John Milton (1608-1674)- Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost is an epic poem written in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was first published in 1667 (but written almost ten years earlier) in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse. A second edition followed in 1674, re-divided into twelve books with minor revisions throughout it and a note; the majority of the poem was written while Milton was blind, and was recorded for him by another person (Bloom, 3). Paradise Lost is one of the greatest epic poems of all time, it is not just concerned with the fall of man, he depicts Adam and Eve in his own views of how men and women should behave, and adds in many of his own political and religious views.
The poem involves the Christian story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Frank Magill describes how “Milton's purpose, stated in Book I, is to "justify the ways of God to men" and explain the conflict between God's eternal foresight and free will” (2013). Although Milton’s book is about the Fall of Man, the character Satan is depicted several times as the hero; a character who is more interesting and captivating than God himself, which might expose that Paradise Lost is in fact a poem questioning the church’s power (a common theme during the English Renaissance) rather than simply a description of the temptation of Adam and Eve (SparkNotes, 4-5).
Milton first portrays Adam and Eve in Book IV in an objective light. The relationship between Adam and Eve is one of mutual dependence, not a relation of domination or hierarchy (Stade, 938). While Milton does place Adam above Eve in regard to his intellectual knowledge, and in turn his relation to God, he also grants Eve the benefit of knowledge through experience (SparkNotes, 3). Although there is a sense of rigidity related with the specified roles of the man and the woman, each unconditionally accepts the designated role because it is viewed as an advantage. Instead of believing that these roles are forced upon them, they each use the necessary requirement as strength in their relationship with each other. These small differences reveal Milton’s view on the importance of empathy between a husband and a wife.
Milton encompasses Paganism, classical Greek references, and Christianity within the poem. It deals with many diverse topics such as marriage, politics (Milton was politically active during the time of the English Civil War), and monarchy, and struggles with many difficult theological issues, including fate, predestination, the Trinity, and the introduction of sin and death into the world, as well as angels, fallen angels, Satan, and the war in heaven (Magill, 4849). Milton draws on his knowledge of languages, and diverse sources – primarily Genesis, much of the New Testament, the Book of Enoch, and other parts of the Old Testament. Milton's epic is generally considered one of the greatest literary works in the English language.
Since Paradise Lost is based upon scripture, its significance in the Western canon has been thought by some to lessen due to increasing secularism. This is not the general consensus, and even academics labeled as secular realize the merits of the work. “In William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, the "voice of the devil" argues:
“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” (Powers, 3). This statement summarizes what would become the most common interpretation of the work in the twentieth century (Powers, 3). Some critics, including C. S. Lewis, and later Stanley Fish, reject this interpretation. Instead, these critics believe the theology of Paradise Lost mimics the passages of Scripture on which it is based (Sanna; Bloom, 14). The latter half of the twentieth century saw critical understanding of Milton's epic move to a more political and philosophical concentration. Rather than the Romantic conception of the Devil as hero, it is generally accepted that Satan is presented in terms that begin classically heroic, then diminish him until he is finally reduced to a dust-eating serpent unable even to control his own body (SparkNotes, 4). The political angle enters into consideration in the underlying friction between Satan's conservative, hierarchical view of the universe, and the contrasting "new way" of God and the Son of God as illustrated in Book III. In other words, in contemporary criticism the main thrust of the work becomes not the deceit or heroism of Satan, but rather the tension between classical conservative "Old Testament" hierarchs (evidenced in Satan's worldview and even in that of the archangels Raphael and Gabriel), and "New Testament" revolutionaries (embodied in the Son of God, Adam, and Eve) who represent a new system of universal organization (Sanna; Bloom, 22). This new order is based not in tradition, precedence, and unthinking habit, but on sincere and conscious acceptance of faith and on station chosen by ability and responsibility. This interpretation makes a lot of use of Milton's other works and his biography, grounding itself in his personal history as an English revolutionary and social critic (Sanna; Bloom, 23-24).