Paradise Lost. John Milton

John Milton (1608–1674) was an English poet, prose writer, and politician, best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost. It tells the biblical story of Satan’s rebellion against God, his defeat, and his fall from heaven to hell, after which he decided to take revenge on God by causing His beloved creations, the first humans, to sin and condemn them to exile from Paradise.

Since its first publication in 1667, the poem Paradise Lost has become the pinnacle of world poetry and has had a huge influence on the entire subsequent development of classical English-language literature - including James Joyce, whose famous Ulysses echoes Paradise Lost in scale and ambition, when the plot of the work unfolds against the backdrop of the universal history of existence with excursions into mythology, ethics, psychology, lyrics, music, architecture, etc.

John Milton devoted seven years of exhausting work to writing Paradise Lost. Translator Oleksandr Zhomnir devoted half of his life to the first Ukrainian translation of this fundamental work of the world cultural layer, which is considered one of the most outstanding literary works written in English.