Paradise Lost

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Paradise Lost. Epic poem by John Milton (1667) concerning mankind's disobedience and consequent expulsion from Paradise through Satan's agency. Derived principally from the biblical account of the fall of man but illuminated by Milton's breadth of scholarship and shaped by his involvement in the Commonwealth cause, it has become the blind poet's best-known work through its panoramic vistas and mastery of language. Dryden's acknowledgement (‘that Poet has cutt us all out’) was later echoed by Hazlitt's commendation that its musicality was unsurpassed. The sequel Paradise Regained (1671) is concerned with Christ's temptation in the wilderness, his resistance atoning for Eve's frailty.

A. S. Hargreaves

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