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JOHN MILTON (1608-1674) - Coggle Diagram

- - - - the biblical story of Adam and Eve. Satan, the most beautiful of the angels, is defeated in the war of Heaven and is thrown into Hell with his followers
    - - A Universe based on Ptolemaic System (although Milton was familiar with the Copernican Theory)
        
        God sits on the throne surrounded by 9 orders of angels. The 10th order, who revolted under Satan, was thrown to Hell, a realm in antithesis with God's world.
        
        Out of chaos, God created the earth in the centre of the universe and the spheres around it
    - - epic poem
        
        God, Satan, Christ, man and the angels recall Homer's warriors and heroes
        
        a PHILOSOPHICAL rather than WARRIOR HERO
      - opening: 'Of Man's First Disobedience'
      - epic hero
        
        SATAN
        
        leadership, initiative, courage
        
        Milton had a sympathy for Satan, rebel against God, because he was a rebel against the political authority of the king and the religious authority of the Church of England
        
        DANTE'S Satan:
        
        bound in ice in the lowest circle of Hell
        (the City of Dis at the centre of the heart)
        
        described as the 'ill Worm', a slimy creature with strong colours
        
        MILTON'S Satan:
        
        described as a fallen angel first, as a snake later
        
        red eyes and yellow neck
    - - HOPE FOR REDEMPTION
      - BELIEF IN DIVINE PROVIDENCE
      - EVIL HANGING OVER MANKIND
    - - elevated
      - new kind of blank verse of sonorous magnificence
      - polysyllabic Latinisms, inversions and circumlocutions
- - - - he overturns Hobbe's theories and defended regicide, Commonwealth and the establishment of a Council of men to safeguard the republic
    - - criticism against the executed king Charles I's memoirs and his idealised image
  - - - educational reform inspired by Renaissance Humanism
    - - a pamphlet in defense of the liberty of the press and of free speech, in contrast with an ordinance about censorship of books and pamphlets passed in 1643
    - - enlarged versions:
        
        Colasterion (1645)
        
        Tetrachordon (1645)
        
        The Judgement of Martin Bucer Concerning Divorce (1644)