No work of Western literature approaches the ambition, scope, and cultural resonance of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The last true epic poem, Paradise Lost reimagines the foundational myth of Adam and Eve from the Book of Genesis in a narrative that also includes the fall of Lucifer and his rebellious fellow angels, the Creation and destruction of the world, and all cosmological and scientific knowledge as it existed in Milton’s time. Every page of Paradise Lost displays Milton’s dizzying mastery of classical and biblical mythology, but they also show the result of his penetrating investigation into the foundational questions of gender, politics, and religion. While in Paradise Lost Milton sets out to “justify the ways of God to men,” he also famously creates the first sympathetic portrait of the Devil in Western literature, prompting William Blake to declare that Milton was “of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” Milton’s famously idiosyncratic, difficult, and grand poetic style exerted enormous influence on generations of writers after him, as did his pathbreaking decision to write his great epic without rhyme. All this makes Paradise Lost a necessary rite of passage for any student of literature but also a vital resource for anyone grappling with the most basic questions of how to live a worthy human life.
