John Milton

Life and writing

The Poetry Foundation places Milton’s poetry and prose across Stuart rule, civil war and the Restoration, and gives his lifetime as 1608–1674. That account provides a setting for a writer whose literary work also engaged public affairs. The profile uses these dates as life context only. They do not date the selected speeches in the poem or authenticate the anthology’s printing. The linked electronic text leaves its underlying print edition unspecified; its digital publication date is not the date of the poem.

Both selected Paradise Lost passages occur in Book I as Satan speaks after defeat. The mind’s power to change its experience and the preference for reigning in Hell belong to that dramatic situation. The checked text writes changed where the anthology abbreviates chang’d in the first passage; the second matches under limited punctuation, spacing and case comparison. Reading further shows the speaker rallying his companions. These are source counterparts with a named speaker, not instructions to adopt every assertion as the author’s moral position.

Reading this voice

Start in Book I and read the speeches around both selected passages. Notice Satan’s situation and whom he addresses, then distinguish the force of his rhetoric from the poem’s wider argument. The first counterpart differs in changed/chang’d; the second matches under limited English normalization. The anthology’s source wording and references stay intact. A selected match does not authenticate all Milton-labelled quotations or identify the anthology’s complete edition.

Subjects to explore

Words to begin with

• A mind not to be chang'd by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
• Here we may reign secure; and in my choice To reign is worth ambition, though in hell: Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.