Chapter Characters of Paradise Lost - Study Guide by John Milton

"And should I at your harmless innocence

Melt, as I do, yet public reason just,

Honour and empire with revenge enlarged,

By conquering this new world, compels me now

To do what else though damned I should abhor.

So spake the fiend, and with necessity,

The tyrant’s plea, excused his devilish deeds.

(IV.388-94)"

Assessment: Politics and

Paradise Lost

How is the student of Paradise Lost to interpret all of these political allusions within the text, place them in the context of Milton’s own political ideas, and relate them to the poem as a whole and the times in which it was published? What is Milton’s purpose, in a political sense, of making allusions about political forms?

We must be aware of the importance of the political issues that Milton brings forward in the poem. In 1660 England reverted to monarchy after a failed eleven-year experiment in government without a king. In 1660 Charles II regained many of the powers his father had exercised as king of England, and soon enough began to immerse his reign in many of the very abuses that had caused so much grievance among the political nation between the 1620s and the 1640s.

In a political context, what does Milton mean in writing Paradise Lost? When taken together and interpreted with Milton’s last political tract, The Readie and Easie Way, the ‘epics’ of the 1660s and 1670s provide a coherent argument.

What Milton argued prior to the Restoration was that the experiment in republicanism had failed. He offered an interpretation of this. For Milton, political and spiritual liberty and freedom were, if not synonymous, complementary. Cromwell’s efforts at "healing and settling" England had failed; Milton realised this by the late 1650s and argued that it had been because of the failure of the godly reformation to capture the English people. Martial force such as the Major Generals was therefore futile, as the Commonwealth had failed to establish a firm base of support. Political allusions in Paradise Lost are thus concerned with the nature of government, the political experience of the Charles I, the Civil Wars and the Republic, and the future of this under a Stuart monarchy restored.

However, Milton declared early on in his life his desire to compose an epic, and the literary considerations should not be ignored. To achieve a full understanding of the poem, Paradise Lost must be considered or interpreted along various lines such as religious or theological, political-constitutional discussions, autobiographical aspects, and literary aspirations of the poet.