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Summary A level English Literature - Milton Paradise Lost Book 9 motif tracker - eduquas - includes themes, analysis, context, critics, quotations$4.21
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Tracking motifs like hands and eyes allows us to see the journey and process of the Fall, as
implied in the changes in how these motifs are described and what they are associated with
- e.g. movement from virtue, innocence, bliss to sexuality and sin, or changing the placement
of guilt and blame
Eyes (16)
- ‘Her long with ardent look his eye pursued’ (397)
- ‘Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes’ (500)
- ‘Curled many a wanton wreath in sight of Eve, To lure her eye’ (518)
- ‘His gentle dumb expression turned at length The eye of Eve to mark his play’ (528)
- ‘Ye eat thereof, your eyes that seem so clear, Yet are but dim, shall perfectly be then
Opened and cleared’ (706)
- ‘Inclinable now grown to touch or taste, Solicited her longing eye’ (743)
- ‘Here grows the cure of all, this fruit divine, Fair to the eye, inviting to the taste’ (787)
- ‘Opening the way, but of divine effect To open eyes’ (876)
- ‘opener mine eyes, Dim erst, dilated spirits, ampler heart, And growing up to
Godhead’ (885)
- ‘Had it been only coveting to eye That sacred fruit’ (923)
- ‘not death, but life Augmented, opened eyes, new hopes, new joys’ (995)
- ‘he on Eve Began to cast lascivious eyes’ (1014)
- ‘well understood Of Eve, whose eye darted contagious fire’ (1036)
- ‘Soon found their eyes how opened, and their minds How darkened’ (1053)
- ‘since our eyes Opened we find indeed, and find we know Both good and evil’ (1070)
- ‘nor only tears Rained at their eyes, but high winds worse within Began to rise’ (1122)
- Milton’s blindness - has no physical insight, but still has religious insight
- Eyes as one avenue for the senses - sight as the secondary path to temptation
(below taste)
- Eyes providing insight
- Idea of ‘looking’ - empirical account, visual evidence (‘ocular proof’)
- Visualising
Hands (15)
- ‘for much their work out-grew The hands' dispatch of two gardening so wide’ (203)
- ‘but, till more hands Aid us, the work under our labour grows’ (207)
- ‘These paths and bowers doubt not but our joint hands Will keep from wilderness
with ease’ (244)
- ‘as wide As we need walk, till younger hands ere long Assist us’ (246)
- ‘and somewhere nigh at hand Watches, no doubt’ (266)
- ‘Of God ordained them: His creating hand Nothing imperfect or deficient left’ (344)
- ‘Thus saying, from her husband's hand her hand Soft she withdrew’ (385)
, - ‘Among thick-woven arborets, and flowers Imbordered on each bank, the hand of
Eve’ (438)
- ‘more hands Help to disburden Nature of her birth’ (623)
- ‘So saying, her rash hand in evil hour Forth reaching to the fruit’ (780)
- ‘Scarce from the tree returning; in her hand A bough of fairest fruit’ (850)
- ‘From his slack hand the garland wreathed for Eve Down dropt’ (892)
- ‘She gave him of that fair enticing fruit With liberal hand’ (997)
- ‘Her hand he seized; and to a shady bank, Thick over-head with verdant roof
imbowered, He led her nothing loath’ (1037)
- Clasped hands as an emblem of unity and fidelity, especially within marriage -
destruction of this emblem as a shattering of the unity in A+E’s relationship
- Hands as a physicalisation of the act of passing over or reaching for the fruit -
emphasises choice, agency, responsibility
- The hand of God
- Hand in both the physical part of the body (monism - body and mind are one), but
also the act of passing something, or the act of assisting or guiding
- In fallen man we see the mutuality and cooperation of marriage, the seizing and
taking, but without the gentleness that was characteristic of their former innocence:
their embraces are now “fruitless,” and they have thrown caution to the wind.
Immediately after Eve’s hand is seized and their play concludes, they, disturbed by
shame, physically and emotionally uncouple themselves. The word “hand”
disappears from the rest of Book 9 as their unity dissipates. The next “fruitless hours”
they spend “in mutual accusation,”[39] or, in other words, in mutual division.
“So hand in hand they passed” (WELSHANS)
- Milton’s monism leads him to advocate for “monist marriage”—a marriage wherein
couples unite both body and soul for “mutual help” towards spiritual advancement.
- Dobranski - Milton’s penchant for depicting the pair holding hands throughout
Paradise Lost is a specifically monist gesture because it “ joins Adam and Eve
physically and spiritually” with each freely choosing the other
- In Protestant theology, husband and wife are united as “one flesh”—a single
body—through marriage.
- Unlike the individual human body, however, the married couple can separate if they
no longer serve as fit companions in spiritual progress
- The Biblical assertion that man and woman become “one flesh” once married.
Genesis 2:24 asserts: “Therefore shal man leave his father and his mother, and shal
cleave to his wife, and they shalbe one flesh.”
- “Joint hands” becomes a synecdoche for monist marriage and the need to remain
faithful to their soul’s hierarchical order. Doing so renders the “malicious foe . . .
Hopeless” as he cannot “circumvent us joined”.
- The breaking of the emblem is a process of disintegration destined to lead to their
spiritual digression.
- In a terrifying moment of inversion, she uses her “rash” hand to reach for the
forbidden fruit—a hand that so recently held tight to her husband’s in a symbol of
monist wedded love. Her hand continues to remain occupied as she returns to Adam,
now holding “A bough of fairest fruit”.
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