The Work
Paradise Lost was first published in 1667 in ten books, then revised and republished in 1674 as twelve books - the form in which it is read today. It is an epic poem of 10,565 lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter (blank verse), composed in English by John Milton. The poem's stated purpose, announced in its opening invocation, is to 'justify the ways of God to men' - a phrase that has become one of the most quoted in English literature. The first edition was published by Samuel Simmons; Milton received five pounds for the copyright, with provisions for additional payments as editions sold.
The poem has never been out of print. Major scholarly editions include those by Thomas Newton (1749), David Masson (1874), Alastair Fowler (1968, revised 2007), and Gordon Teskey (2005). It is universally regarded as the greatest epic poem in the English language and one of the supreme achievements of Western literature.
Biblical Engagement
The poem's primary biblical source is Genesis 1-3, which provides the narrative framework: the creation of the world, the placing of Adam and Eve in Eden, the prohibition against eating from the Tree of Knowledge, the temptation by the serpent, and the expulsion from Paradise. Milton expands these three chapters of Genesis into a cosmos-spanning narrative of approximately sixty pages of verse.
Beyond Genesis, Milton draws on Isaiah 14:12-15 ('How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning') and Ezekiel 28:12-19 (the lament for the king of Tyre, traditionally read as referring to Satan's fall) for his account of Satan's rebellion and expulsion from Heaven. Revelation 12:7-9, depicting the war in heaven between Michael and the dragon, provides the basis for the war in Heaven narrated in Books 5-6. Romans 5:12-21, Paul's theology of the first and second Adam, shapes Milton's Christology: the Son volunteers to redeem humanity in Book 3, a scene that dramatizes the eternal covenant of redemption. John 3:16 - 'For God so loved the world' - resonates throughout the Father's speeches.
Milton directly quotes Scripture in the poem. In Book 3, the Father declares: 'So Man, as is most just, / Shall satisfy for Man, be judg'd and die, / And dying rise, and rising with him raise / His Brethren, ransom'd with his own dear life' - a poetic condensation of Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15. The Son's response draws on Philippians 2:5-8, the kenosis hymn: 'Account mee man; I for his sake will leave / Thy bosom, and this glorie next to thee / Freely put off.'
Author & Context
John Milton (1608-1674) was born in London to a prosperous family. His father, a scrivener and composer, gave him an exceptional education: St. Paul's School, Christ's College Cambridge, and six years of private study. Milton was a committed Puritan and supporter of the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil War. He served as Secretary for Foreign Tongues under Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth government from 1649 to 1660, during which time he wrote propaganda defending the execution of Charles I.
Milton began losing his sight around 1651 and was completely blind by 1652. He composed Paradise Lost entirely through dictation to amanuenses (secretaries, including his daughters), a circumstance that gives special poignancy to the poem's invocations of divine light and its portrayal of Samson's blindness (later treated in Samson Agonistes, 1671). The Restoration of Charles II in 1660 brought Milton's political world crashing down: he was briefly imprisoned and permanently marginalized. The poem was thus composed in defeat, blindness, and political disillusionment - circumstances that many scholars see reflected in Satan's defiant speeches.
Milton's theology was heterodox in several respects. His posthumously discovered treatise De Doctrina Christiana reveals Arian tendencies (subordination of the Son to the Father), Arminian views on free will, and mortalist beliefs about the soul's death with the body until resurrection. These theological positions are discernible in the poem, particularly in the Father-Son relationship and in the emphasis on free will as essential to genuine obedience.
Plot Summary
The poem opens in medias res with Satan and his rebel angels lying on the burning lake of Hell after their failed rebellion against God. Satan rallies his forces, and they build the palace of Pandemonium, where they debate their next move. Satan volunteers to corrupt God's new creation, humanity, and journeys through Chaos to reach the newly created Earth.
Books 3-4 shift between Heaven, where God foresees the Fall and the Son offers himself as redeemer, and Eden, where Adam and Eve live in innocent happiness. Satan, disguised as a cormorant and later a toad, infiltrates Paradise. Books 5-8 contain the archangel Raphael's narration to Adam of the war in Heaven and the creation of the world - Milton's retelling of the first two chapters of Genesis in magnificent detail.
In Book 9, the climax, Satan enters the serpent and tempts Eve with arguments about knowledge, freedom, and equality with God. Eve eats the forbidden fruit; Adam, unable to bear separation from her, eats also. Book 10 depicts the consequences: the Son's judgment (Genesis 3:14-19), Adam and Eve's recriminations, and Satan's hollow triumph. Books 11-12 present the archangel Michael's prophecy to Adam of human history from Cain and Abel to the coming of Christ and the final redemption - a compressed biblical narrative from Genesis 4 through Revelation.
Key Passages
Satan's opening speech in Hell (Book 1, lines 242-270) establishes the poem's central tension between defiant autonomy and divine sovereignty: 'The mind is its own place, and in it self / Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n. / What matter where, if I be still the same.../ Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.' This passage has generated more critical debate than perhaps any other in English poetry - is Milton admiring Satan or exposing his self-deception?
The morning hymn of Adam and Eve in Book 5 (lines 153-208) - 'These are thy glorious works, Parent of good, / Almighty, thine this universal Frame' - paraphrases Psalm 148 and Psalm 19:1-6, creating a liturgical centerpiece for the poem's vision of unfallen worship.
The moment of the Fall itself (Book 9, lines 780-794) is narrated with devastating restraint: 'She pluck'd, she eat: / Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat / Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe, / That all was lost.' The cosmic scope of Milton's language - nature itself groaning - echoes Romans 8:22.
Critical Reception
Reception was immediate and divided. John Dryden called it 'one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced.' Joseph Addison's Spectator essays (1712) established it as the English Aeneid. But the Romantic poets complicated the picture: William Blake declared that Milton was 'of the Devil's party without knowing it' - a claim that Satan is the poem's true hero. Percy Bysshe Shelley agreed. This 'Satanist' reading dominated the nineteenth century.
The twentieth century saw a fierce counter-reaction. C.S. Lewis's A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942) argued that Satan is meant to be seen as progressively degraded, not admired. Stanley Fish's Surprised by Sin (1967) proposed that Milton deliberately tempts the reader into sympathizing with Satan in order to reenact the Fall in the reading experience. These remain the two dominant critical frameworks, though feminist, postcolonial, and materialist readings have proliferated since the 1980s.
Theological Significance
The poem is the most sustained attempt in English literature to dramatize the entire arc of Christian salvation history: from the eternal councils of the Trinity, through creation, fall, and judgment, to the promise of redemption and final restoration. Its treatment of free will is particularly important: Milton insists, against Calvinist predestinarianism, that Adam and Eve were 'sufficient to have stood, though free to fall' (3.99) - a position that aligns with Arminian theology and has significant implications for the problem of evil.
The poem's most theologically provocative element is its characterization of God the Father, whom many readers have found cold, legalistic, and unappealing compared to Satan. Milton was aware of this risk; the Son functions as the poem's emotional and theological counterweight, embodying divine love and mercy. This Father-Son dynamic dramatizes the Old Testament / New Testament hermeneutical tension in a way that no systematic theology can match.
Legacy
Paradise Lost shaped virtually all subsequent English poetry. Its blank verse became the standard medium for serious English verse until the twentieth century. Pope, Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, and Eliot all wrote in its shadow. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) uses it as an explicit intertext: the creature reads Paradise Lost and identifies with both Adam and Satan. Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy (1995-2000) is a deliberate counter-narrative. The poem's influence extends to theology: Karl Barth read it; C.S. Lewis built his Space Trilogy and Perelandra as a Miltonic thought experiment; and every subsequent treatment of Satan in English literature - from Byron's Cain to Bulgakov's Master and Margarita - exists in dialogue with Milton's characterization.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should have Genesis 1-3 open alongside Books 7-9. Isaiah 14:12-15 and Ezekiel 28:12-19 illuminate the Satan narrative. Revelation 12:7-9 parallels the war in Heaven (Books 5-6). Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 provide the Pauline theology of the two Adams that structures Book 3. Philippians 2:5-11 (the kenosis hymn) illuminates the Son's self-offering. Psalm 19 and Psalm 148 should be read alongside the morning hymns of Book 5.
Further Reading
- C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942) - the classic defense of Milton's orthodoxy and the indispensable starting point for theological readers. - Stanley Fish, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost (1967) - the most influential modern critical reading, arguing that the poem reenacts the Fall in the experience of reading. - Alastair Fowler, ed., Paradise Lost (Longman Annotated English Poets, 2nd ed., 2007) - the definitive scholarly edition with exhaustive biblical and classical annotations.