Paradise Lost
- For the UK Goth metal band, see Paradise Lost (band).
Paradise Lost (published 1667) is an epic poem in 12 books of blank verse by the 17th century English poet John Milton. It narrates the Christian story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
The protagonist of this Protestant epic, is the fallen angel, Satan. Today it would appear that Milton presents Satan almost sympathetically, as an ambitious and prideful being who defies his tyrannical creator, omnipotent God, and wages war on Heaven, only to be defeated and cast down. Some critics regard the character of Satan as a Byronic hero.
Milton begins his story in media res, after Satan and the other rebel angels have been defeated and cast down by God into Hell. In Pandæmonium, Lucifer must employ his rhetorical ability to organize his followers; he is aided by Mammon and Beelzebub.
Later, Lucifer enters the Garden of Eden, where he successfully tempts Eve, wife of Adam, to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil.
Influences include the Bible, Milton's own Puritan upbringing and religious perspective, Edmund Spenser, and the Roman poet Virgil.
On April 27, 1667 the blind, impoverished Milton sold the copyright of Paradise Lost for £10.
Later in life, Milton wrote Paradise Regained, charting God's returning to man the possibility of paradise. This sequel has never had a reputation equal to the earlier poem. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake commented:
- The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.
In the late 1970s, the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki wrote an opera based on Paradise Lost.
The epic was one of the inspirations for Philip Pullman's trilogy of novels His Dark Materials.
Online texts
Paradise Lost
Paradise Regained
