Paradise Lost by node

The greatest long poem in the English language, and among the most audacious acts of literary ambition ever attempted. Milton set out to justify the ways of God to men and produced instead the definitive portrait of rebellion, depicting Satan's war against Heaven, the corruption of Eden, and the expulsion of humanity into a fallen world. The theology is orthodox; the poetry is not. Satan remains the most psychologically vivid figure in the poem, his pride and anguish rendered with a sympathy that has unsettled readers for three and a half centuries.