Paradise Lost by John Milton Illustrations by William Blake

9. “And She Shall Be Called Woman”

11. “So Judged He Man”

14. Born 9 December 1608 – Died 8 November 1674
John Milton

15. Paradise Lost has many of the elements that define epic form:
 it is a long, narrative poem;
 it follows the exploits of a hero (or anti-hero);
 it involves warfare and the supernatural;
 it begins in the midst of the action, in media res, with earlier crises in the
story brought in later by flashback;
 and it expresses the ideals and traditions of a people.
It has these elements in common with the Aeneid, the Iliad, and the Odyssey

16.  The poem is in blank verse, that is, non-rhyming
verse. In a note he added to the second printing,
Milton expresses contempt for rhyming poetry.
 Paradise Lost is composed in the verse form of iambic
pentameter—the same used by Shakespeare. In this
style, a line is composed of five long, unaccented
syllables, each followed by a short, accented one.

17. 1st edition published in 1667 in 10 books
2nd edition published in 1674
reorganized in 12 books with some
revisions

18.  Milton's epic achieved classical status in the last years of the 17th century,
when it was published with explanatory notes
 Twenty years later, its position was consolidated by an influential series of
articles written by Joseph Addison in the Spectator (a daily paper).
 In 1732 Richard Bentley produced a corrected version of the poem claiming
that the blind poet had employed an incompetent secretary, argued that the
published version contains many errors of wording and logic
 Bentley's unjustified and insensitive revisions attracted widespread ridicule
 These revisions reflected, however, a feeling that Paradise Lost, though a
national classic, was somehow unorthodox in its theological and
philosophical outlook.
 Pope's poem, and indeed his earlier work Rape of the Lock, show another
kind of response to Milton. They are 'mock-epics', and re-deploy elements
of Milton's style (and, of course, that of his classical antecedents) to comic
ends.
 Milton's achievement was felt to be so great that no contemporary poet
could rival or match it: writing a serious epic would be out of the question.

19. The End