John Milton dictated all of Paradise Lost after going blind
Milton lost his sight in 1652, yet he produced an epic of more than ten thousand lines by speaking it aloud to helpers and friends. Published in 1667, Paradise Lost retells the fall of Adam and Eve, and its magnetic, eloquent Satan has unsettled readers ever since.
Milton lived from 1608 to 1674. His contemporary biographer John Aubrey dated the writing to 1658 through 1663, though parts probably germinated much earlier. According to the scholar John Leonard, Milton did not originally intend a biblical subject: epics traditionally celebrated heroic monarchs, and he first imagined one built around a legendary British or Saxon king in the vein of Arthur. Leonard suggests the English Civil War interrupted those early plans. The first edition of 1667 ran to ten books of blank verse.
Following epic custom, the poem starts in the middle of the action. Satan and the rebel angels have already lost their war and lie in Hell. In its capital, Pandæmonium, Satan rallies them with dazzling speeches, backed by Beelzebub and Moloch. God foresees that humanity will fall through deception, and because the angels fell by their own choice while humans will be tricked, he offers mankind redemption; the Son volunteers to die for human sin. The archangel Raphael later recounts the three-day war in Heaven, ending when the Son alone drives out the rebels.
Adam and Eve are drawn as distinct personalities with passion and a physical relationship even before sin. Satan, disguised in a serpent, flatters Eve into eating from the Tree; Adam, knowing what she has done, eats too. Guilt and shame follow their first nightmares. Returning to Hell in triumph, Satan and his followers are turned into limbless, voiceless snakes. The archangel Michael shows Adam the future up to the Flood and then the promise of redemption.
Milton aimed to justify God's ways to humanity, wrestling with free will, predestination and the nature of good and evil. Critics praise the poem's language and theological reach, yet many readers find Satan heroic or sympathetic, a reading that remains hotly contested.
Source: Paradise Lost
