"Paradise Lost," Then and Now
I've been teaching Paradise Lost for six weeks aand April 21st was our final day.
We started the epic about when the war in Ukraine started, and began the epic by saying that Milton's poem actually not only begins with war. (Satan and the fallen angels are in hell, with its burning lake of fire, having been driven out by God). Milton shows that war began before human history (in heaven), that war began even before the creation of our world. Satan and the rebel angels create a canon and gunpowder—the first weapon of war a is Satanic invention.
Milton's battle between good and evil starts even in heaven, and the last book of the epic says it will go on until the end of the world (when earth with be "purged"/destroyed by fire and a new world of peace created). How depressing. Well, today, as I go in to teach that final book of Paradise Lost, I look at the newspapers and see that the long-range missile Putin tested yesterday as a warning to his enemies is named..."Satan." I am not kidding!
You can't make this up.