Paradise Lost

Influences include the Bible, Milton's own Puritan upbringing and religious perspective, Edmund Spenser, and the Roman poet Virgil. It is widely regarded as one of the finest epic poems in the English language.

The protagonist, and the most dramatic figure in this Protestant epic, is the angel, later demon, Lucifer. Milton presents Lucifer almost sympathetically, as an ambitious and prideful being who defies his creator, omnipotent God, and wages war on heaven, only to be defeated and cast down. Some critics see Lucifer as a Byronic hero[?]. In Hell, Lucifer must employ his rhetorical ability to organize his followers; he is aided by Mammon and Beelzebub.

Later, Lucifer enters the Garden of Eden, where he successfully tempts Eve, wife of Adam, to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil.

On April 27, 1667 the blind, impoverished Milton sold the copyright of Paradise Lost for £10.

Later in life, Milton wrote Paradise Regained[?], charting God's returning to man the possibility of paradise.

In the late 1970s, the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki wrote an opera based on Paradise Lost.

Online texts Paradise Lost

• Dartmouth well-formatted html version (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/note/)
• Project Gutenberg text version 1 (http://promo.net/cgi-promo/pg/t9.cgi?entry=20&full=yes&ftpsite=)
• Project Gutenberg text version 2 (http://promo.net/cgi-promo/pg/t9.cgi?entry=26&full=yes&ftpsite=)

Paradise Regained

• Project Gutenberg text (http://promo.net/cgi-promo/pg/t9.cgi?entry=58&full=yes&ftpsite=)

See also the documentary films :

• Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills
• Paradise Lost 2: Revelations