Social Context of the Paradise Lost

Social Context of the Paradise Lost

Gudić, Nedžad
Khan, Shahab Yar

In the Paradise Lost, John Milton tried to explain how evil is seductive. It is one of the reasons why he portrayed Satan with ultra human dimensions in Book I and II. And what makes Satan so heroic is not the particular situation he is in or any facts about him: his magnificence comes from the inspired verse which Milton puts into his speeches. No one reading these speeches can miss their power and eloquence. It is no accident that when Winston Churchill was looking for something to rally the British people after the military disaster of Dunkirk, he used these lines on the radio. There is nothing in English literature to match the heroic determination, power, courage, and energy manifested here and throughout Satan's early speeches. And his followers are appropriately energized. At very end Paradise Lost was more than a work of art. Indeed, it was a moral and political treatise, a poetic explanation for the course that English history and Human kind had taken.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2010-06

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