Paradise Lost (version 2)
Written by John Milton
Narrated by Thomas A. Copeland
()
About this audiobook
After a statement of its purpose, the poem plunges, like its epic predecessors, into the midst of the action, shockingly bringing to the front the traditional visit to the underworld, for Satan’s malice is the mainspring of the negative action. But at the center of the poem lies the triumph by the Son of God over the angelic rebels, which counteracts Satan’s evil design. To preview this pattern, the fallen angels’ council in hell is counterbalanced by a council in heaven, in which the Son offers himself as a scapegoat for mankind long before the original sin has been committed.
With this background, the narrator introduces us to Eden and our “Grand Parents.” Satan is detected spying on them and is expelled from the garden, after which God sends an angel to tutor Adam and Eve in the history of the heavenly war that has led to the present situation. At Adam's request, the heavenly guest then recounts the creation of the visible world, explaining also the proper nature of development, whereby all things proceed from lower to higher by refining that which nourishes them.
Satan, however, returning in the form of a snake, offers Eve an evolutionary shortcut in the form of a magical food capable of endowing her with super powers. He claims it has conferred on him both reason and speech. Since Eve is suffering at the moment from a fancied slight to her moral strength, she allows herself to forget her recent lesson and yields to this temptation. Adam, unable to imagine life without Eve (and failing to explore alternatives to sin), accepts the fruit from her and eats as well.
Satan’s triumph is short-lived, for although hell and the world of mankind are now linked by a broad highway, he and his followers are humiliated in hell by being turned involuntarily into snakes every year.
Whatever their reasons, both Adam and Eve have disobeyed their Maker’s sole command, and both are condemned to mortality and expulsion from the garden, but before they leave they are vouchsafed another history lesson, this time of the world to come: the progress of sin, the Savior’s coming, and the growth of the church.
John Milton
John Milton was a seventeenth-century English poet, polemicist, and civil servant in the government of Oliver Cromwell. Among Milton’s best-known works are the classic epic Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, considered one of the greatest accomplishments in English blank verse, and Samson Agonistes. Writing during a period of tremendous religious and political change, Milton’s theology and politics were considered radical under King Charles I, found acceptance during the Commonwealth period, and were again out of fashion after the Restoration, when his literary reputation became a subject for debate due to his unrepentant republicanism. T.S. Eliot remarked that Milton’s poetry was the hardest to reflect upon without one’s own political and theological beliefs intruding.
More audiobooks from John Milton
Paradise Lost Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Paradise Regained Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related to Paradise Lost (version 2)
Related audiobooks
Homeric Hymns, Epigrams, and The Battle of Frogs and Mice Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Paradise Lost Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Divine Comedy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Metamorphoses Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Time Machine (Version 4) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Shakespeare's Sonnets (version 2) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Iliad (Pope Translation) Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Bible (WEB) NT 01-27: The New Testament Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Odysseys of Homer Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Notes from the Underground Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Well at the World's End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bible (KJV) 19: Psalms Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPamela, or Virtue Rewarded Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Tragedy of Macbeth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Invisible Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Alcestis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Great Expectations (version 2) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Titus Andronicus Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A Midsummer Night's Dream Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The History of the Caliph Vathek Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCeltic Folk and Fairy Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Metamorphosis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5War and Peace Vol. 1 (Dole Translation) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Wheel Of Time Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The War of the Worlds Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Divine Comedy (version 2 Dramatic Reading) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Poetry For You
The Strength In Our Scars Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pretty Boys Are Poisonous: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Classic Hundred Poems: All-Time Favorites Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rumi's Little Book of Life: The Garden of the Soul, the Heart, and the Spirit Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poems of T.S. Eliot Read by Jeremy Irons Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Good Poems: Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Inferno of Dante Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Home Body Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Milk and Honey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Sun and Her Flowers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: A New Translation by Caroline Alexander Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Citizen: An American Lyric Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poetry of Walt Whitman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf: Translated by Seamus Heaney Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Raven and Other Poems: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5W. B. Yeats: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Metamorphoses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: with Pearl and Sir Orfeo Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Paradise Lost (version 2)
0 ratings0 reviews