Paradise Lost Explained: How John Milton Wrote His Epic Religious Poem from Satan’s Perspective


Par­adise Lost is one of the books which the read­er admires and lays down, and for­gets to take up again,” Samuel John­son wrote in the late eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry. “None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a plea­sure. We read Mil­ton for instruc­tion, retire harassed and over­bur­dened, and look else­where for recre­ation; we desert our mas­ter, and seek for com­pan­ions.” These near­ly two and a half cen­turies lat­er, how many of us attempt to seek out the instruc­tion of Mil­ton in the first place? What was a lit­er­ary hit in 1667 has become a work read most­ly by spe­cial­ist schol­ars — but will, per­haps, become a favorite among view­ers of the YouTube chan­nel Hochela­ga thanks to its new video above.

The first thing to know about Mil­ton’s epic poem, says Hochela­ga host Tom­mie Trelawny, is that it “tells the sto­ry of the Bib­li­cal fall of man — but, curi­ous­ly, from Satan’s per­spec­tive.” Even if it’s nev­er occurred to you to set eyes on Par­adise Lost, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly heard one of Satan’s most mem­o­rable dec­la­ra­tions: “Bet­ter to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.”

There’s a decent chance you’ve also run across anoth­er, “The mind is its own place, and in it self. Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n,” per­haps with­out know­ing which char­ac­ter speaks it. But if you hear enough of his quotable quotes, you might start to think that this Satan fel­low makes some good points after all.

Par­adise Lost had a sim­i­lar effect on some of its God-fear­ing ear­ly read­ers, who sus­pi­cious­ly start­ed to won­der whose side Mil­ton was real­ly on. What the poem seems to glo­ri­fy, when read today, isn’t Satan, and it’s not even so much God or man as lan­guage itself. Now as then, Mil­ton’s baroque gram­mar and heav­i­ly Lati­nate vocab­u­lary con­sti­tut­ed a good por­tion of both the work’s chal­lenge and its appeal. Equal­ly notable is his obvi­ous con­vic­tion that lan­guage is up to the task of address­ing the most fun­da­men­tal truths, ques­tions, and con­tra­dic­tions of exis­tence. Satan may not emerge vic­to­ri­ous — and cer­tain­ly does­n’t at the end of the sequel, Par­adise Regained — but if he hap­pens to have the best lines, that just reflects our greater, and thor­ough­ly human, fas­ci­na­tion with the bad guys more than the good ones.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Only Sur­viv­ing Man­u­script of John Milton’s Par­adise Lost Gets Pub­lished in Book Form for the First Time

William Blake’s Hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry Illus­tra­tions of John Milton’s Par­adise Lost

John Milton’s Hand Anno­tat­ed Copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio: A New Dis­cov­ery by a Cam­bridge Schol­ar

Spenser and Mil­ton (Free Course)

A Sur­vival Guide to the Bib­li­cal Apoc­a­lypse

Did the Tow­er of Babel Actu­al­ly Exist?: A Look at the Archae­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.



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