![]() ![]() Again, Milton's just being true to his characters, and writing a great story while he's at it. He's not exactly all flowers and hugs there either. Similarly, God's a dick because God's a dick. That's the point of Satan! If Milton didn't make him as appealing as possible, he'd be doing Satan a disservice. Satan is tempting for us because Satan is tempting for us. Did Milton screw up? Is he being cynical, or a double-secret atheist? And why is God such a dick?īut no one asks whether, say, Shakespeare screwed up in making Iago so much fun they just give him credit for writing an awesome villain. There's all this debate over why Satan is so appealing in Paradise Lost. thank god i realized later that the best way to get attention is through cigarettes and promiscuity not literature. i think i blocked a lot out but i do remember a female demon who is repeatedly raped by her sons immediately after giving birth to them. all of the descriptions are completely graphic and grotesque. the book is about a war waged in hell after satan's fall into the underworld. ![]() most likely people realized that i was desperate for attention and for some strange reason was using john milton to get it, but on the off chance they did believe i was 'into' paradise lost, i must have seemed like a total psycho. i did this with a few other books too (catcher in the rye, on the road, ect.) i carried it to school so that teachers would see it in my possession and prominently displayed it on my bedside table to let friends and family know.Īfter actually reading the book for a brit-lit class i realized how wrong my thirteen-year-old self was with the image i assumed i was portraying. i didn't ever want to read it but i wanted to give off the impression that i was the type of person who would read it. In middle school i had seen this book lying around the house and for some reason it struck me as very impressive. Samuel Johnson praised Paradise Lost as "a poem which.with respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the human mind," though he (a Tory and recipient of royal patronage) described Milton's politics as those of an "acrimonious and surly republican".īecause of his republicanism, Milton has been the subject of centuries of British partisanship. William Hayley's 1796 biography called him the "greatest English author," and he remains generally regarded "as one of the preeminent writers in the English language," though critical reception has oscillated in the centuries since his death (often on account of his republicanism). Writing in English, Latin, Greek, and Italian, he achieved international renown within his lifetime, and his celebrated Areopagitica (1644)-written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship-is among history's most influential and impassioned defenses of free speech and freedom of the press. Milton's poetry and prose reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day. ![]() He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), written in blank verse. Educated at Cambridge, he was a prolific pamphleteer, and campaigned vigorously for religious and civil liberties and the freedom of the Press.John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. ![]() Milton lived at a time of immense political change, and spent much of his life as a radical. It is told in blank verse, in twelve books, and its exuberant imagery, lengthy suspended sentences and distinctive sound-patterning can be attributed to the fact that the poem was composed after Milton went blind: it was dictated to a series of amanuenses, including the poet's daughters. The poem enacts debates about the nature of free will and predestination, and has sparked much critical and philosophical discussion. One of the most striking aspects of the poem is its portrayal of Satan, a charismatic rebel who is so intriguing that the poet William Blake commented that Milton was 'of the Devil's party without knowing it'. First published in 1667, its aim was no less than to 'justifie the wayes of God to Man' - to explain why God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. John Milton's ambitious rewriting of the Fall of Man is one of the most influential poems in the English language. They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, ![]()
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