Notes on CS Lewis' Preface to Paradise Lost (1942)

June 01, 2026

Lewis’s primary influences seem to have been:

Williams, to whom the book is dedicated. Lewis says Milton crit is essentially “lost” between Blake and Williams (168)
Saurat (see ch 12, especially) for the questions, if not answers.

Ch 2 Is Criticism Possible?

This chapter is devoted to refuting TS Eliot’s claim? suggestion? that it is only the judgment of the best contemporary poets whose verdict he will accept on Paradise Lost. The argument is fairly pedestrian and smells of strawman, but is fortunately basically irrelevant to the overall book it seems.

Ch 3 Primary Epic

Rather than the “primitive vs artificial” distinction that Milton seems to draw, Lewis distinguishes between primary and secondary (16), Homer and Beowulf being representatives of the former.
Epic poetry was only one kind amongst several that would have been enjoyed by our forebears, even in court. Lewis takes pains to get us to appreciate the dignity of epic poetry, which involves us moderns overcoming several hurdles or barriers. First he cites a middle English word solempne which is basically our “solemn” but without the gloomy connotations (21) think of celebrations, pomp. The person who performs a role with pomp in a ceremony is not vain, they are rather obedient: “The modern habit of doing ceremonial things uncermoniosuly is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender’s inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual” (22).
Lewis concludes, with some caveats, that Beowulf is clearly and Homer probably epic court poetry. To appreciate them we must then keep in mind the associations of “incense, sacrifice, civic pride, and public holiday” (24).

Ch 4 The Technique of Primary Epic

Lewis notes the prominence, indeed as a defining characteristic of oral poetry, viz stock words and phrases. “It is a prime necessity of oral poetry that he hearer should not be surprised too often or too much” (26), its language must be both familiar and yet elevated, not merely commonplace (27). Ritual seems to be the model here. “The element of ritual which some dislike in Milton’s poetry thus comes into epic at the very beginning” (27).
Discussion of Homeric diction, remarkable for its emphasis on the “unchanging human environment” (28), the way it captures our sense of the quotidian (not Lewis’ word) and deeply familiar. “The permanence, the indifference, the heartrending or consoling fact that whether we laugh or weep the world is what it is” (29). This results in the overwhelming believability (29) or objectivity (31) of Homer but also its “unwearying splendour and ruthless poignancy of the Homeric poems. Miserable or even sordid events may happen; but the brightness of the sun, the ‘leaf-shaking’ largeness of the mountains… is there all the time, not with any suggestion (as it i might be iun a romantic poet) of the ‘consolation of nature’ but simply as a fact. Homeric splendour is the splendour of reality. Homeric pathos strikes hard precisely because it seems unintended and inevitable like the pathos of real life” (30). Lewis seems to argue that these effects are not really consciously intended by Homer, they are rather the unavoidable results of the words and phrases available to him, the “stored human life” (31).
Brief discussion of Beowulf too, some distinctions, I skip over them for now.

Ch 5 The Subject of Primary Epic

Lewis critiques the idea that a “great story or subject matter” is essential to epic. It is surely not the case for the Odyssey which is basically an adventure story of one man (35) nor is it even the case for the Iliad, which is more about the rage of Achilles than the fate of the Greeks or Trojans. “The truth is that Primary Epic neither had, nor could have, a great subject in this later [national interest] sense. That kind of greatness arises only when some event can be held to effect a profound and more or less permanent change in the history of the world, as the founding of Rome did, or still more, the fall of man. Before any event can have that significance, history must have some degree of pattern, some design. The mere endless up and down, the constant aimless alternations of glory and misry which make up the terrible phenomenon called a Heroic Age, admit no such designs” (37-8).
The greatness of Homeric epic lies rather in the “human and personal tragedy built up against this background of meaningless flux” (40) whereas for Virgil the “suffering has a meaning” (40). Beowulf “approaches” Virgil in that there is a full-fledged concept of evil in the monsters (Lewis seems to consider this to be necessary for the level of meaning he is gesturing towards?) but still the monsters’ defeat is “not permanent or even long-lasting” (40). Something like the Christian concept of time seems to be necessary for Lewis (and he indeed sees Virgil as a sort of proto-Christian).

Ch 6 Virgil and the Subject of Secondary Epic

“The epic subject, as later critics came to understand it, is Virgil’s invention; he has altered the very meaning of word epic” (41) through his embracing of the national origin story, something the Greeks were just not very interested in, whose “hearts’ desire was the timeless, the unchangeable” (42). Virgil’s approach is to “take one single national legend and treat it in such a way that we feel the vaster theme to be somehow implicit in it… He must locate the his action in a legendary past and yet make us feel the present… After Virgil and Milton, this procedure seems obvious enough. But it is obvious only because a great poet, faced with an all but insoluble problem, discovered this answer and with it discovered new possibilities for poetry itself” (42-3).
Lewis goes on to give some concrete examples of this. He also contrasts Virgil with Homer, and defends Virgil’s against some charges of being inadequately manly, compared to Achilles; but Lewis retorts that Achilles is more like a passionate boy next to the mature adulthood of Aeneas. “With Virgil European poetry grows up” (47). I think this is a Lewis-ian theme, reminds me of the Christian “putting away childish things”.
More development of the epic core of Virgil, and how this also makes him “almost a great Christian poet” (49). “In making one legend symoblical of the destiny of Rome, he has, willy-nilly, symbolized the destiny of Man. His poem is ‘great’ in a sense in which no poem of the same type as the Iliad can ever be great. The real question is qhether any epic development beyond Virgil is possible. But one thing is certain. If we are to have another epic it must go on from Virgi. Any return to the merely heroic, any lay, however good, that tells us merely of brave men fighting to save their lives or to get home or avenge their kinsmen, will now be an anachronism. You cannot be young twice” (49). Another good example of what Lewis sees as the parallels, I think, between youth -> adulthood, pre-Christianity -> Christianity. For him there is an essential structure to the world and time, and it is a Christian structure. Anything other than that is essentially false (and of course he has a host of other deprecatory moral characterizations for such deviations as well).

Ch 7 The Style of Secondary Epic

The challenge for Virgil and Milton is how to achieve the rarefied, solemn experience without the accoutrements of the altar, just for a person reading in their chair at home. Somehow the reader as “private person must be made to feel that he is assisting at an august ritual, for if he does not, he will not be receptive to the true epic exhilaration. The sheer writing of the poem, therefore, must now do, of itself, waht the whole occasion helped to do for Homer. The Virgilian and Miltonic style is there to compensate for—to counteract—the privacy and informality of silent reading in a man’s own study. Every judgement on it which does not realize this will be inept. To blame it for being ritualistic or incantory, or lacking intimacy or the speaking voice, is to blame it for being just what it intends to be and ought to be” (50-1).
This is achieved by what is called the grandeur or elevation of Milton’s style, which Lewis attributes to basically 3 things: 1) use of unfamiliar or archaic words, 2) the user of proper names of things “splendid, remote, terrible, voluptuous or celebrated”, and 3) “Continue allusion to all the sources of heightened interest in our sense experience… but all over-topped and ‘managed’ with an air of magnanimous austerity” (51), all which combine through Milton’s “manipulation” of us, to sweep us along. “It is common to speak of Milton’s style as organ music. It might be more helpful to regard the reader as the organ and Milton as the organist. It is on us he plays, if we will let him” (51).
Lewis gives various examples of such over the next few pages. Especially his emphasis on “continuity” (probably the enjambedness is relevant here?) and how he refuses to let us settle. Lewis’ argument here seems to be (which is odd when put so bluntly) that the complex sentence structure, his “Latinism”, is a way of keeping us going and is compensated for by the “simplicity of the broad imaginative effects beneath it and the perfect rightness of their sequence” (57). I’m not sure I can agree that the imaginative effects are simple in any sense. It seems like Lewis is saying “just let it wash over you” which it perhaps can and even does. But surely the complexity of syntax causes more interruption than smoothness, as a reader you must double back frequently to make sure you’ve understood correctly, which you frequently have not. Same with the apparently intentional ambiguity that Lewis brings up shortly after this (59-60).
Lewis then moves into a discussion of the “basic images” (almost Jungian) that Milton works with, and assumes we more or less already have in mind. Milton’s challenge with describing paradise is how to both describe it without over-describing it in his own private terms, rather to let our mind fill in the blanks. “The more elaborately… we build the temple, the more certainly we shall find, on completing it, that the god has flown… While seeming to describe his own imagination he must actually arouse ours” (61). Lewis follows with an analysis of Satan’s approach to Eden, which is fine enough, but he skips over what I think is the most interesting fact, that we are to identify with Satan’s approach and also skips (no pun intended) entirely over the moment when Satan simply leaps the wall in a single bound, which is one of the strangest parts of this episode. Lewis’ overall point here, which I think is at least directionally right, is that the reader should not be disappointed by the lack of novel or unexpected features in Milton’s heaven: “the unexpected here has no place” (64).

Ch 8 Defense of this Style

Lewis begins this chapter with an imaginary accusation from someone who takes issue with Lewis’ characterization of Milton as “manipulating” the reader. The argument is sort of philosophical, e.g. Lewis argues that rhetoric and poetry are bedfellows in some important senses. “Very roughly, we might almost say that in Rhetoric imagination is present for the sake of passion (and, therefore, in the long run, for the sake of action), while in poetry passion is present for the sake of imagination, and therefore, in the long run, for the sake of wisdom and spiritual health—the rightness and richness of a mans’ total response to the world” (68). This is a pretty good example of how Lewis sees poetry/aesthetics, morality, and perception as all bound up together.
Having defended Milton against the charge of rhetorical manipulation, as for the stock responses/phrases (which actually seem more of a Homer “problem” than Milton?) Lewis’ answer is essentially “it seems that most people’s responses are not ‘stock’ enough and that the play of experience is too free and too direct in most of us for safety or happiness or human dignity” (69). The picture Lewis is developing is basically that of art/Milton as necessary part of culture/eduction/morality. More concrete examples of this on pages 70-71. “The examples I have cited warn us that these Stock responses are which we need in order to be even human are already in danger… The older poetry, by continually isistnc on certain Stock themes—as that love is sweet, death bitter, virtue lovely, and children or gardens delightful—was performing a service not only of moral and civil, but even of biological, importance” (71).
Interesting (in light of Narnia) passage: “there is, furthermore, a special reason why mythical poetry ought not to attempt novelty in respect of its ingredients. What it does with the ingredients may be as novel as you please., But giants, dragons, paradises, gods, and the like are themselves the expression of certain basic elements in man’s spiritual experience” (72) they are “like words”. Curious example of Snow White which Lewis complains caricatured the dwarfs, excluding the “wisdom, the avarice [and] earthiness of true dwarfs” (72) I’m sorry but you’re going to have to explain how wisdom+avarice is somehow an essential part of the human spiritual lexicon.
Interesting bit on Milton’s poetic diction, e.g. “optic glass” was just what they called them in those days, “ruin and combustion” language was present in document from the Long Parliament.

Ch 9 The Doctrine of the Unchanging Heart

Fairly bog standard critique of the idea of an unchanging universal core of human, that if you try to abstract particularities away you are left with something not actually human at all. Lewis says he used to hold a view like this but no longer does. Urges us to, rather than take the armor off the knight, see if we can’t put it on ourselves.

Ch 10 Milton and St Augustine

Basically argues that almost all of Milton’s theology, especially the Fall, is from Augustine, lots of City of God citations.
“It is my hope that this short analysis will prevent the reader from ever raising certain questions which have, in my opinion, led critics into blind alleys” (89) e.g. the apple is just an apple, no more; the cause of the fall is disobedience due to pride; the moral of the story is obey God and you will be happy, disobey and you will suffer. “How are we to account for the fact that great modern scholars have missed what is so dazzlingly simple? I think we must suppose that the real nature of the Fall and the real moral of the poem involve an idea so uninteresting or so intensely disagreeable to them that they have been under a sort of psychological necessity of passing ot over and hushing it up (89-90)”. Fish (page 208 of Surprised By Sin) contends that rather than trying to prevent the reader from raising such questions, Milton “insists that the reader raise them, and then that he answer them, either by recalling the simplicity of the revealed word or by turning inwards where there are waiting a ready supply of self-serving rationalizations” (209); in other words, the reader’s temptation parallels that of A&E and is no “accident” as Lewis seems to imply.

Ch 11 Hierarchy

Lewis basically argues Milton loved hierarchy, like pretty much everyone from his age. Great Chain of Being stuff. Some chill quotes about inferiority of women, references to Aristotle on natural superiority. “A king is one who rules over his real, natural inferiors. He who rules permanently, without successor, over his natural equals is a tyrant” (93). Also some comments on Shakespeare who likewise according to Lewis loved hierarchy. It is modern critics’ aversion to hierarchy that, e.g., makes them misunderstand The Taming of the Shrew. So it is not at all inconsistent that Milton could praise and justify the hierarchy of Heaven while condemning that of Charles II (96).
“But what about our feeling that Milton doesn’t fully believe/endorse the Heavenly hierarchy, that his republicanism gets the better of him? I am willing to admit that Milton himself probably failed in the virtues of obedience and humility: and if all you mean by a disharmony in the poem is that the poet thought better than he lived and loved higher virtues than he had attained, then the poem is divided. But if you mean that he only paid lip service to the principle of subordination… then I disagree. The Hierarchical idea is not merely stuck on to his poem at points where doctrine demands it: it is the indwelling life of the whole work” (99), he is “enchanted” by the idea (100). There is discipline in heaven and we will rejoice in it. “Those to whom this conception is meaningless should not waste their time trying to enjoy Milton” (101). Unless we understand Milton (and other great classic poets) on this score, we “shall be in constant danger of supposing that the poet was inculcating a rule when in fact he was enamoured of a perfection” (102).

Ch 12 The Theology of PL

Lewis’ goal in this chapter is to controvert the main claims of Milton’s hereticalness, esp those of Saurat. I mostly skip over the particulars here. The discussion of corporeality and the influence of the Zohar is interesting. Lewis nowhere uses the term “monism” that Rogers employs several times in his lectures.
“The heresies of PL thus reduce themselves to something very small and rather ambiguous” (114). The poem is not addressed to students of the Zohar or De Doctrina. “The modern habit of writing poems which are to be understood only in the light of the poet’s own reading, however idiosyncratic and accidental it may be, was quite foreign to the classical, public and objective conceptions of poetry which Milton held” (114). This is a very strong claim with essentially no argument behind it; may be true, perhaps. When we study PL we are to study M as a poet, and “when we study that we find that he has laid aside most of his private theological whimsies during his working hours as an epic poet. He may have been an undisciplined man; he was a very disciplined artist… The best of Milton is in his epic: why should we labour to drag back into that noble building all the rubble which the laws of its structure, the limitations of its purpose, and the perhaps half-conscious prudence of the author, have so happily excluded from it? Must Noah always figure in our minds drunk and naked, never building the ark?” (115).

Ch 13 Satan

There are two possible senses to Satan’s magnificence/appeal: the first, which Lewis says was never denied before modern times, is his appeal as a poetical construction; the second, which claims Satan to be himself sympathetic and appealing, if only subconsciously, was (according to Lewis) never held before Blake or Shelley (117-8). Lewis takes it to be obvious that M himself had no such sympathy towards Satan.
Lewis then proceeds to consider whether PL is to be considered a “comic” poem (118), by which he seems to mean not a comedy in the Dantean sense. “To this I answer, No; but only those will fully understand it who see that it migiht have been a comic poem” (118), the epic form subordinates Satan’s absurdity to the misery he causes, but (this seems to be Lewis’ claim), you can imagine how it could have been otherwise, and M has not been able to “exclude” all the absurdity (and hence comedy?) of Satan. “That is the explanation of the Divine laughter in PL which has offended some readers. There is a real offense in it because Milton has imprudently made his Divine Persons so anthropomorphic that their laughter arouses legitimately hostile reactions in us—as though we were dealing with an ordinary conflict of wills in which the winner ought not to ridicule the loser. But it is a mistake to demand that Satan… should be able to rant and posture through the whole universe without, sooner or later, awaking the comic spirit. The whole nature of reality would have to be altered to give him such immunity” (118-9). The crux of this seems to be that Satan’s revolt is inherently self-contradictory (120), Satan lies, exaggerates, and eventually believes his own boasts. This leads to absurdities e.g. Satan’s “Nonsense” claim to be self-generated (122). (Note that Empson argues this was not an unusual theological position at the time.) What we see in Satan is the horrible co-existence of a subtle and incessant intellectual activity with an incapacity to understand anything” (123).
“It remains of course true that Satan is the best drawn of Milton’s characters. Th reason is not hard to find. Of the major character whom Milton attempted he is incomparably the easiest to draw. Set a hundred poets to tell the same story and in ninety of the resulting poems Satan will be th best character. In all but a few rwiters the ‘good’ character s are the least successful, and every one who has ever tried to make even the humblest story ought to know why. To make a character worse than oneself it is only necessary to release imaginatively from control some of the bad passions which, in real life, are always straining at the leash; the Satan, the Iago, the Becky Sharp, within each of us, is always there and too ready… But if you try to draw a character better than yourself, all you can do is take the best moments you ahve had and to imagine them prolonged and more consistently embodied in action…we do not really know what it feels like to be am an much better than ourselves” (125). “Heaven understands Hell and Hell does not understand Heaven” (125-6).
Lewis then tries to convince that Adam is actually not bad, yeah, and has wide-ranging interests! (127). Whereas Satan is only interested in himself, hence dull (128).

Ch 14 Satan’s Followers

The debate in Hell depicts evil in a very believable, human sense, the way it grows from real scenarios we may find ourselves in. The newly fallen angels are like a man who has just forsaken his country or cheated on his wife (130).

Ch 15 The Mistake About Milton’s Angels

Milton’s depiction of the angels should be taken as “a literally true picture of what they probably were according to the up-to-date pneumatology of his century” (136), which was underlaid by a “Platonic Theology” (not scholastic) in which created spirits were believed to be “corporeal” (136).
Strange passage on “aereal combat” (139) that Lewis seems to believe is a real but mystical (miraculous?) and in the past commonly observed phenomenon.
Some more casual sexism (141).
“The details of Raphael’s eating seem unfortunate to the modern reader because he judges them as if they were gratuitous inventions, to be taken on their merits as fiction. The whole point of view changes if we suppose ourselves coming to the work with a belief in such theories of the aereal body already formed and curious to see whether the poet will evade such details or triumphantly bring them in without becoming prosaic” (143-4).

Ch 16 Adam and Eve

Begins with a quote from Raleigh to the effect that Adam “from the depths of his inexperience is lavishly sententious” (145) which Lewis says he used to agree with, but has reconsidered since (as is more or less the theme of this book) adjusting his expectations to what Milton was trying to achieve. Lewis had been looking for an A&E who were naifs, uncivilized, even primitive, and was put off when he didn’t find them (146). But A&E were created “full grown and perfect” (146), quotes Augustine on the fantastic mental powers of Adam (147), likewise Eve is the “matriarch of her world” (151) and we must avoid the temptation to misread her humility and modesty, which is before Adam, but not before such fallen specimens as ourselves.

Ch 17 Unfallen Sexuality

Lewis is unsure whether M was “wise” in choosing to represent sex in Paradise; Augustine says it did not occur. Lewis tries to distinguish “bodily shame” from a sort of modesty and imo fails (154). Lewis seems to wish Milton just hadn’t tried, though he suspects Dante may have been up to the task. Also if his analysis is correct, then why does Raphael blush when asked about sex?

Ch 18 The Fall

Eve is drawn immediately into Satan’s “Nonsense” at the moment of the Fall (157). We next observe her subtle slide into consideration of murder (158) which Lewis applauds as a realistic representation of how we can support our fall into evil/sin by self-serving justifications.

Ch 19 Conclusion

Lewis here offers his own “estimate of the value of the poem as a whole” (163), having been so far mostly concerned to “hinder hindrances” to appreciating it. He first criticizes essentially the dullness of the last two chapters (worth noting again the Fish disagrees) and suggests this was due to a temporary and probably inexplicable (but perhaps due to age) loss of poetical powers.
He also remarks on the character of God, which many have found unsatisfactory (perhaps mostly because they simply “dislike God” (164) full stop) but seems to propose that a rendering mor e “awful, mysterious, and vague” would have made him more appealing (164). Instead, “Milton has failed to disentangle himself from the bad tradition… of trying to make Heaven too like Olympus. It is these anthropomorphic details that make the Divine laughter soudn merely spiteful and the Divine rebukes querelous” (165).
Lewis even argues PL is not a religious poem! It is more contemplative than religious exercise (166). Fish certainly disagrees with this. Some more comments about Dante’s superiority, how Dante would have handled Heaven and God better, but also how Milton’s stumbles here are less serious for the poem than they would have been in the Divine Comedy.
Yet, PL “fulfills the conditions of great story better perhaps than any other, for, more than any other, it leaves things where it did not find them” (167).
He ends on a note describing the three kinds of people who cannot enjoy Milton: there are first simply the “uncivil” and base (169-70) who lack the necessary character. Second are… people who like Ulysses and stream of consciousness? I don’t know what to make of this argument, seems like a strange strawman, but L devotes nearly 2 full pages to it (170-171). Finally there are those (“probably”?) like T.S. Eliot who… are too sanctified for Milton? I also fail to understand what Lewis is getting at here, but in this case it seems like more fault of my own. It seems something like: Eliot thinks the “trumpets and eagles” are gone from the world, so we cannot celebrate them any more; but Lewis cannot agree that all poetry should have Eliot’s “penitential” quality. I suppose this is meant to be something like the modernist “God is dead” predicament. Unclear.