I n a recent skirmish in the current war on woke, John Milton’s Paradise Lost was caught in the crossfire. In December 2024, the scholar Orlando Reade’s book on the “revolutionary afterlife” of Milton ...

It’s John Milton’s time now. In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election and afterward, Shakespeare was frequently invoked to help make sense of the Trump phenomenon. After Trump lost the 2020 ...

On winter nights in the early sixteen-sixties, a blind poet lay awake in his bed and dreamed of the universe. Before his eyes swam suns and stars. A celestial light, visible to him alone, revealed a ...

Alan Jacobs clarifies centuries of debate over John Milton’s epic retelling of the Fall. Christian life is rooted in a story with a specific plot. It begins with God’s creation of the world, builds ...

We may earn a commission when you buy products through the links on our site. Mr. Jacobs, a literary critic and professor at Baylor, has written a “biography” of “Paradise Lost”: a concise, lively and ...

It is hard not to like Satan. He is Western culture’s original rebel, the bad boy who dared to defy the authority of God. He also has the best lines. “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav’n,” ...