, Lowell, and Holmes Sr.

v     Bryant was the oldest, and Lowell was the youngest. Oliver Wendell Holmes was the last to die, in 1894.

v     These poets all lived in Massachusetts, and were connected with Harvard University, either as professors, students, or guest speakers.

v     Besides their popularity, these poets were connected by their style, using standard forms, meter, and stanzas, that made their work easier to memorize in school. J

v     Their poems were about family life, mythology, and politics, and were meant for common people, not critics.

William Cullen Bryant

v     Bryant became famous at age fourteen with his poem “Embargo”, criticizing the president.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

v     Longfellow is famous for his poem “Paul Revere’s Ride”, about a hero of the American Revolution who warned farmers that the British were coming.

John Greenleaf Whittier

v     Whittier was a Quaker abolitionist, most famous for his poem “Snow-Bound”, about a family trapped in their home by a snow storm. They relax by telling each other stories.

James Russell Lowell

v     Lowell is most famous for a book length satirical poem titled “A Fable for Critics”. It made fun of all the most famous poets and critics in America.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

v     Holmes’s most famous poem is “Old Ironsides”, a poem that saved America’s greatest warship, the USS Constitution from being turned into scrap.

Frederick Douglass Biography

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)

v     Frederick Douglass was a slave, a writer, a preacher, a social reformer, and a politician.

v     He was a leader of the abolitionist movement in America to end slavery, and supported equal rights for all, including women, immigrants, native Americans, and minorities. Specifically, he argued for the right to vote, desegregation in schools, and the right for blacks to fight in the Civil War.

v     As a brilliant speaker and writer he proved that black slaves had the intelligence to function as free citizens.

v     Frederick wrote three autobiographies: Narrative of the Life of F.D., My Bondage and My Freedom, and Life and Times of F.D.

v     Douglass also published an abolitionist  newspaper titled, The North Star.

v     His greatest speech was titled, “What to the slave is the 4^th of July?”

v     He was even nominated Vice President (without his knowledge or consent) by the Equal Rights Party, a small political party, in 1872.

v     There are several schools named after Frederick Douglass.

v     Yale University offers the Frederick Douglass Book Prize each year for the best historical writing about slavery. 

Personal Life:

Born into slavery in Maryland, Frederick Bailey never knew his parents. It was rumored his father was his mother’s master, but he never really knew. He was separated from his mother as an infant, and lived with his grandmother until he was seven. His mom died when he was ten. From age seven to twelve Frederick worked on a plantation. He then became a house slave in Baltimore. This is where Sophia Auld, his master, taught him the alphabet. He soon began to teach himself to read secretly.

By age sixteen, he was teaching other slaves to read the Bible, and held regular lessons for six months before other masters broke up a meeting, using stones and clubs. Frederick was sent to a “slave breaker” as punishment, working on a small farm. He was beaten and whipped regularly until he successfully fought back.

In 1837, he fell in love with a free black woman living in Baltimore named Anna Murray, who helped him escape. She gave him a sailor’s uniform with fake ID papers, and enough money to take a train to New York and freedom. He later wrote, “I felt as one might feel upon escape from a den of hungry lions.” Anna Murray soon joined him and after eleven days they were married, using the name Mr. & Mrs. Johnson. They soon moved to Massachusetts, taking the new name Douglass. They had five children. He joined a church and became a preacher.

In 1843 he joined the “Hundred Conventions” project, touring America to preach against slavery, during which he was attacked and beaten. In 1845 he traveled to England and Ireland, partly to dodge his former master, who wanted his “property” back. Douglass preached, and was popular enough that people raised money to buy his freedom.

During the Civil War he served as a recruiter, and two of his children joined as soldiers. After President Lincoln was shot, Douglass spoke at his memorial in Washington, after which widow Mary Lincoln gave Douglass her husband’s walking stick.

In 1882 his wife died, and in 1884 he remarried, to Helen Pitts, a white feminist, who was twenty years younger. This angered both their families. Frederick responded saying his first marriage had been to someone of his mother’s colour, and his second to someone of his father’s. He and Helen moved to Washington DC. Their house is now a historical site.

Quotes:

“I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.”

“A man’s rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box.”

Emily Dickinson Biography

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

v     Emily Dickinson is considered one of America’s greatest poets. She was an innovator, writing poems with irregular meters, punctuation, and words that didn’t always rhyme. She knew when to break the rules and why.

v     Emily wanted critics to help her with her work, so she sent poems to various magazines, including the Springfield Republican, and the Atlantic Monthly, a literary magazine that’s still popular today in America. The editor, Thomas Higginson encouraged her to keep writing and sending more poems.

v     Years later, Emily told Thomas that, by encouraging her, “You were not aware that you saved my life.”

v     Dickinson’s subjects were fear, frustration, death, God, friendship, love, and nature.

v     Emily didn’t become famous until after she died. Her poems were published posthumously (after she died), but they were always edited and reworded. It wasn’t until 1955 that a complete collection of her poems was published, unedited.

Personal Life:

Emily was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father was a lawyer and a politician. She was very bright and well-behaved, but free-thinking. Later on, she criticized her parents, writing, “I have a brother and a sister; my mother does not care for thought; and father; too busy with his briefs to notice what we do. He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they joggle the mind.”

 

Emily’s life was filled with tragedy, and it didn’t help that she could see the cemetery, located across the street. She attended Amherst Academy, where she befriended the young principle Leonard Humphrey. Her best friend, Sophia Holland, died of Typhus. After high school, she went to Mount Holyoke Seminary, one of the first universities for women in America, but only stayed for ten months before returning home. No one knows why. Shortly after, another friend of hers died, Benjamin Franklin Newton, a young lawyer studying with her father. And then Leonard Humphrey died, at age 25. Emily wrote to a friend,

“... some of my friends are gone, and some of my friends are sleeping – sleeping the churchyard sleep – the hour of evening is sad – it was once my study hour – my master has gone to rest, and the open leaf of the book, and the scholar at school alone, make the tears come, and I cannot brush them away; I would not if I could, for they are the only tribute I can pay the departed Humphrey.”

The House where Emily Dickinson lived, in Amherst, MA

Emily was very reclusive, never marrying, and hardly ever leaving the mansion, which her grandfather had built. She spent much of her time caring for her mother, who was bedridden and ill, from around 1850 all the way to 1882 when she died. In 1874, her father died. When the funeral was held in the house’s entrance hall, Emily stayed in her room with the door cracked open. She didn’t attend the memorial service either. She wrote to Higginson that her father’s “Heart was pure and terrible and I think no other like it exists.”

Emily was eccentric, often wearing white, and refusing to greet guests. She preferred writing to people, and if she had to, she’d speak to someone on the other side of a door. She would talk to her neighbours by leaving little poems for them, with a bouquet of flowers. She once wrote “The soul selects her own society, then shuts the door.”

It’s possible she may have started a romance later in life with a widowed judge, but it’s impossible to know because all their letters were burned at her request.

When she died of kidney failure, at 55, people were amazed at the number of poems she’d written, almost 1800! People had thought of her more as a gardener than a poet, since she spent so much time in her garden. In her will, she asked her sister to burn all her papers, including her poems. But Lavinia wanted the poems to be published.

First she sent half to her brother’s wife. Then she sent the other half to her brother, who was now living with another woman. So, since these two women hated each other, it took over fifty years to get all of Emily’s poems together in one published collection.

Emily Dickinson Biography

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

v     Emily Dickinson is considered one of America’s greatest poets. She was an innovator, writing poems with irregular meters, punctuation, and words that didn’t always rhyme. She knew when to break the rules and why.

v     Emily wanted critics to help her with her work, so she sent poems to various magazines, including the Springfield Republican, and the Atlantic Monthly, a literary magazine that’s still popular today in America. The editor, Thomas Higginson encouraged her to keep writing and sending more poems.

v     Years later, Emily told Thomas that, by encouraging her, “You were not aware that you saved my life.”

v     Dickinson’s subjects were fear, frustration, death, God, friendship, love, and nature.

v     Emily didn’t become famous until after she died. Her poems were published posthumously (after she died), but they were always edited and reworded. It wasn’t until 1955 that a complete collection of her poems was published, unedited.

Personal Life:

Emily was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her father was a lawyer and a politician. She was very bright and well-behaved, but free-thinking. Later on, she criticized her parents, writing, “I have a brother and a sister; my mother does not care for thought; and father; too busy with his briefs to notice what we do. He buys me many books, but begs me not to read them, because he fears they joggle the mind.”

 

Emily’s life was filled with tragedy, and it didn’t help that she could see the cemetery, located across the street. She attended Amherst Academy, where she befriended the young principle Leonard Humphrey. Her best friend, Sophia Holland, died of Typhus. After high school, she went to Mount Holyoke Seminary, one of the first universities for women in America, but only stayed for ten months before returning home. No one knows why. Shortly after, another friend of hers died, Benjamin Franklin Newton, a young lawyer studying with her father. And then Leonard Humphrey died, at age 25. Emily wrote to a friend,

“... some of my friends are gone, and some of my friends are sleeping – sleeping the churchyard sleep – the hour of evening is sad – it was once my study hour – my master has gone to rest, and the open leaf of the book, and the scholar at school alone, make the tears come, and I cannot brush them away; I would not if I could, for they are the only tribute I can pay the departed Humphrey.”

The house where Emily Dickinson lived, in Amherst, MA

Emily was very reclusive, never marrying, and hardly ever leaving the mansion, which her grandfather had built. She spent much of her time caring for her mother, who was bedridden and ill, from around 1850 all the way to 1882 when she died. In 1874, her father died. When the funeral was held in the house’s entrance hall, Emily stayed in her room with the door cracked open. She didn’t attend the memorial service either. She wrote to Higginson that her father’s “Heart was pure and terrible and I think no other like it exists.”

Emily was eccentric, often wearing white, and refusing to greet guests. She preferred writing to people, and if she had to, she’d speak to someone on the other side of a door. She would talk to her neighbours by leaving little poems for them, with a bouquet of flowers. She once wrote “The soul selects her own society, then shuts the door.”

It’s possible she may have started a romance later in life with a widowed judge, but it’s impossible to know because all their letters were burned at her request.

When she died of kidney failure, at 55, people were amazed at the number of poems she’d written, almost 1800! People had thought of her more as a gardener than a poet, since she spent so much time in her garden. In her will, she asked her sister to burn all her papers, including her poems. But Lavinia wanted the poems to be published.

First she sent half to her brother’s wife. Then she sent the other half to her brother, who was now living with another woman. So, since these two women hated each other, it took over fifty years to get all of Emily’s poems together in one published collection.