Poetry
Paradise Lost
John Milton · 1667
Opening lines
Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Driven from heaven with his followers, the Rebel rises on a lake of fire, holds counsel and has a palace built where the next course is debated: to resume the war, or to quietly spoil what the victor has just created. The second view prevails and he sets out alone, crosses chaos, is shown the way by an angel whom he deceives, reaches the garden and clears its wall in a single leap. There he sees a man and a woman, and learns that a single tree is forbidden to them.
Context
The poem was dictated for the most part between about 1658 and 1663, by a blind author who, after 1660, was briefly imprisoned and found himself on the side of the defeated: he had defended in writing the execution of the king whose son had just returned to the throne. The contract he signed on 27 April 1667 is the oldest known agreement between an author and a publisher: five pounds down, and five more at each of the first three printings once thirteen hundred copies had been sold. Publication was delayed by a paper shortage caused by the war against the United Provinces. The refusal of rhyme, held to be a barbarous invention, was not printed at the outset: the publisher obtained it from the author in 1668, so many readers having stumbled over verses that did not rhyme.
Who it is for
More than ten thousand lines of seventeenth-century English, translated into French as early as 1729, then by Delille in verse and by Chateaubriand.
Prizes and reception
Ten pounds sterling received in all during his lifetime, eight paid to his widow in 1680, and twenty-five collected by the publisher on selling the right on.
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