Reading Order
Paradise Lost Reading Order
Paradise Lost (1667) by John Milton is the greatest epic poem in the English language — the story of the Fall of Man, organized around Satan's rebellion against God, his seduction of Eve, and Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden. Milton chose to write his epic on the grandest possible subject: not the Trojan War, not the founding of Rome, but the origin of human sin and suffering. The poem is organized in twelve books (originally ten, revised for the 1674 second edition), opening in medias res with Satan in Hell, rallying his fallen angels for a new campaign against God through the corruption of his most recent creation, Man. Satan travels from Hell through Chaos to the newly created Earth; he observes Adam and Eve in Paradise; he tempts Eve through a dream, then through the disguised-serpent conversation of Book Nine, which is the emotional and dramatic center of the poem. Adam chooses to share in Eve's fall rather than live without her. The consequences — the entry of Death into the world, the loss of Paradise, the difficult life of labor and pain that awaits — are told in the final books. The poem's extraordinary formal achievement (the verse paragraphs, the Latinate syntax, the sustained blank verse) and its theological complexity (particularly the character of Satan, whom generations of readers from Blake to Shelley have found more interesting than God) make Paradise Lost one of the most discussed works in the English literary tradition.
Where to start
Paradise Lost (1667, revised 1674) — the complete twelve-book poem, in any good modern edition. The Penguin Classics edition with John Leonard's notes is outstanding; the Norton Critical Edition is the standard scholarly text. Best Milton reading order: Comus → Lycidas → Paradise Lost → Paradise Regained → Samson Agonistes.
Complete Paradise Lost Book List
- 1Buy
Paradise Lost
John Milton·1667·The complete twelve-book poem — Satan, Adam, Eve, God, and the War in Heaven. The Penguin Classics edition with John Leonard's notes is widely regarded as the best modern edition for general readers; the Norton Critical Edition (ed. Gordon Teskey) is the scholarly standard - 2Buy
Paradise Regained
John Milton·1671·The companion — Christ's temptation in the wilderness. The companion as the brief epic that Milton wrote as the complement to Paradise Lost: where Paradise Lost tells the story of the Fall, Paradise Regained tells the story of the recovery — Christ's resistance to Satan's temptations in the wilderness, which is the answer to Eve's yielding in the Garden - 3Buy
Samson Agonistes
John Milton·1671·The companion dramatic poem — Samson's renewal. The companion as the third piece of Milton's late career: published with Paradise Regained, it is Milton's most personal and most anguished work — Samson's blindness, imprisonment, and eventual renewal through the destruction of the Philistines is widely understood as Milton's meditation on his own situation after the Restoration - 4Buy
The Faerie Queene
Edmund Spenser·1590·Spenser's companion — the epic allegorical romance. The companion as the predecessor: Spenser's Faerie Queene is the primary English epic before Milton, and Milton's relationship to Spenser (whom he called his 'original') is one of the most important in the English poetic tradition - 5Buy
The Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri·1320·The companion — Dante's journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The companion as the predecessor that Paradise Lost most directly engages: Milton uses the same three-part cosmological structure (Hell, the middle region, and Heaven) and the same sustained theological investigation that Dante developed in the Divine Comedy - 6Buy
Faust
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe·1808·Goethe's companion — the Faustian bargain. The companion as the German investigation of the same theological question: where Milton investigates the relationship between God, Satan, and human freedom through the Fall narrative, Goethe investigates it through the Faustian bargain — the human desire for transcendence that is also the human vulnerability to temptation - 7Buy
The Aeneid
Virgil·-19·Virgil's companion — the founding of Rome. The companion as the primary classical epic model: Milton's Paradise Lost is in sustained dialogue with the Aeneid, using Virgil's epic conventions (the in medias res opening, the epic similes, the journey through the underworld) and transforming them for the Christian subject matter - 8Buy
Areopagitica
John Milton·1644·Milton's companion — the argument for freedom of the press. The companion as the prose companion to Paradise Lost: where the poem investigates freedom and necessity through the Fall narrative, Areopagitica investigates the same questions through the political argument for freedom of thought and expression
Paradise Lost — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Paradise Lost about?
Paradise Lost is John Milton's epic poem about the Fall of Man — the story of Satan's rebellion against God, his seduction of Eve, and Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden. The poem opens in medias res with Satan in Hell, rallying his fallen angels; Satan then travels from Hell through Chaos to the newly created Earth, where he observes Adam and Eve in Paradise. Through a series of stratagems — a dream, the disguised-serpent conversation of Book Nine — Satan tempts Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, promising that it will make her like God. Eve eats it; Adam, unwilling to live without Eve, eats it too, even knowing it is forbidden. The consequences — the entry of Death into the world, the loss of Paradise — are announced by the archangel Michael in the final books, and the poem ends with Adam and Eve's expulsion from Paradise, walking together with 'the world was all before them.'
Is Satan the hero of Paradise Lost?
The question of whether Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost has been debated since the poem's publication. William Blake wrote that Milton was 'of the Devil's party without knowing it'; Percy Shelley in A Defence of Poetry called Satan 'a moral being... superior to [God] in moral excellence'; and C.S. Lewis wrote The Preface to Paradise Lost partly to refute this 'romantic' reading. The 'romantic' reading notes that Satan is given the most compelling speeches, the most dramatic entrance, and the most vivid psychological complexity in the poem's early books; his declaration 'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven' has become one of the most quoted lines in English literature. The 'anti-Satanist' reading notes that Satan's arguments are systematically shown to be self-deluding throughout the poem, that his grandeur diminishes as the poem progresses, and that Milton signals his corruption through the similes and imagery associated with him. The debate is unresolved because the poem is genuinely complex.
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