Satan and his unholy legions are described in great detail as are their rebellion and malevolence. The action shifts to the rebellion of Lucifer and from then on, to familiar episodes like the temptation of Adam and Eve and their disobedience to God's laws. It begins with a prologue that describes the subject of the epic, much like an introduction. Each one is devoted to a particular Biblical episode. Paradise Lost consists of twelve smaller volumes divided into Books. The entire work, consisting of nearly ten thousand individual lines of blank verse was dictated by Milton from memory, to a series of scribes. He completed it after five years of tremendous effort, since he was already totally blind when he began working. When the monarchy was restored, Milton found himself on the wrong side and he retreated into hiding where he began working on his dream of creating an epic to match the best in Latin and Greek. Milton was deeply embroiled in politics and the new parliament. Tumultuous historical events intervened, like the English Civil War and the establishment of Puritan Rule. It was here that he first read Virgil and Homer and decided to create his own epic in English. Milton grew up in a privileged environment, having been schooled at home by private tutors and traveling extensively throughout Italy. His father was a wealthy merchant who had embraced Protestantism despite opposition from his Catholic family. The poet John Milton was more than sixty years old when he embarked on this immense work of literary creation. It describes an omniscient, all powerful God, the Fall of Man, the Temptation in the Garden of Eden, the disgraced angel who later becomes known as Satan, the Angelic Wars fought by Archangels Michael and Raphael and the Son of God who is the real hero of this saga. This problem almost turned me off the audiobook before I'd really given it a chance.Magnificent in its scale and scope, this monumental poem by the blind poet John Milton was the first epic conceived in the English language. Anyone who wants to focus on just Book V of Paradise Lost, for instance, has to do a lot of work to figure out where he or she should start listening. That said, it would be of great help to students if the publisher would label the recorded segments with the specific book (and maybe even line numbers!) from which the reading was drawn. Listening to this recording helped me, I believe, experience this book as its 17th century author intended, rather than as my jaded eyes had seen it before. The actors in this project could not have been better, and perform their roles with great dignity, and without the slightest irony. Having listened to this recording, I am amazed at the difference truly great readers make in the meaning of a story. Also, to a modern mind (or at least to my mind) some of the descriptions of Adam and Eve and their time in the garden seemed almost campy. I was not a great fan of Paradise Lost before, largely because Eve annoyed me so (she looks to Adam for leadership, while he looks to God), and some of Milton's inventions (mainly those surrounding the character of Sin) seemed gratuitous. I found myself revisiting this story recently, having last read it almost 30 years ago. Paradise Regained, published in 1671, tells of the temptation of Christ by Satan as he wanders in the wilderness for 40 days and nights. John Milton's epic, biblically-inspired poems are wonderfully dramatised for BBC Radio starring Denis Quilley as Milton, Ian McDiarmid as Satan and Robert Glenister as Christ, enhanced by specially composed music.įirst published in 1667, Paradise Lost describes Satan's plot to ruin God's new and most favoured creation, Mankind, and recounts the temptation of Adam and Eve and their banishment from the Garden of Eden. Out of chaos shall come order and out of darkness shall come light. The highly-acclaimed BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Milton's epic poem telling the story of the fall of man and also its sequel, Paradise Regained.
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