Betrayal and portrayal of political and biblical hierarchy in

John Milton’s Paradise Lost

By Ashley Holt

April 19, 2004

Professor Megan Matchinske

John Milton

Betrayal and portrayal of hierarchy in John Milton’s Paradise Lost

The polarity of hierarchy in John Milton’s Paradise Lost is a collective rendition of competing political, religious, and literary movements to determine biblical truths into a new form of epic prose. Betrayal of the literary tradition’s hierarchy is evident in the authorship of his epic, but the portrayal of biblical traditions is apparent because of the interdependency of evil and good. Although John Milton’s Paradise Lost portrays a scathing relationship to England’s emerging political, religious and artistic hierarchy, his poem echoes the renditions of epic predecessors and remains an innovative—yet interpretative—theory of biblical Heaven and Hell.

The transitional political sphere of hierarchy in Milton’s lifetime spearheaded his attempt to recreate the biblical fall of Adam and Eve into epic poetry. The nature of a dueling battalion of ethical hierarchy in Milton’s poetry is the result of the turmoil in Great Britain. Divine intervention of the Elizabethan and Tudor monarchy, which established the king’s right for absolute rule, introduced Milton’s authorship to denounce English Parliament’s control on his artistic endeavors. In Milton’s speech “Areopagitica” the question of unlicensed printing represents the declination of English political rule on the stylistics and genre requirements of his last theological reflective prose, Paradise Lost.

[…] Order which ye have ordained to regulate Printing: that no book, pamphlet, or paper shall be henceforth printed, unless the same be first approved and licensed by such[…] will be primely to the discouragement of all learning and the stop of truth. (720)

The application of unlicensed press to his life’s work increased the drive to hinder diminished creativity, and the assistance of separate entities—such as his daughter, aides and the initiation of Gutenburg’s printing press—helped to refute political rule of extreme press censorship. Douglas Bush’s background of English political history identified Milton’s lifetime as a 60-year tract of religious, ecclesiastical questions, which influenced the moral hierarchy of Milton’s prose (Bush 7). Essayist Joan S. Bennett stated this occurrence as the breaking point for orthodox hierarchy in Milton’s work, which denounces conformity to a traditional introduction to angelic entities. “Although Paradise Lost is not a political allegory, Charles was the tyrant with whose ways Milton was most familiar, whose actions and motivations he had devoted crucial years to depicting and analyzing.” (Bennett 363) The turmoil of politics in the 17th century represented the waning political power of English Parliament and the Anglican Church, and its monarchy is a precursor of Milton’s purpose to break from a traditional hierarchy of Paradise Lost. The legislative rankings of political England and the result of Milton’s actions are the likely cause of his decisive attempt to falter his political proceedings and initiate literary endeavors.

An analogy to Shakespeare’s plight—an author’s need for patronage to represent the Bible’s truth—is applicable to Milton’s authorship. Literary custom, which was in opposition to Milton’s artistic, literary endeavors in the 1700s, is a reverent and pious representative to the political contentions of his essay, “The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates:”

“If men within themselves would be governed by reason and not generally give up their understanding to a double tyranny of custom from without and blind affections within, they would discern better what it is to favor and uphold the tyrant of a nation.” (750)

The numerous ethical themes of Paradise Lost—will, reason and conscious—and the capacity to place a rubric to their juxtaposition with Satan and God’s intentions are equivalent to Milton’s decision to break from tradition. Censorship of any political agenda is inconclusive to his artistic break from the orthodox tradition’s concept on biblical Heaven and Hell, which is evident in Paradise Lost.

Biblical theology of a paradox between good and evil is foreshadowed in the opening lines of Milton’s invocation to his epic’s muse. A convoluted hierarchy of biblical faith is evident. The invocation of the epic muse initiates the psychological bipolarity of Milton’s emigration from a biblical “evil” battalion to the Heaven-based order in the latter books of Paradise Lost.

[…]Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous Song

That no middle flight intends to soar[…]

Illumine, what is low raise and support;

That to the height of this Argument

I may assert eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to men. (211).

Satan serves as the middleman leader in the discourse on the militant battalion of Hell’s strategy to exit the fiery lake, which is similar to a dark and evil rendition of the New Testament’s Gospel. His parody is similar to the lyrical invocations of David in Psalms. Illumine is a retrospective tendency to personify Milton’s blind impediment, and a reference to Isaiah’s loss of sight in the Old Testament. Additional biblical allusions to the Satan’s entity in Hell is referenced by the epic similes to a giant Leviathan sea creature, which can be elucidated from chapter one in the book of Genesis.

“God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind.” (Genesis 1:21)

Interpretations of political and religious doctrine are also depicted in the leadership styles of Satan’s hierarchy of angels. Theological doctrines are not part of Eden’s leadership skills because of a loose association with his democracy in Paradise Lost. Mammon, Belial, Moloch, and Beezlebub have leadership styles that are similar to an open sphere to a republic, and their argumentative tendencies are for the purposes to contradict each other to some singular plight of recovery for fallen biblical faith. The irony of Milton’s poetry is his ability to transpose seemingly-evil characters with mythological figures of literature. Odysseus in Homer’s “Odyssey” travels the length from Troy to Ithaca as a legendary hero—just as Satan travels the length of his journey from the sulfurous lake of Hell to the guardian gates of Heaven, Uriel. Additional mythological allusions to classical literature include the reference to paganistic epic forms, such as polytheistic idols.

[…]On the part of Heav’n

Now alienated, distance and distaste,

Anger and just rebuke, and judgment giv’n

Sin and her shadow Death, and Misery

Death’s Harbinger. (Book IX, lines 12-15)

The use of a bird as part of the epic’s style to recreate mythological allusions of biblical Hell includes Milton’s determinacy of sin and disobedience in his poetry. The creation of Satan began as the first disobedience of Heaven, and his daughter and wife—Sin and Death—were foreshadowed in the early books of Paradise Lost. In the case of Milton’s Paradise Lost the question of his authorship’s purpose is determined for the unraveling of his life’s dilemma on mortality and death. Moloch’s speech, the first example of the Hell’s hierarchy of leadership is similar to the ire and sacrificial tendencies in the Bible’s Old Testament.

[…]First Moloch, horrid King besmear’d with blood

Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears,

Though for the noise of Drums and Timbrels loud

Thir children cries unheard,

that pass’d through fire to his grim Idol. (Book I, lines 392-396)

An additional example of paralleled political and religious hierarchy is the application of the militant representation to Satan’s legion of archangels. Each member of Satan’s battalion is a collective character of juxtaposed political, religious, and contradictory leadership themes.

Editor Scott Elledge stated the purpose of Milton’s hierarchy was to evaluative a method of elucidation to halt the concept of suffrage on evil-inspired entities. Satan is both betrayed from his openly, benevolent quest for heavenly acceptance and portrayed as a sinful wrongdoer to Milton’s plot.

[…]Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;

And in the lowest deep a lower deep

Still threat’ning to devour me opens wide,

To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav’n. (Book IV, Lines 75-78)

His soliloquy is laden with melancholy depictions of how Milton’s audience must understand the judgment of the Bible’s Old Testament theory on evil. Satan’s description as a heroic and militant leader is representative of the decline in Milton’s health, and the author’s principle motives are to adhere epic allusions to Biblical figures in Paradise Lost. Literary devices of thematic superimposition created conflicting epic resolutions, which propose to confound traditional theologians of literature’s adhesive tendency to biblical references. The Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—are a parallel to Satan’s hierarchy for an evil’s uprisal in Book IX.

[…] O Earth, how like to Heav’n, if not preferr’d

More justly, Seat worthier of Gods, as built

With second thoughts, reforming what was old!

For what God after better worse would build? (Book IX lines 98-102)

This example depicts the hierarchy of Paradise Lost as an upward descent from Satan’s current status as a narrator and protagonist. His battalion—Moloch, Belial, Mammon, and Beezlebub—are part of the irony of the last passage because of his ill-used faith in the Godhead. The old tradition of biblical faith—sacrifice and servitude—are part of the epic poem’s trend, and allusions to the monarchy of Great Britain’s hierarchy are evident. Satan’s character is similar to the monarchy’s tradition of tagging an inherently evil character on a king, such as Richard in Shakespeare’s Richard III. Satan’s lamentation in Book IX depicts an inverted tendency, which multiplies the lack of faith in his character:

[…]I in none of these Find place or refuge;

and the more I see pleasures about me,

so much more I feel Torment within me,

as from hateful siege of contraries;

all good to me becomes Bane.( Book IX Lines 118-123)

His grotesque and retaliative nature inspires the epic’s hierarchy to spiral downward outside of the purgatory of Satan’s character, which both appeals to the audience’s sympathy to a heinous narrator. Additional betrayals of the epic literary tradition are inspired from the form of Paradise Lost. The initial books are filled with battalion imagery and evil agendas for revolt in Hell, but the books following Book V are whimsical outlets into Eden’s pleasure and God’s purpose for Earth. The style of in media res—which entitles his audience to no foreshadowing of how Satan was banished from Heaven until Book IV—allows Milton’s readership to transpose biblical reference to the his heroic verse. Paradise Lost is neither a poem nor narrative; instead, the prose reads as a convoluted script into the Milton’s literary endeavors to explain God’s way to men. In this passage, God’s determinant plan for Adam and Eve is to release them from the oasis of gentility and nature into a desolate wasteland of sin.

“Go: for thy stay, not free, absents thee more;

Go in thy native innocence, rely

What thou hast of virtue, summon all,

For God towards thee hath done his part, do thine.

So spake the Patriarch of Mankind. (Book IX Lines 372-76)

Biblical, political and epic similitude to the plight of Heaven’s foremost couple is the break from church doctrine in the 17^th century. The hierarchy of reason and authoritative rule are slighted for personal judgments and the conclusions of will and conscious. Epic imagery to a Heaven-inspired Trinity changes into a self-oriented knowledge of biblical and Earthy truth once the themes of reason are included.

“That which before us lies in daily life,

Is the prime Wisdom; what is more, is fume,

Or emptiness, or fond impertinence,

And renders us in things that most concern

Unpractic’d, unprepar’d, and still to seek. (Book VIII Lines 193-197)

The unconventional epic similitude of Adam’s speech in form is a derisive shift from the betrayal of God’s plan as a giver of knowledge. Adam’s attempt to disclose the purpose of their loss and release from Heaven—in the perspective of the archangel Michael—is to depict the empty feeling of their betrayal once they are released from the gates. This is influential because of the knowledge of the epic form’s loss of technique in last books of Paradise Lost. Additional interpretations of the betrayal and portrayal of Milton’s hierarchy of literary allusions is the epistolary, or letter-writing, tendency in Books VII. Thus, the betrayal of the epic is the same as the portrayal of Milton’s contempt with church and literary doctrine on theory.

The intriguing aspect of Milton’s literary form is his ability to transpose biblical doctrine in a conflicting resolution for the purpose of theological doctrine. The same way Satan entices Milton’s audience to the dilemma of opposing sides in both Heaven and Hell—the predecessor of easily interpretable rules and laws are set by Michael and God’s legion of angels. The resolution of the poetry becomes an appeal to the purpose of an evil sphere of order and rule. Milton’s passages serve the purpose of expelling the notion of governmental rule so that an allusion to an unordered chaos—Pandemonium—can be understood in the eyes of his patrons and readers. The hierarchy of Milton’s process situates the evil tendencies of banishment foremost, and the nomadic expulsion of Adam and Eve outside Eden is the inevitable recompense ending for Satan’s foreshadowing of an wry God in the first Book of Paradise Lost. Poetic freedom from theological doctrines in Paradise Lost was for the purpose of discouraging the church’s authoritative attempt to control artistic expression. Thus, the derisive juxtaposition of seemingly conflicting gubernatorial hierarchy in Hell and Heaven’s hierarchy assisted epic tradition by initiating a dense, convoluted dialogue between the polarity of good and evil—which echoes Milton’s biblical and literary predecessors.

Works Cited

Bush, Douglas. English Literature in the Earlier 17^th Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1952, pg 7.

Elledge, Scott. “A Little Look into Chaos.” Paradise Lost: Critical Essays. New York: Norton & Company, 1993. pgs 618-19.

Hughes, Merritt. “Areopagitica.” John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose. New York: Macmillian Publishing Company, 1957. pg. 720.

Hughes, Merritt. “Paradise Lost.” John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose. New York: Macmillian Publishing Company, 1957. pg. 175-470.

Hughes, Merritt. “Tenure of Kings and Magistrates.” John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose. New York: Macmillian Publishing Company, 1957. pg. 750.

The Holy Bible: New International Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers. 1982.