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British Poetry

Notes Milton incorporates Paganism, classical mythology, and Christianity into the poem. While Milton’s
principal goal in the work is to give a compelling Theodicy, he nevertheless deals with a range of
topics, from marriage to politics (Milton was politically active during the time of the English Civil
War). Many difficult theological issues are deliberately addressed, including fate, predestination,
the Trinity, the introduction of sin and death into the world, as well as the nature of angels, fallen
angels, Satan and the war in heaven. Milton draws on his knowledge of languages, and diverse
sources—primarily Genesis, much of the New Testament, the deuterocanonical Book of Enoch, and
other parts of the Old Testament. Milton’s epic is often considered one of the greatest literary works
in the English language, along with those of Shakespeare.

19.1 Paradise Lost-I: Introduction to the Author and the Text

19.1.1 Introduction to the Text
John Milton was born on December 9, 1608, around the time Shakespeare began writing his romance
plays (Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest) and John Smith established his colony at
Jamestown. Milton’s father was a scrivener and, perhaps more importantly, a devout Puritan, who
had been disinherited by his Roman Catholic family when he turned Protestant. In April 1625, just
after the accession of Charles I, he matriculated at Christ’s College, Cambridge. During these years,
Milton considered entering the ministry, but his poetic ambitions always seemed to take precedence
over his ministerial aspirations.
Milton composed his early verse in Latin, in the fashion of a classically educated person. As soon as
his third year at Cambridge, however, he expressed his desire to abandon such fashionable poetry
in order to write in his native tongue. Unlike the learned classicists of his day, who imitated Greek
and Latin versification, Milton sought to rehabilitate the English poetic tradition by establishing it
as an extension or flowering of the classical tradition. He saw himself as a poet whose lineage
extended, through the Romans, back to the Greeks. Like Homer and Virgil before him, Milton would
be the epic poet of the English nation.
The poetic vocation to which Milton was heir is both nationalistic and religious in character. The
epic poet chronicles the religious history of a people; he plays the role of prophet-historian. Hence,
as Milton wrote in a letter to Charles Diodati, “the bard is sacred to the gods; he is their priest, and
both his heart and lips mysteriously breathe the indwelling Jove.” A sense of religiosity and patriotism
drive Milton’s work. On the one hand, he felt that he could best serve God by following his vocation
as a poet. His poetry would, on the other hand, serve England by putting before it noble and religious
ideas in the highest poetic form. In other words, Milton sought to write poetry which, if not directly
or overtly didactic, would serve to teach delightfully. The body of work emerging from these twin
impulses - one religious, the other political-witnesses his development as (or into) a Christian poet
and a national bard. Finally, it is in Paradise Lost that Milton harmonizes his two voices as a poet
and becomes the Christian singer, as it were, of epic English poems.

Write a note on the poem, Paradise Lost.
It should be noted, then, that in Paradise Lost Milton was not only justifying God’s ways to humans
in general; he was justifying His ways to the English people between 1640 and 1660. That is, he was
telling them why they had failed to establish the good society by deposing the king, and why they
had welcomed back the monarchy. Like Adam and Eve, they had failed through their own
weaknesses, their own lack of faith, their own passions and greed, their own sin. God was not to
blame for humanity’s expulsion from Eden, nor was he to blame for the trials and corruption that
befell England during the time of the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. The failure of the

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