Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained Author:John Milton Over a period of five years or so, John Milton, completely blind, dictated the 10,000 lines of Paradise Lost, which tells the story of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from Eden. The greatest epic poem in English, it remains popular with scholars and common readers alike, often for a somewhat ironic reason: Satan, lavishly envisioned, i... more »rresistibly draws them in. The poem is notable also for its mixture of classical mythology, contemporary science, and personal theology.
Paradise, forfeited when Adam and Eve yielded to the devil, was recovered, according to Milton, when Jesus resisted him. Much shorter than its predecessor and lacking its lushness--Satan here is notably unheroic--Paradise Regained adheres closely to the Gospel account of the tempting of Christ after his forty days in the wilderness.
Together, the two poems present a Protestant account of ultimate sin and lasting redemption, one governed throughout by Milton's desire to "justify the ways of God to men."« less