Q 01/05

Who wrote Paradise Lost?

A) John Dryden

B) John Donne

C) John Bunyan

D) John Milton

Answer · why

D) John Milton

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

Q 02/05

In what year was Paradise Lost first published?

A) 1667

B) 1642

C) 1660

D) 1611

Answer · why

A) 1667

Paradise Lost first appeared in 1667, seven years after the Restoration of Charles II had ended Milton's career as a republican pamphleteer.

Q 03/05

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

A) Eight

B) Twenty-four

C) Ten

D) Twelve

Answer · why

D) Twelve

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

Q 04/05

Which poet does Milton name as 'Maeonides' with Thamyris, Tiresias and Phineus in Book 3?

A) Homer

B) Hesiod

C) Pindar

D) Sophocles

Answer · why

A) Homer

Milton names 'blind Maeonides' — Homer — alongside Thamyris, Tiresias and Phineus in the Book 3 invocation to Light, ranking his own blindness with th...

Q 05/05

What poetic form is Paradise Lost written in?

A) Heroic couplets

B) Blank verse

C) Terza rima

D) Spenserian stanzas

Answer · why

B) Blank verse

Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter; Milton defended his 'ancient liberty' from 'the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming' in a note added ...