context

• Milton on gender and marriage: 


  'it consisted in the mutual love, society, help, and comfort of the husband a wife, though with a reservation of superior rights to the husband' - De Doctrina Christiana
• Milton on Liberty:


  'he that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring christian'
• Genesis 1-3 - Eve:


  'the serpent beguiled me, and I did eat' - directly mirrored into Milton's poem
• what are the key concepts of tragedy?

  hubris, harmatia, peripetia, anagnorisis
• what are the key character types in tragedy?

  machiavellian - cunning + showing no moral principles

  villain - character whose evil motives central to the plot

  malcontent - character who is not satisfied with the way things are

  tragic hero - character in the centre depicted as having virtuous and sympathetic traits - ultimately meets with suffering
• St Augustine's christian doctrine on the fall of man:

  adam's fall contaminated the entire human race - left humans with the inclination to sin + sin is inescapable

  only way to salvation is through the unearned receiving of god's grace
• milton's fall of man:


  milton suggests that man would have been well off if the fall never happened an remained obedient - contrasts the theological concept of 'felix culpa'
• areopagitica (1644)

  argued against censorship - often help up as first impassioned plea for free speech

  'that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary'
• political context: 


  english civil war - Milton on parliamentarian's side - monarchy restored in 1660 - Milton went into hiding
• milton's views on monarchy and tyranny:

  concentrates on puritan reformation in the church and replacement on monarchy within the free commonwealth.

  'men are born to command and not to obey'
• what was Milton's role in Cromwell's government?

  secretary for foreign languages