Paradise lost

"Reviled as a regicide, isolated in a personal darkness, and aging, John Milton did not relinquish his voice. He somehow used that tireless voice, rather, to create Paradise Lost, one of the enduring masterpieces of English literature. Despite its difficulties--idiosyncratic syntax, densely packed ideas, capacious structure and epic form--the poem still has the power to dislodge modern readers from our ordinary habits of reading and push us to ex...