John Milton--Paradise Lost 弥尔顿的失乐园.doc

John Milton--Paradise Lost 失乐园 John Milton, a poet and political commenter of the English Bourgeois Revolution, is the most sublime and most lonely figure in English literature, whose importance is acknowledged all over the world. He is the last rearguard of the Renaissance and the primary promoter of Enlightenment. The love of every form of human culture and the steadfast devotion to duty as the highest object in human life have shaped his entire career. Of all his great works, Paradise Lost is the most complicated and most profound one, which wins him endless honor. It is indeed the only generally recognized epic in English literature since Beowulf and a heroic poem in Renaissance style. It deals with revolt from God, with sin and fall, and with the possible salvation. It presents the author’s views in an allegoric religious form, and readers will easily discern its basic idea—exposure of the ways of Satan and justification of the ways of God to men. It is the reflection of the reactionary forces of Milton’s time and the passionate appeal for freedom. As the main character of Paradise Lost, Satan is definitely impressive and powerful, whose ambivalence catches all critics’ eyes and leads to centuries’ disputes. Those commenters can be classified into three groups. The first group mainly consists of revolutionists. They traditionally read this epic with strong political inclination, putting Satan at the place of protagonist and considering him a symbol of revolution, which must be influenced greatly by those western romantic poets such as William Blake and Percy B. Shelley (Fowler 45). They are generally called pro-Satanists. Short Comment on Satan in Paradise Lost since Apollo’s divine word “to understand yourself”, the western literature has been always fulfilling such pursuit and being in continuous self-questioning. Like Puluomixius’ rejection to divinity, 亚哈’s to nature, Satan’s fighting against God also ended up with failure. They are showing people with