The originality of Milton's Paradise Lost lies in its ability to transform the predominantly secular minds of Homer, Virgil, Boiardo and other masters of the epic literary into a theological subject outside of tradition. . Although Paradise Lost features elements familiar from epics before Milton's time -- war, splendid nature, visions of the future, tremendous journeys -- its subject, the Fall of Mankind or the Genesis account, transforms the meaning tradition of these elements, giving his epic a new aesthetic appeal as well as (what Milton believed to be) divine purpose. By recreating God's divine plan for the destiny of humanity, Milton knows that his readers are aware of the fall of Adam and Eve from the beginning, and he is thus able to shift the focus away from the endings and redirect it towards the resolution of some of the fundamental conflicts of Christian doctrine. . Regarding these conflicts, Milton primarily addresses an idea that Christian theologians continue to debate: what freedom means according to God's divine framework. To describe the goal of the epic – to make its readers better Christians – Milton sets up a struggle between two visions of freedom. Between these visions of freedom articulated in Book 9 – Eve's definition of freedom as choice and Adam's as obedience – Milton presents Adam's definition as the truest model because it reflects both the Milton's vision of human freedom as well as the structural freedom of Paradise Lost itself. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Milton establishes the model of freedom that will be reflected in Adam and Eve's concepts of freedom in Paradise Lost through two works: "Second Defense of the English" and "The Verse." In "Second Defense of the English People", Milton states that "people [who] cannot govern themselves and moderate their passions [become] slaves [to] their lusts", determining that slavery must conform to something base: in this case, passions. The second important point established by Milton is that “to be entrusted with the possession of liberty” one must “learn obedience.” Milton's argument in favor of human freedom is of a particular type: in evoking God, Milton associates his conception of divine justice with human freedom and thus attributes greater meaning to the relationship between freedom and obedience as seen in Paradise Lost. Milton agrees with common morality when he expresses that the value of an action depends on its motive – and that if there is no freedom, actions cannot have meaning because they will be automatic. He supports this idea by using suggestive and ambiguous words, such as "wish", "unless", "will", etc., in order to emphasize that man is free because he has the capacity to become " the slave of his lusts.” .” What Milton wants his readers to understand, however, is that although there are different types of personal and political freedoms, true freedom comes only when a man acts reasonably and does what God requires, because man is only truly free when he finds himself within the framework of freedom. the order that God created for him. In other words, by following what reason knows to be right, man frees himself from the forces of his own nature, from the "lusts", "dissensions", "jealousies" and "superstitions" which enslave. God and government leave man free to choose so that he can discover that true freedom is obedience, and thus know and appreciate freedom for what it really is. Inestablishing his concept of freedom in “The Second Defense of the English People”, Milton was then able to lay the foundations of his concept on the structural freedom of Paradise Lost in his note entitled “The Verse”. Here Milton decrees that the “measure” of a truly delightful verse lies not in its rhyme, but rather in “its proper number, its proper quantity of syllables, and its meaning” – otherwise known as meter. In referring to epic poetry as something that must be "reclaimed" -- saved "from the modern and painful slavery of rhyme" -- Milton immediately parallels the downfall of epic verse through slavery to rhyme with the fall of humanity through slavery to passion in Paradise Lost. This model of freedom of verse reflects Milton's model of human freedom in "Second Defense of the English People": servitude conforms to the baseness of rhyme, which Milton determines to be less than meter, and thus, the true freedom of verse verse lies in its obedience or submission to blank verse. By describing his concept of true liberty in "Second Defense of the English People" and "The Verse," Milton creates a basis for understanding how the dual visions of liberty in Book IX fit into the larger contexts of the poem. . When morning arrives and Adam and Eve prepare for their labors, Eve opens the discussion of freedom by declaring: "Let us share our labors, / you where choice / leads you" (IX, 214-5). As Eve argues for the choice to divide the work so that they can accomplish more work, Adam responds by stating that God "assigned" the work so that it would not be "boring work" but rather a “pleasure” (IX, 242). In doing so, Milton illustrates how Eve makes a conscious choice to work against the order God created in work: God creates work to be enjoyable, not to be laborious work. focused on results. It is also important to note that in this scene Adam and Eve are unaware that Satan is in the garden hidden in the body of the serpent, but are nevertheless aware of Raphael's warning regarding Satan's temptation. Placing Eve's argument for freedom in this context, Milton emphasizes that it is Eve's conception of choice that opens up the possibility for Satan to tempt her while she works alone, making her a premature version of freedom since it risks disobeying God. The suggestion of freedom as choice is highly significant because it establishes the pattern between mind, will, and body that Milton uses to prove why Eve's pattern is incomplete as well as why man falls. Adam begins his response to Eve by declaring: “God has left the will free, for what obeys / Reason is free, and he has made reason just” (IX, 351-2). Here Milton establishes that reason is in the mind and forms the will, which is the quality that enables action. Adam explains that reason is free through obedience to God because reason is known through God, and that in obedience the relationship between mind, will, and body can act as it should. However, Adam explains the possibility for lower desires to deceive reason: "We stand firm, but it is possible to deviate / Since reason can not impossibly / Some specious object by the enemy suborned / And fall into deception without knowing it” (IX, 359-62). ). By alliterating the fricative consonants "s" in "to subsist" and "to deviate", Milton draws attention to the dual nature of reason: God creates a reason strong enough to survive temptation, while still having the possibility of overcoming it. to sell. Illustrating this, Adam concludes that although Eve's desire to choose is harmless enough, because it opens up the possibility.