Paradise Lost John Milton

When Satan says “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav’n,” he becomes a true advocate for freewill. He has gone against what he considered a tyrannical leader, lost, and reemerges as a classical tragic hero reminiscent of the likes of...

‘I may assert eternal providence,

And justify the ways of God to men.’

(Book I, II. 25-26, p. 4)

It would be strange for any reader not to see that John Milton’s most famous work, Paradise Lost, is a deeply religious text, simply by glancing at...

The writers of the early modern period often presented in their texts characters who struggled with a crisis of identity. Furthermore, these characters were unable to reconcile their identity with the role that they played within the fictional...

Webster’s presentation of the fallen world in Act V of The White Devil appears as a more developed and grander reflection of Milton’s fallen world in Book IX of Paradise Lost. Milton’s outstanding attributes of the fallen world are developed by...

In his “Areopagitica,” John Milton claims “He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian. I...

Since its first publication in 1667, Milton’s Paradise Lost has continued to exert its influence over literature, having particular resonance with the romantics, Wordsworth citing it as among ‘the grand store-houses of enthusiastic and meditative...

Humans have instincts. However, some are often suppressed and viewed by society as immoral and unnatural because not all of them have pure intentions. In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Milton retells the story of Adam and Eve and their fall from...

Milton’s exploration of heroism in Paradise Lost has been the focus of much debate and controversy since the poem was first published. Critical attention has shifted through the years from Satanism to feminism, from the exultation of Adam to the...

In Paradise Lost, John Milton endows angels with magnificent qualities, both positive and negative. Through symbolism, he shows their greatness. In a meaningful shift from earlier ideas of his time, Milton’s angels are shown to possess full free...

When comparing their two works, it becomes clear that while John Milton’s Paradise Lost shares the general viewpoint on marriage found in Mary Astell’s Reflections upon Marriage — that being that the institution of marriage of the time period was...

John Milton’s first encounter with death sent him reeling and kept him off balance for a long time. He found an escape in poetry, pouring out his confusion and frustration and sorrow in the now-famous poem Lycidas. The young Milton was struck with...

The potential for political meaning in the metaphors, allegories and allusions of Paradise Lost is rich for interpretations due to the shifting associations of political ideologies with various sides, in order to prove a spectrum of arguments. The...

Densely populated with similes, allusions, and speeches, John Milton’s Paradise Lost takes Satan’s fall from Heaven and expands it into a meditation on hierarchy, knowledge, and power. Though Satan’s main vendetta against God is established in his...

In Book IV of Paradise Lost, Eve relates her birth and her first meeting with Adam. She claims to first have been distracted by her reflection on a pond, where she would have stayed had a voice not warned her away. The person on the pond “started...

An antagonist is essential to any story. Establishing a clear “bad guy” gives the story more emotion, uniting the reader with the protagonist(s) against a common enemy that is easy to hate. Every story has an antagonist, but only some are evil....

In his poem Christabel (1816), Samuel Taylor Coleridge revises John Milton’s Paradise Lost to create a version of the fall of humanity that is wholly feminine. Coleridge represents Eve though the character Christabel, an innocent young maiden...

Following the story of Genesis, John Milton’s Paradise Lost gives insight to Adam and Eve’s Fall from Paradise and Satan’s war against God in heaven. While all of the characters add crucial detail to the storyline, Eve is arguably one of the most...

In Milton’s Paradise Lost, the species of man has been given free will, and is best illustrated through Satan and Eve due to their choices. Milton define free will as a way to become closer to God, for choosing God makes a person superior, as...

When one hears the word Satan, he thinks of an opposition to God. The name alone conjures up evil thoughts in most peoples’ heads. In the epic poem, Paradise Lost, a tale of the creation story, however this feeling of evil is quickly misplaced....

John Milton wrote Paradise Lost following the epic tradition while, at the same time, it articulates concerns relevant for the Seventeenth Century audience, including the idea of exploration. With this, Milton’s epic enunciates the colonial...

Love serves as the medium through which the imperfections[1]of Adam and Eve can be relayed in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The story follows the journey of Adam and Eve as they struggle with prioritizing their love for God over their love for each...

In Milton's Paradise Lost, Satan appears to be an antagonist to God, but is actually a hero in rebel form. Through his speeches and the birth of Sin, Satan establishes himself as a creator. Creation, especially through word, is the ultimate form...

In 1759, Voltaire published his magnum opus, Candide—nearly a century after Milton first published his own masterpiece, Paradise Lost. Upon finally settling on a farm with his dearest friends, Candide concludes the text by saying “we must...

Throughout both John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost and Sinclair Ross’ novel As For Me and My House, characteristics and implications of sex are comparable. To elaborate, only sex within wedlock is regarded as righteous as both works support...