Paradise Lost Essays

Paradise Lost

Eden is at the very centre of all major events in Paradise Lost Book IX, and Milton proves keen to exploit its potency as a setting. The Garden represents both the glory of God’s Creation and the fragility of its existence. Milton juxtaposes Satan...

Paradise Lost

In an attempt to defend both divine providence and free will, Milton’s God justifies the inherent discrepancy between destiny and free choice. Supporting the belief that Man is created with sufficient qualities to withstand on his own, Milton’s...

Paradise Lost

Milton’s Paradise Lost deviates significantly from the unadorned version of man’s fall from grace found in Genesis. This, however, was not a problem for Milton who (as a Puritan) believed that the embellishments he wrote were divinely inspired...

Paradise Lost

The originality of Milton’s <i>Paradise Lost</i> lies in its ability to transform the predominantly secular spirit of Homer, Virgil, Boiardo, and other masters of literary epic into a theological subject outside of the tradition....

College

Paradise Lost

Being a devout Christian, reasonable freethinker and a popular writer with a political consciousness, John Milton took upon himself the ambitious task of writing a modern Christian epic in English, inspired by the classical pagan tradition of epic...

College

Paradise Lost

Satan’s Reason

The character of Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost is a different portrayal than traditional biblical teachings imply. The Christian tradition provides a dichotomist view of heaven and hell, good and evil, God and Satan. Milton’s...

College

Paradise Lost

Milton’s construction of Eve in Paradise Lost is beset with dithering ambiguity, with her identity being defined and redefined within. The text has been construed during the Restoration, on the backdrop of the libertine culture and the...

College

Paradise Lost

Lord Acton, a British historian, once said “All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Over the course of human history, the Church has been the focus of many criticisms, including but not limited to the relationship with the...

12th Grade

Paradise Lost

In John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, the audience’s opinion on the anti-hero Bosola and his moral integrity changes throughout the play due to his sudden catharsis and change in behavior after he realizes the consequences of his working for the...

College

Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost, the epic poem written in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton narrates the biblical account of the Fall of mankind. Eve is the only character that is both female and human in the poem and Milton’s depiction of...

College

Paradise Lost

Words with the root “obedient” or “obedience” appear thirty-two times in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, while the root word “loyal” appears only four times. Nevertheless, ties of loyalty are central to the narrative of man’s first fall. Questions...

College

Paradise Lost

As proposed by Immanual Kant, the Enlightenment consisted of having “the courage to use your own understanding,” and John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Descartes’ Meditations, and Cervantes’ Don Quixote collectively provide instances that both affirm...

College

Paradise Lost

John Milton conforms much to the popular misogyny of his time - the belief that women are inferior to men, and wives subservient to their husbands. However, his epic Paradise Lost explores the positive and important role women in that society...