The Sublime

Professor
J. Jennifer Jones

Astrid Drew

Professor Jones

HPR 312

20 February 2007

Pride and Sublime Height:
The Link between Paradise Lost and The Book of Job

Although The Book of Job was already ancient centuries before Milton penned Paradise Lost, these texts bear similar themes and poetic technique. Paradise Lost and The Book of Job both possess an implicit moral lesson about the consequences of rebellion against God and the dangers of pride, and both texts strengthen the impact of these lessons through textual structure and sublime language.

Though one could interpret the misfortunes of Job as injustice on God’s part, Job’s language gives away his sin of pride. His confidence is what betrays his pride: “Surely he would listen to reason; / I would surely win my case. / For he knows that I am innocent; / if he sifts me I will shine like gold” (Mitchell 59). Job assumes to know how God would react to his mortal explanations, that he knows what is right over the infallible God: “I will speak the truth to his face” (35). He suggests that God is a reasonable judge and thus will answer to the human (Job’s) notion of justice. He forgets that God is not human and so has his own ideas of justice, punishment, and truth. Job implies that once his soul is “sifted” he will be revealed as valuable and pure. This moment marks his self-assurance crossing the narrow line from confidence into arrogance. Job betrays how highly he values himself by describing how others react to him: “They thirsted for my speech like rain / and drank it as if they were dust” (69). This pride is thoroughly deflated when God speaks to Job, every syllable dripping with sarcasm: “Where were you when I planned the earth? / Tell me, if you are so wise” (79). God mocks Job, and forces him to realize how powerful God is. It is only after Job humbles himself before God, the vain arrogance diminished, that he is rewarded with all of his lost possessions and family, their numbers and value doubled.

In Paradise Lost Milton makes it sinfully easy to sympathize with Satan on his charge that God is a tyrant in heaven and thus potentially blind to his sin of pride. In Book I, even when Satan sees how grotesquely changed he is by the violent fall, he refuses to repent: “yet not for those / nor what the potent Victor in His rage / Can else inflict do I repent or change” (94-96). Satan paints God as a tyrant through his language, portraying Heaven as a prison in comparison to Hell: “Here at least/ we shall be free” (I.258-259). Satan is unwilling to face his defeat and so idealizes his deplorable surroundings and vilifies God. It is not until Book IV that the sight of Eden forces Satan to confront his errors and feel the consequent remorse: “I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere / Till pride and worse ambition threw me down” (IV.40). At the root of it, his sin lies in his pride to become as great as God; his pride forbids him to repent and submit once more.

In order to make more potent these messages of sinful pride and arrogance punished by God’s divine justice, both Milton and the author of The Book of Job employ the powers of poetic structure to better instill their message to readers. Paradise Lost is structured by blank verse, or non-rhyming iambic lines that are usually 10 beats in length with occasional deviations of nine or eleven beats. Mitchell’s translation of The Book of Job very probably derives its structure from the original oral tradition, with iambic tetrameter lines that are usually eight beats long but often as little as six or as many as ten. For each text, even if the number of beats is off, the number of stresses within each line is consistent with natural speech. The familiar rhythm makes the lines more memorable to readers, thus making the messages of those lines just as lasting.

Sublime language is rife in both texts, predominantly of characters or scenarios described in such a way as to convey height and majesty, terrible or great. When God confronts Job in the form of a whirlwind and speaks to him, his awesome divinity is accentuated and expressed by the literal height each question implies, such as harnessing constellations:

“Can you tie the Twins together
or loosen the Hunter’s cords?
Can you light the Evening Star
or lead out the Bear and her cubs?
Do you know all the patterns of heaven
and how they affect the earth?” (Mitchell 81)

Likewise, when Satan is confronted by Gabriel and his angels, they are described with words that magnify their divine presence as lofty and large by also referring to the skies:

Now had night measured with her shadowy cone
Half way up hill this vast sublunar vault
And from their ivory port the cherubim
Forth issuing at th’accustomed hour stood armed
To their night watches in warlike parade. (IV.776-80)

By referring to objects that are physically high and out of reach, such as stars or vaulted ceilings, the same sense is transposed into the textual image and attached to the characters speaking or being described to convey a sublime awe.

In conclusion, Milton’s Paradise Lost and Mitchell’s translation of The Book of Job are linked by the common sinful pride and arrogance of the respective characters Satan and Job, as well as by the use of language to better impress the moral lesson upon the reader. They both use poetic structure or metrical form to give a natural flow and cadence to the lines, with some minor deviations. The use of the sublime is the strongest power of these texts, to give the reader a sense of awe to match what is happening, whether it is Gabriel puffing himself up before Satan or God speaking, his words looming over the humbled Job. Though separated by centuries, both texs represent their implicit moral messages as extremely important and so convey them in the most powerful way possible.

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Works Cited

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Ed. Gordon Teskey. New York, London: Norton, 2005.

The Book of Job. Trans. Stephen Mitchell. New York: Harper Perennial, 1979.

Longinus, On the Sublime. 1 A.D. Trans. W. H. Fyfe; Rev. D. A. Russell. Loeb Classical Library, 1996.
ISBN: 0674995635

 John Milton, Paradise Lost. 1674. Ed. Gordon Teskey. New York: Norton, 2005.
ISBN: 0393924289

The Book of Job. Trans. Stephen Mitchell. New York: Harper Perennial, 1992. ISBN: 0060969598

Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. 1757. Ed. James T. Boulton. Indiana: U of Notre Dame P, 1993.
ISBN: 0268000859

Immanuel Kant. The Critique of Judgement. 1790. Trans. James Creed Meredith. New York: Oxford UP, 1978. ISBN: 0198245890

Anne Radcliffe. The Italian. Ed. Frederick Garber. New York: Oxford UP, 1998.
ISBN: 0198245890

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey. Ed. Marilyn Gaull. New York: Longman, 2004.
ISBN: 0321202082

Suggested Texts

Michael Greer. What Every Student Should Know About Citing Sources with MLA Documentation. New York: Longman, 2006.
ISBN: 0321447379

Joseph Gibaldi. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 6th Rev. Edition. MLA P, 2003
ISBN: 0873529863

Diana Hacker. A Writer’s Reference. 5th Sprl edition. Bedford/St. Martin's P, 2003.
ISBN: 0312412622

Course Requirements

Participation (15%)
4 Short Essays (40%)
Seminar Paper (45%)