Note exam preparation information at the foot of this sheet.

Think about, and be prepared to discuss, five of these questions. Check any word you don't understand in a dictionary or glossary of literary terms.

The questions in bold will be addressed in lectures; the others in tutorials.

1. Critical opinion on the relationship between Eve and Adam has long been divided. Is it tyrannical? Is it equal? Is the poem feminist? Proto-feminist? Misogynistic?
   

2. Is Milton's God tyrannical?
   

3. In what ways in hell depicted as a place and as a state of mind?
   

4. What is work like in an unfallen world?
   
   
5. Is William Blake right when he says Milton was of the Devilâs Party without knowing it?
   
   
6. Is Stanley Fish correct when he says this profoundly Christian poem consciously encourages us to see Satan as its hero? What reason might Milton have had for doing this? Does the representation of Satan change in the course of the poem?
   
   
7. Do you think Terry Eagleton is right and that Milton may be one of English literature's most important poets of social reform? Why/Why not?
   
   
8. Can you suggest passages in which Milton might be seen to criticise the values of epic poetry?
   
   
9. What does Milton mean by "right reason"? (See Book I, 248-9)

Some key sections:

Book I

1-49 Invocation

50-282 Satan and Beelzebub

376-521 Catalogue of devils

622-69 Satan's address to fallen angels

670ff Creation of Pandemonium

Book II

629ff Satan's journey

648-870 Satan meets Sin and Death

927ff Satan's journey across the Void

Book IX

Poetic invocations

Change of genre to tragedy, 1-47, transcending classical epic

Sex, desire, gender, knowledge

Serpent's approach to Eve 412ff. Note voyeurism, visual alllusions; appeals to Eve's pride and narcissism 532-48; her desire for knowledge and power 679ff.

Eve's pleasure in eating 780ff; Adam and Eve's carnal desire 1013ff, including shame.

Disguise and deception

Satan's choice of serpent 62ffk; serpent and Even at tree of knowledge 625ff; serpent's rhetoric 670ff; Eve's self-sophistry and deception k745-79.

Satan's soliloquy on dismay and negative energy 99-178; Adam and Eve debate powers and weaknesses of faith 253-55; Adam's commitment to joing Eve 838ff (esp. 957-99; 997-99).

Exam preparation:

Review Beowulf, and be prepared to respond to a sample exam question based on an extract from the poem. You should be able to locate the passage within the text as a whole, and to use it as a starting point for a discussion of points raised in the lecture and the tutorial. For example, in the case of Beowulf, the extract might lead you to discuss the text's complex attitude to heroism, or the relationship between warrior and lord, or the representation of women--or all three of these things.