Andrew Morley and I were discussing Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ the other day. Andrew had been expected to memorise parts of it as a schoolboy, whereas I was attempting to read it from start to end. Andrew - among others - thought that it was meant to be read aloud. That’s almost certainly correct because the blind Milton dictated it to his daughter.
Either way it’s a challenge to read. Published in 1667, it is a loose derivation of Genesis 3, sitting stylistically between Shakespeare and Homer. It is not for everyone, being written in what we call blank verse, and is very long.
Briefly, it is a tale of conflict played out in Heaven, Hell, and Eden. The climax (perhaps) is when God hears that Satan is heading for Paradise. Immediately the Garden of Eden is put into lockdown, God appoints his senior angels as border controllers, and Adam and Eve are warned not to talk to strangers. But Satan leaps over the wall, finds the sleeping Eve, and whispers in her ear. The rest of the plot more or less follows the Genesis story, but this is a poem, not a theological tract, and its true value may lie in its illustration of how 17th-century culture viewed the contest between good and evil.
If you delve into it, you will be struck by its influence on the hymn texts of the next two or three centuries. Only last week, we sang;
‘Be thou my breastplate, my sword for the fight,
be thou my armour, and be thou my true might’.
The theme time and time again is a militaristic tale of conflict between good and evil. This might seem anachronistic today, but was the standard view in Milton’s time, as was the view of sin as an infection. Indeed, Milton sees Satan as a super-spreader of something akin to Covid 19.
The poem was banned by the Roman Catholic Church for many years, primarily because Satan can be seen in Greek heroic terms, as one who overcomes setbacks to become victorious as the one who enters Eden and infects humankind.
There are good synopses on the internet; anything that gets us thinking about human nature, and about the battle for our hearts and minds has got to be a good thing.
