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“Paradise Lost had an enormous impact on Satanism. Ironically so, because John Milton was a Christian, and he did not write Paradise Lost in any way to honor the Devil. But because he’s such a tremendous writer, he ends up making Satan, for the first time, a nuanced and compassionate character. Before that, in medieval works, Satan is pretty one-dimensional. He’s just the bad guy and that’s it. But then, in Paradise Lost, you see his motivations. You start to feel sympathy for the Devil. It talks about how he’s cast out of heaven, and you hear about his struggles. You end up rooting for him. There’s the great quote, “Better to reign in Hell than//serve in Heaven.” Milton ended up making the Devil seem like a very appealing character.” Read more...
La Carmina, Journalist
“Paradise Lost is a homecoming story of marital breakup and martial reunion, just as the Odyssey is. They’re also both epics about redefining a community in the wake of a devastating war, and about whether there will ever be an end to war.” Read more...
Emily Wilson, Classicist
“To question and decide for himself is essential to Milton’s whole sense of what it means to be a free human being…In his astonishing intervention in the Adam and Eve story, Milton considers how it was possible not for ignorant children, but for knowing, thoughtful, complex human beings to do what they did. Specifically, he asks, why was the woman alone when she had her fateful conversation with the serpent, and why did she then do what she did? It’s characteristic of Milton that he works out in the most exquisite and excruciating detail the conversation between the man and the woman when they decided briefly to separate. It wasn’t at all accidental that they were apart; it was a choice that Eve made after her conversation with Adam. And so too it wasn’t mere hunger that led her to eat the fruit. Milton gives a brilliant and painful description that anyone who has been in a relationship for more than five minutes will understand, a description of trying to negotiate your separateness from someone you love and to whom you are committed.” Read more...
The best books on Adam and Eve
Stephen Greenblatt, Literary Scholar
