Paradise Lost: Experimental and Unorthodox Sacred Epic

In this essay, I stress notable ways in which Paradise Lost is experimental as an epic and unorthodox as a sacred poem. It eschews the national, imperial, and dynastic themes of previous epics and instead offers a probing and original retelling of the fall of humankind and its tragic consequences. At the same time, I consider how Milton's Protestant epic, with its emphasis on spiritual interiority, may be seen as a polemical political and religious poem imaginatively concerned with issues of political liberty, tyranny, and dissent. Other dimensions of Paradise Lost—for example, its representation of gender and sexual relations, its emphasis on Adam and Eve's domestic life and tensions, its engagement in controversial theological issues, and its depiction of a material cosmos—also highlight its striking originality as an epic.