My aim is to do an essay to analyze Paradise Lost by the English poet John Milton. I want to concentrate in the three important new concepts which appear, for the first time, in the 17th century which are reflected in Milton's Paradise Lost: man, nature, and experience. The 17 th century was a time when a great many issues that had arisen since the Reformation came to ahead: religion, politics, power and freedom were questioned as never before. John Milton was born in London in 1608 at the height oh the Protestant Reformation in England. His father had left Roman Catholicism and Milton was raised Protest and, with a heavy tendency toward Puritanism.
Milton excelled in languages such as Latin, Greek, and Hebrew and in classical studies. For more than 20 years, Milton set aside poetry to write political and religious pamphlets for the cause of puritanism. For a time, he served as Secretary for Foreign Tongues under Cromwell. .
Milton was a mixed product of his time. On the one hand, as a humanist, he fought for religious tolerance and believed that there was something inherently valuable in man. As a puritan, however, he believed that the Bible was the answer and the guide to all. Where the Bible didn't afford an answer, milton would turn to reason. At the end of the war, milton was imprisoned for a short time for his views. In 1660, he emerged blind and disillusioned with the England he saw around him. Milton died of kidney failure in 1674 and was buried in the church of St. Giles in London.
Paradise Lost is considered to be his masterpiece. It's a biblical epic poem. It will be the first time in which an author will mix the epic, which was related to man with religion, which was related to God. All the texts written before Milton dealt with politics (king) or religion (God), but now something appears in the middle: the man and his experience. Paradise Lost is written in blank verse, since it was the only way in which the author could capture his experience (realism) in his work.
