Milton Paradise Lost Book 1 Summary

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    "Paradise Lost" was first published in 1667. Milton had began to composed it in 1658,he had then been totally blind forever five years and we have to imagine that the poem taking shape by a process of mental composition, the dictation of perhaps 50 lines at a time and as well as repeated checking and revision. When it was complete there was a final revision which took about two years ; and the subsequent process of getting the poem into print was a massive task.


About Paradise Book 1

    "Paradise Lost" renews the heroic ideas of Homar and Virgil but only to condemn them. Yet in the process of convention Milton exploits to the full their poetic beauty, in the same way as he exploits the beauty of classical mythology while he never fails to tell us that it is 'fable' that is either fantasy or a garbled form of truth. A new kind of heroism is put forward, superior to the old, the spiritual in the state of the symbols of human ideal. If that intention is hampered by the absence of an action which a 'spiritual' hero can show his truth capacity. Milton has made up for it in his presentation of the old ideal through Satan whether in hell or heaven. 

Lines in Paradise Lost -  Ten thousand five thousand sixty lines of blank verse divided into twelve books, each headed by a prose 'argument' or summery on the content. 

Narrator of the Paradise Lost - John Milton 

Point of view  of the Paradise Lost - Third Person.

Tone of the epic Paradise Lost - Lofty formal tragic tone. 

Tense used in the epic Paradise Lost - present 

Setting of the epic Paradise Lost Book 1-  Pandemonia/ Hell. 

Time -Before the beginning  of the time. 

Place - Hell, chaos of night, earth (Paradise the garden of eden). 

Sources of the epic Paradise Lost - Milton used The Bible, Homer's "Iliad  and odessy", Virgil's "Aeneid" and the stories in Greeko - Roman mythology as sources of the information and as writing model. 

Theme of the Book 1 in Paradise Lost -  In Book 1 the Paradise Lost  Milton reveals the central theme of the work : "to justify the ways of God to man". here justify means to 'explain  and defend' and ultimately to 'vindicate ' , God's courts of action in dealing with Adam and Eve after they succumb to the temptation and it forbidden fruit. 

Major conflict in Book 1 - Satan already damned to hell undertakes to corrupt God 's new beloved creation human kind.

 

Paradise Lost Book 1 Summary

In "paradise Lost",  the first book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject, man's disobedience, and the loss thereupon of paradise wherein he was placed, then touches the prime cause of his fall, the serpent, Or rather Satan in the Serpent who revolting from God and drawing to his side many legions of angels was by the command of God driven out of heaven with all his crew into the great deep which action passed over. 

Milton Paradise Lost Book 1 Summary
Paradise Lost Book 1


    The poem hastes into the midst of thing presenting Satan with his angels now fallen into hell, described here not in the center but in a utter darkness fitliest called Chaos : here Satan with his angels lying on the burning lake, thunderstruck and astonished, after a certain space recovers, as form confusion, calls up him who next in order and dignity lay by him. They confer of their miserable fall.

    Satan awakens all his legions, who lay till then in the same manner confounded, they rise their numbers array of battle, their chief leaders named, according to the idols known afterwards in cannan ( Palestine)  and the countries adjoining. To this Satan direct speech, comforts them with hope yet of regaining heaven, but tells them lastly of a new world and new kind of creature to be created, according to an ancient prophecy or report in heaven ; for that angels were long before this visible creation, was the opinion of many ancient Fathers. 

    To find out the truth of this prophecy, and want to determine thereon the refers to full council. What his associates thence attempt. Pandemonium the palace of Satan rises, suddenly built out of the deep : the infant peers there sit in council.   


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