Paradise Lost By John Milton (1608 – 1674) Essay, Research Paper

Few literary poems attempt to take on

such a huge theme as Paradise Lost. Milton himself, in the Argumentum that

begins the poem, claims to have produced the greatest poem ever written,

“things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.” The poem’s theme is nothing

less than the origin of evil itself, which Milton sees as being embedded

in man’s nature as a result of the original transgression and subsequent

sins of humanity’s common ancestors. It recounts, in twelve expansive books,

a story line that occupies only a few verses of the book of Genesis.

Aside from its sheer size, other elements

might make the work somewhat difficult for a modern reader. It is told

in the high formal style, filled with rhetorical speeches, invocations,

elaborate similes, and long “catalogues” of names, places, and armies.

Milton showers his poem with thousands of allusions to Hebraic, medieval,

and renaissance culture, and his syntax may strike a modern reader as twisted.

This striking and unusual word order is imitative of Vergil’s Aneid and

the structure of many other great classical epics,

But one need not be a classical scholar

to enjoy Paradise Lost. The music of the language is often mesmerizing,

and its imaginative retelling of the Genesis account is without equal.

The reader is immediately intrigued by

Milton’s portrait of Satan. In fact, it’s not hard to sympathize with the

fallen devil, or even side with him – his character is more fleshy and

alluring than that of the somewhat bland God of the poem. But that is the

very irony Milton wanted to achieve: just as Satan makes evil appear good,

so Satan’s ways may appear, but only at first glance, attractive.