paradise lost context

• Milton was alive from .... to


  1608-1674
• Milton's first pamphlet?


  Divorce tracks - wrote about his ex wife Mary, discussing how he felt men and women should have freedom to divorce without cost.
• Areopogitica


  books shouldn't be banned, writers should have public freedom
• Cromwell


  Leader of the republican party which Milton was a member of. Had Charles I beheaded, and ruled England from 1649-1658. Milton wrote essays in favour of Cromwell and was the 'Secretary of foreign tongues
• Milton and women


  Had 3 wives. Mary = 3 girls and one boy, Kathrine 1656-1658, third wife was 24 and he was 55. He disliked his daughters and cared more for his nephews education then theirs. They described him as 'fussy and patronising
• Milton and freedom


  He felt that 'all men were naturally born free' which is why he sided with the Republican party.
• Romantic reading

  Blake views Paradise lost as sympathetic to the Devil, saying that Milton was 'secretly of the Devil's party' and he enjoyed this.

  Shelly wrote admiringly of Satan, and said that 'nothing can succeed the energy and magnificence of the character of the Devil in paradise lost' and 'Milton's devil as a moral being is far superior to his God.
• Byron


  The devil was a Byronic hero, which means he was cunning but attractive.
• Women Johnson


  'contempt for women' 'subordinate and inferior beings' 'made only for obedience, man only for rebellion