Paradise Lost BookⅠ 英文赏析

John Milton, a poet and political commenter of the English Bourgeois Revolution, is the most sublime and most lonely figure in English literature, whose importance is acknowledged all over the world. He is the last rearguard of the Renaissance and the primary promoter of Enlightenment. The love of every form of human culture and the steadfast devotion to duty as the highest object in human life have shaped his entire career.
Of all his great works, Paradise Lost is the most complicated and most profound one, which wins him endless honor. It is indeed the only generally recognized epic in English literature since Beowulf and a heroic poem in Renaissance style. It deals with revolt from God, with sin and fall, and with the possible salvation. It presents the author’s views in an allegoric religious form, and readers will easily discern its basic idea—exposure of the ways of Satan and justification of the ways of God to men. It is the reflection of the reactionary forces of Milton