60 Fun Facts About Paradise Lost

Who wrote Paradise Lost?

Milton lived from 1608 to 1674 and had gone completely blind more than a decade before the poem appeared.

In what year was Paradise Lost first published?

The first edition ran to ten books; a second edition of 1674 rearranged the poem into twelve.

How many books does the 1674 second edition of Paradise Lost contain?

The rearrangement deliberately mirrored the twelve books of Virgil's Aeneid.

How many books did the original 1667 edition of Paradise Lost have?

Later printings also inserted prose 'Arguments' summarising each book.

What poetic form is Paradise Lost written in?

The lines are unrhymed iambic pentameter; Milton added a note to the second edition explaining why the poem does not rhyme.

According to the opening invocation, Milton's stated aim in the poem is to do what?

The phrase comes at line 26 of Book 1 and frames the whole epic as a theodicy.

What is the name of the capital city of Hell in Paradise Lost?

The word was Milton's coinage from Greek roots meaning 'all demons', and it later became an everyday English word for uproar.

Which fallen angel is Satan's second-in-command in Paradise Lost?

He helps organise the demons after their expulsion and steers the debate in Book 2 toward Satan's plan.

Which fallen angel leads the building of Hell's capital, 'the least erected spirit that fell from Heav'n'?

C. S. Lewis wrote that his tragedy is that he never understood the difference between Hell and Heaven at all.

Which fallen angel is named as the architect of Hell's capital?

In Roman religion Mulciber was another name for Vulcan, the smith god who was himself thrown from heaven.

Satan's famous declaration in Book 1 is that it is 'Better to reign in Hell, than' what?

The line comes at 1.263; the loyal angel Abdiel later throws it back at him during the war in Heaven.

What was Satan's name before his fall, according to the poem?

Milton has him rebel out of pride and envy after God proclaims the Son as anointed.

Over how many days do the battles of the War in Heaven take place?

On the final day the Son single-handedly drives the rebel legions out of Heaven.

Who defeats the entire rebel army at the final battle of the War in Heaven?

Michael leads the loyal host on the earlier days, but the decisive victory belongs to the Son alone.

Which archangel narrates the War in Heaven to Adam and warns 'lest Passion sway thy Judgment'?

His visit to the bower stretches across Books 5 to 8, and along the way he explains that angels eat food.

How many wings does Milton give the archangel who visits Adam and Eve in Eden?

One pair is 'regal with ornament', one 'dipped in colors of Heaven', and the third shadows his heels 'with feathered mail'.

Which archangel shows Adam a vision of the future of mankind before the expulsion from Eden?

The vision runs as far as the Great Flood, and he then tells Adam of redemption through 'King Messiah'.

Which lone angel in Satan's audience refuses to join the rebellion and reports it to God?

His name means 'Servant of God' in Hebrew, and in Book 6 he answers Satan: 'Reign thou in Hell thy kingdom, let me serve in Heav'n'.

Two angels find Satan in Eden crouched by the sleeping Eve's ear in the form of what creature?

A touch from Ithuriel's spear forces him back into his true shape, and he is marched off to Gabriel.

What object does the angel Ithuriel use to force Satan back into his true form?

John Adams borrowed the image, calling political philosophy an Ithuriel's spear that makes prejudice and superstition start up in their real shapes.

Who is Ithuriel's partner in the search for Satan in the Garden of Eden?

Both angels are dispatched by Gabriel, who commands the guard on Paradise.

Which allegorical character in Paradise Lost is Satan's daughter, born from his head, and keeper of Hell's gates?

She is the first female character in the poem and the mother, by Satan, of Death.

How does Milton describe the appearance of Death when Satan meets him at the gates of Hell?

Critics such as Addison and Johnson complained that giving such abstractions bodies undermined the epic's seriousness.

Where does Eve first see and admire her own reflection immediately after she is made?

The scene deliberately echoes the myth of Narcissus, and she confesses she found Adam less enticing than the reflection.

In what disguise does Satan finally tempt Eve to eat the forbidden fruit?

He works on her vanity, telling her that her beauty makes her almost divine.

What happens to Satan and his followers when he returns to Hell to boast of his triumph?

Milton has them share the serpent's punishment because they shared the serpent's guilt.

In Book 9, a passage describing the tempter of Eve forms an acrostic spelling out what word?

The initial letters of five successive lines spell the name, a hidden signature that critics noticed only centuries later.

Which of these is a distinctly Miltonic addition to the biblical account of the expulsion from Eden?

The vision includes stories from both testaments and ends with Michael's promise of 'a paradise within thee, happier far'.

According to the poem's cosmology, Earth hangs from Heaven by what?

Milton's universe has three primary layers, Heaven, Chaos and Hell, and he never drew a map of it himself.

Whom does Milton invoke for inspiration at the opening of Paradise Lost, in place of the classical muses?

The invocation is one of many classical epic conventions Milton reuses, alongside the in medias res opening and Homeric similes.

Milton had gone blind before writing Paradise Lost. In what year did he lose his sight?

He dictated the whole poem to helpers, an image later painted by Fuseli and Delacroix.

Before settling on a biblical subject, what did Milton originally intend his great epic to be about?

Scholar John Leonard suggests the Civil War interrupted his early attempts at an epic 'that would encompass all space and time'.

For how much did Milton sell the publication rights to Paradise Lost in 1667?

A further £5 was due each time a print run of 1,300 to 1,500 copies sold out; the first quarto sold for three shillings a copy.

Who was the publisher that registered Paradise Lost for publication in 1667?

His mother Mary had been running the family printing business since his father Matthew's death in 1654.

How long did the first edition of Paradise Lost take to sell out?

Just before his death in 1674 Milton supervised a second edition with a note explaining 'why the poem rhymes not'.

Milton's sequel, published in 1671, was titled what?

It appeared in the same volume as his closet drama Samson Agonistes.

The sequel to Paradise Lost deals primarily with which biblical episode?

It follows the account in the Gospel of Luke and is only four books long, which is why Barbara Lewalski called it a 'brief epic'.

Which Quaker friend prompted the sequel by asking Milton 'what hast thou to say of Paradise found?'

Milton reportedly 'sat some time in a muse' before changing the subject, then later showed him a new manuscript.

Which poet wrote that Milton 'was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it'?

The line appears in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; Philip Pullman later quipped that he himself is of the Devil's party 'and does know it'.

Which 1818 novel opens with an epigraph from Paradise Lost and has its creature read the poem?

Paradise Lost is one of three books the creature finds, and both Victor and his creation are called fallen angels.

Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials takes its title from which book of Paradise Lost?

The phrase describes the raw stuff of Chaos that Satan crosses on his way to the new-made world.

Which Haydn oratorio built its libretto largely on Paradise Lost, alongside biblical texts?

Baron van Swieten was among those who shaped the German text, Die Schöpfung, first heard in 1798.

Which Polish composer wrote an opera based on Paradise Lost in the late 1970s?

Eric Whitacre later wrote an 'electronica opera' called Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings.

In the 1997 film The Devil's Advocate, the antagonist played by Al Pacino shares his name with whom?

The film's finale has Keanu Reeves's character quote 'Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven'.

Which John Steinbeck novel takes its title from Book 1 of Paradise Lost?

Frederick Buechner's A Long Day's Dying likewise takes its title from Book 10.

Which fourth edition of Paradise Lost was the first illustrated, with an engraving before each book?

Up to eight of the twelve plates were by Sir John Baptist Medina; Blake, Doré and Fuseli came much later.

Which surrealist executed a set of ten colour engravings inspired by Paradise Lost in 1974?

The epic's illustrators also include John Martin, whose vast mezzotints of Pandæmonium influenced Victorian ideas of Hell.

At which Cambridge college did Milton's fair complexion earn him the nickname 'the Lady'?

His notebook of early poems is nonetheless known as the Trinity Manuscript, because that is where it is kept today.

Which famous astronomer, then under house arrest, did Milton meet on his Italian journey?

Milton later cited the visit in Areopagitica as an example of what censorship does to a nation's thinkers.

Milton's 1644 pamphlet Areopagitica is a celebrated attack on what?

He wrote it after the hostile reception of his divorce tracts, and it remains a foundational defence of press freedom.

What government post did Milton hold under the Commonwealth from 1649?

The job meant composing the republic's Latin correspondence with foreign states, and his assistant was Andrew Marvell.

Where is Milton buried?

A monument to him was added at Westminster Abbey in 1737, decades after his death in November 1674.

Which contemporary biographer dated the writing of Paradise Lost to 1658-1663?

Blind since 1652, Milton dictated the whole poem to amanuenses and friends, a scene Romantic painters loved to depict.

Into how many layers does Milton's cosmology divide the universe of the poem?

Heaven sits above the expanse of Chaos, with Earth hanging from a golden chain and Hell beneath.

Besides SATAN, what other word does Milton spell out as an acrostic in Book 9?

He also spells FFAALL nearby, which scholars read as the double fall of Adam and Eve.

What does Hebrew 'Abdiel', the name of the loyal seraph, mean?

He is the first to strike a blow against Satan in the War in Heaven, and some critics see him as Milton's self-insert.

Which classical myth does Eve's fascination with her own reflection allude to?

She confesses to Adam that at first she found him less enticing than the image in the water.

Where in the poem is the domestic debate over working apart that leaves Eve alone?

Eve argues separate work is more efficient and Adam agrees; Satan's temptation depends on finding her by herself.

Which engraver produced the plates for the first illustrated edition of 1688?

Up to eight of the twelve designs were by Sir John Baptist Medina; Paul Fourdrinier re-engraved them smaller by 1730.

Which Romantic poet complained that he relied too heavily on Milton's style?

Alexander Pope's final, unfinished work was also meant to be in Miltonic blank verse; Samuel Johnson mocked the bad imitators.