7 - “Till the Day / Appear of Respiration to the Just”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 October 2009
Summary
The Tenth Book of Paradise Lost has a greater variety of persons in it than any other in the whole poem. The author, upon the winding up of his action, introduces all those who had any concern in it, and shows with great beauty the influence which it had upon each of them. It is like the last act of a well-written tragedy, in which all who had a part in it are generally drawn up before the audience, and represented under those circumstances in which the determination of the action places them.
The tenth book of Paradise Lost is perhaps the busiest in the epic, and, as Joseph Addison aptly noted, the appearance of all the poem's major characters and all its locales, immediately following the severely restricted action of Book IX, gives the impression of a finale in which each character is displayed in the condition to which he or she has been brought by the now completed action of the drama.
But the action of Paradise Lost is not completed, and the resituating of its actors and locales is only provisional. Much of Book X portrays the aftermath of the tragedy presented in Book IX. The revisions of the world order consequent to man's disobedience are noted: the bridge between Earth and hell that is the concrete sign of Satan's league with man, the arrival of Sin and Death in paradise, the unfortunate changes in the earthly environment.
As the effects of the fall are realized on Earth, the restorative movement of the epic begins. Thus Book X serves both as denouement and transition.
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- Information
- Authors to ThemselvesMilton and the Revelation of History, pp. 151 - 176Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1988