"Cliff Notes - Paradise Lost" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

three-day temptation in the desert by Satan.) Milton's final work,
Samson Agonistes, is a Greek drama as impressive as Paradise Lost in
everything except size.

Milton died in 1674, just after the second edition of Paradise Lost
appeared. The poem was for that time a modest best seller. It sold
1,300 copies in the first eighteen months and earned Milton a total
of ten pounds. By the end of the seventeenth century, the book had
gone through six editions, including one published in 1678 with large
engraved illustrations. It has never lost its status as a classic,
and it has never stopped being a source of controversy. People love
or hate Paradise Lost, for as many reasons as it has readers. The
poem has retained its interest because it deals with subjects that
will always concern us--good, evil, freedom, responsibility. And
because, like any great work of literature, it's exciting to read.

PARADISE LOST: THE PLOT

Paradise Lost follows the epic tradition in not telling the story
chronologically, with one event following another in the sequence in
which they occurred. Instead it begins at midpoint and tells the
rest in flashbacks (and flash-forwards). Before we consider the plot
as it actually unfolds in Paradise Lost, it is helpful to have in
mind an outline of the story in chronological order.

PARADISE LOST: THE CHRONOLOGICAL SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

God has three aspects, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost or
Holy Spirit. As creator, God the Father sets everything going, like
a clock, so that he knows what is to happen but does not interfere
with the running of it. In Heaven he is surrounded by angels
("angel" comes from a Greek word meaning "messenger"). When he
decides to announce the equal status with himself of his Son,
one-third of the angels rebel under the leadership of Lucifer, who
becomes Satan, the Prince of Hell. A terrible three-day War in
Heaven ends in the defeat of Satan by the Son, who drives all the
rebel angels down to Hell, which God has created for them out of
primal Chaos.

To replace the missing angels, God through his Son creates the World,
and he puts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Paradise. Like the angels,
they have free will. They live in pleasure, with frequent visits
from the angels, but they must not touch two trees in the garden, the
Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.

Satan wants revenge on God for his defeat, so he tempts Eve to eat
fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. She in turn tempts her husband,
Adam. This is the original sin from which all mankind's troubles
flow. The life of pleasure is over: man must work and woman must
suffer childbirth pains. The two are driven from Paradise to make