PL & TDOM Critics

Question 1

‘Adam’s sin was less ignoble than Eve’s’

Answer 1

C. S. Lewis, 1942

Question 2

‘Through giving Adam the fruit Eve commits “murder”’

Answer 2

C. S. Lewis, 1942

Question 3

‘The tragedy is more his failure than hers’

Answer 3

Burden, 1967

Question 4

‘The Miltonic problem of the fall [is] a specifically female dilemma’

Answer 4

Gilbert and Gubar, 1979

Question 5

‘Eve takes and keeps the initiative’

Answer 5

Tillyard, 2005

Question 6

‘Adam and Eve Must Give Account to the Lord’

Answer 6

Domenichino, 1626

Question 7

‘Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence’

Answer 7

Mary Shelley in Frankenstein, 1818

Question 8

‘Adam fell by uxoriousness.’

Answer 8

C. S. Lewis, 1942

Question 9

Creation of Adam Painting

Answer 9

Michaelangelo, 1512

Question 10

[Milton was] ‘of the Devil’s party without knowing it’.

Answer 10

Blake, 1790

Question 11

‘Milton’s Devil as a moral being is as far superior to his God’

Answer 11

Percy Shelley, 1821

Question 12

‘Throughout the poem, [Satan] undergoes a progressive degradation from God’s 2nd in Command to a mere peeping Tom, leering and writhing in prurience’.

Answer 12

C. S. Lewis, 1942

Question 13

‘The Satanic image is not simply an illusion but a perversion of true heroism’

Answer 13

Steadman, 1976

Question 14

[Satan’s] ‘sense of Injured Merit is likely to cause Resentment’

Answer 14

Bloom, 2002

Question 15

‘The God of Milton is always a father, a creator, a judge’

Answer 15

Voltaire, 1727

Question 16

‘The material chaos of Paradise Lost is unmistakably opposed to God’

Answer 16

Chambers, 1963

Question 17

‘The reason why the poem is so good is that it makes God so bad’

Answer 17

Empson, 1965

Question 18

‘[God’s punishment of Satan is] a display of sorcery rather than an act of divine justice’.

Answer 18

Evans, 1973

Question 19

‘For a widow would be the cause of a thousand woes’

Answer 19

Swetnam, 1615

Question 20

‘The Duchess is “good”… of her love for Antonio… “bad” in ignoring the wishes and welfare of her family’

Answer 20

Whitman, 1975

Question 21

‘[The Duchess] seeks private happiness at the expense of public stability.’

Answer 21

Bliss, 1983

Question 22

‘The Duchess’ widowhood is not the cause but the context of her martyrdom’

Answer 22

Oakes, 1999

Question 23

‘[The Duchess’] heroic stoicism in the face of persecution’

Answer 23

Marcus, 2009

Question 24

[The Duchess] ‘Beauty determination and a sense of moral goodness’

Answer 24

2014 Dominic Dromgoole Production

Question 25

‘Webster… has to arouse terror and pity, not thought’

Answer 25

Kingsley, 1890

Question 26

‘It is Ferdinand who is unsure of himself’

Answer 26

Calderwood, 1962

Question 27

‘The brother’s picture of the Duchess is a projection of the evil in their own minds

Answer 27

Brennan, 1963

Question 28

Ferdinand played Micheal Williams highlighting sexual nature as Duchess was played by Judi Dench

Answer 28

1971 Clifford Williams Production

Question 29

‘The Cardinal knows already that he is in Hell.’

Answer 29

Bradbrook, 1947

Question 30

‘The Cardinal’s cool, unemotional detachment is more terrifying than Ferdinand’s impassioned raving’

Answer 30

Bliss, 1983

Question 31

‘Critics have found little to like or admire in Antonio

Answer 31

Belton, 1967

Question 32

‘Antonio can be no model of virtue: he too is like the equivocal Bosola’

Answer 32

Neill, 2015

Question 33

‘The Duchess abandons her duties of ‘body politic’ for those of her ‘body natural’ and for this she has to die’

Answer 33

Jankowski, 1990

Question 34

With Bosola, a ‘fatal lack of clearness ruins everything’.

Answer 34

Archer, 1893

Question 35

‘The only character in the play who is not "fixed" at either extreme is Bosola.’

Answer 35

Giannetti, 1969

Question 36

‘Satan’s malcontent status seduces readers into sympathising, mirroring the danger of sin’

Answer 36

Fish, 1967

Question 37

‘In all other poems, love is presented as a vice; in Milton only it is a virtue.’

Answer 37

Voltaire, 1759

Question 38

[Milton shows a] ‘contempt of females’ as ‘subordinate and inferior beings.’

Answer 38

Johnson, 1779

Question 39

Satan is the hero because he defeats Adam

Answer 39

Dryden, 1697