 Welcome to my channel, I am Harpita Karwa and in this video I would like to talk about just a second I will reveal that but before that I would like to share something important with you. I was going through my youtube channel and I found that I have made video on Canterbury Tail, I have made a video on Wasteland but then I realized that I have not yet made any video on Paradise Lost and then it occurred to me that it would be so unfair for Mr. Milton that I have not yet talked about his work. So in this video I am going to talk about John Milton's Paradise Lost and I will be looking at some interesting facts and some important details associated with it. So let's start. So before we move on and look at John Milton's Paradise Lost it is important to know a bit about Mr. Milton as well. So when I was looking at the biography of Milton I found out that Milton was very delicate when he was a kid. Okay, so when he went to school he had these long hair and delicate manors due to which people used to tease him as Lady of Christ. So he was called as Lady of Christ when he was a kid. He was bullied by this name then he studied in his school and while he was studying in the school he found that there's a cathedral very near to his school and that particular cathedral was St. Paul Cathedral and you will be amazed to know that Mr. John Dunn who is a very famous metaphysical poet he used to give sermons in that cathedral. So Milton grew up listening to the sermons of John Dunn. Later he completed his higher education from Cambridge College and after studying from Cambridge University he went to Horton where he spent six years in isolation. He did not meet anybody he just devoted himself to study late in English and other classical works and that is how he developed himself as a writer. The next thing Milton do was to go on a trip to France and Italy and when he was travelling in France and Italy he met the great astronomer Gillelio and when he met Gillelio he was so influenced by Gillelio that he had this fascination for Gillelio throughout his life. Gillelio was the only contemporary of Milton who is referred to by name in Paradise Lost. He was so fascinated by Gillelio that he referred to him by name in Paradise Lost and also in Paradise Lost in book 8 specifically he has talked about astronomy, talked about science and telescope and all these important things connected to Gillelio. After spending some time in Italy and France he then moved back to England and in England at that time Oliver Cromwell was ruling. This was a period of civil war in Interregnum 1640 to 1660 when Oliver Cromwell became the protector, Lord Protector of England and Oliver Cromwell as we all know is a Puritan. Milton was also a Puritan throughout his life. He was born in a Catholic family but then he always followed Puritanism. So he was a Puritan and he supported Oliver Cromwell a lot. He also responded to people attacking Oliver Cromwell's government and while he was writing those pamphlets, guess who was assisting him? Andrew Marvell the great poet of the 6th, 17th century was the assistant of John Milton during the Interregnum period. Later in 1660 the restoration happened, Charles II was restored to the throne and Milton had to hide in order to protect himself and while he was hiding so many tragedies B fell on his life. He lost his eyesight then he lost his son and he also lost his wife. So after so many pains he started writing Paradise Lost and that is how Paradise Lost became such an important piece of literature. So Paradise Lost is the work which made Milton famous and it is said to be the major work written by Milton in his career but that doesn't mean that Milton has not written other works. He is a famous poet and a famous essayist. He has drafted this beautiful work called Aeropegetica against the Licensing Act. Then he also wrote some famous poems like To His Blindness, Lisidus. He has also written a mass called Comus. I discuss all these things in detail in my online course so you can find the details of my online course on my website arpitakarva.com and you can also find the list of writers which are a part of my online course curriculum. Moving back to Milton we find that Milton's Paradise Lost has been taken from Bible. So the main storyline of Paradise Lost has been taken from Bible and then he expanded it. Also the book was published in 10 parts in 1667. He later revised it and then it was published in 12 parts in 1672. The book totally talks about the theme of fall of man. How a man who is one of the most important creation of God fall due to his own disobedience. He does not obey the God and that is how he fall. So the book talks about the theme of fall of man and the story is very simple. Let's look at the story in brief. So Paradise Lost basically talks about Lucifer who is the chief angel of God. So God lives in heaven with all the angels and Lucifer was the chief angel. One day he felt that he should not obey God. He should not be inferior to God and therefore he rebelled against God. So he fought with the other angels and he was cast out of the heaven. So he and one third of the angels who also supported Lucifer they all were thrown out of the heaven and they fell in a pit there they build hell. So Lucifer changed to Satan and became an evil character. So the first plot of Paradise Lost talks about the story of Lucifer and how he journeys from an angel to a demon and then on the other hand we also look at the story of Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were the first creation of God. First creation that means the first humans created by God and they were living in Paradise which is a very beautiful garden okay garden of Eden they are living there and everything is happy and everything is so beautiful but God has only given them one instruction that you don't need to eat from the tree of knowledge. So in the tree of knowledge there's an apple of knowledge you don't need to eat that apple. If you don't eat the apple you're all safe. Now Satan who is living in hell he wants to take a revenge from God. So what he does is that he tempts Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge and Eve gets into the trap she eats from the tree of knowledge and Adam when he looks at the fallen condition of Eve he cannot stop himself from doing the same sin he also commits the same sin and both of them are thrown out of Paradise and that is how they became humans who are mortal. So humans are mortal Adam and Eve they were immortal they had no suffering they had no pains they were living a happy life but because of this disobedience they were cast out of the garden of Eden and now they have to suffer like all the human beings. So this is the story of Paradise Lost in short Milton has expanded it beautifully talking about each and everything so now that we have looked at Paradise Lost summary and we have also looked at some of the important facts related to John Milton's life it is the right time to look at the 10 important facts related to Paradise Lost. So the first fact that I would like to talk about is the first 16 lines of Paradise Lost when you open Paradise Lost you will find that the first 16 line they compromise of one single sentence do remember this thing we think that the first line is one sentence but no the first 16 line it is a continuation and total 16 line compromise of one sentence. The second important fact is that in the book one of Paradise Lost when we find that Satan is cast out of the heaven and now he is fallen in a pit with all the other fallen angels he starts to address the fallen angels and he says this beautiful line that it is better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven and that is when all the fallen angels together they start to build a temple mimicking the glory of heaven and that temple that scenate hall where Satan will address everybody that hall is called pandemonium. The third important fact is that Satan is supported by other fallen angels in this particular process and out of these fallen angels three of them are very crucial the first one is Beelzebub the second is Mammon and the third is Belial so do remember the names of these three chief fallen angels along with Satan they are the main criminals in this book Paradise Lost. The fourth interesting fact about Paradise Lost is that Milton has evoked muses in Paradise Lost for three times why is he evoking muses the reason why he is evoking muses is because he's following the epic tradition in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey muses are evoked by Homer and also Milton is evoking muses to help Milton in writing Paradise Lost we know that Milton was blind and therefore he's asking the help of muses so that he can write Paradise Lost okay so he has evoked two muses in three books he has evoked Urania in book one and four and he has also evoked the muse of holy light in book three so do remember these muses they are an important segment of UGC net question paper apart from that you should also remember that along with Satan there was another important angel of God whose name was Raphael so angel if you look at angel Raphael you'll find that he is good Satan he became bad he rebelled against God and then he later became an evil character but Raphael was always good and God sent Raphael to Adam and Eve so that Raphael can warn Adam and Eve to not commit the sin of disobedience and it is Raphael who tells the entire story of creation to Adam and Eve and in return Adam shares the story of his own creation so Adam narrates to Raphael how he was created and then he later narrates how Eve was created from his own ribs so do remember the fact that Adam is the one who is telling the story of Eve's creation as well Eve was created from Adam's rib why was he created because Adam felt very lonely and therefore he asked God that please create a companion so God created a lady from Adam's rib who became Eve. Paradise Lost has not only been read by the literature students but all the main writers of English literature they have analyzed Paradise Lost and they have studied it in detail one such writer is John Dryden who is the first person to put Paradise Lost on stage so he performed a play of Paradise Lost and the name of the play was State of Innocence similarly we have Mr William Blake who came next in line he was a pre-romantic writer and William Blake was so inspired by Milton's Paradise Lost that he acclaims that Milton belongs to Devil's party without knowing it that means Milton has given the portrayal of Satan so beautifully that it feels as if Milton is favoring Satan more than he's favoring God. The romantic writers they loved Paradise Lost especially Milton's portrayal of Satan we have Shelly who beautifully says that Milton's devil is a moral being far superior to his God and if you look at Shelly's Prometheus and Prometheus Unbound you'll see how the character of Prometheus is modeled on Satan and we have Mary Shelly Shelly's wife who has written this work called Frankenstein in this work Frankenstein there's a monster the first book that the monster reads is Paradise Lost so you can see how beautifully Paradise Lost has been talked about by writers coming after Milton and till now we have writers who are doing a tremendous study on Milton's Paradise Lost in the same line we have William Empson the famous critic who has written a work called Milton's God and in that work he says that the reason why this poem is so good is because it makes God so bad so this is how William Empson has interpreted Milton's Paradise Lost so these were few important and interesting facts about Paradise Lost I hope this video proves beneficial in your preparation if you like this video then don't forget to give this video a big fan thumbs up and also comment below if you have any questions any doubt you can also follow me on my social media pages where I'm running this free go-net quiz for all the UGC net English aspirants you can also go to my website where we have displayed the list of writers that you must study for UGC net English I have recently started this online mock test series so if you are preparing for UGC net English then go check out that mock test and then analyze your preparation level so that's it for this video lecture we'll meet very soon in the next video lecture till the time we meet next happy learning keep loving literature and stay tuned to arpidakarward.com