![]() An important new, deeply reflective biography is McDowell (2020) but that only goes halfway to 1642, so you may want to read Von Maltzahn (2009). ![]() ![]() All the information to do with the text, brief details of Milton’s life, and historical background will be found there. There are many wonderful editions: we recommend Kerrigan, Rumrich and Fallon (2008). The best way to read Paradise Lost is to go carefully from end to end, book by book. Into the poem was compressed all of Milton’s remarkable learning, his immense poetic gifts, and many of his unusual and often idealistic view of human free will, the origins of evil, the relations between the sexes and how mankind relates to God. Milton’s rewrite of the Book of Genesis in the Bible is extensive to call it daring is an understatement. Paradise Lost tells the story of the Fall of mankind in the Garden of Eden, and before it, the rise of the rebel angels in heaven, led by Satan, and their defeat and casting into hell. ![]() When he published it in 1667 he was a political outcast and widely reviled after the reversion to monarchy, but he was rapidly hailed as the author of what many have regarded as the greatest non-dramatic work in the English language. John Milton was a significant civil servant – the chief translator of diplomatic documents for the English Commonwealth of 1649-1660 – when, already blind, he began to dictate Paradise Lost. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |