Paradise Lost

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Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) is the supreme achievement of English epic poetry: twelve books of blank verse narrating the Fall of Man, from Satan's rebellion in heaven through the temptation and expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden. Milton was blind when he dictated it, working from a vast storehouse of classical learning and Protestant theology. Dryden, Blake, Shelley, Keats, and virtually every subsequent English poet measured themselves against it. Satan is among the most complex and compelling figures in literature — so magnificently drawn that Blake declared Milton was 'of the Devil's party without knowing it.' Reading it aloud reveals the music of Milton's periods in ways silent reading cannot capture.