Paradise Lost and other poems Author:John Milton These three major works by the seventeenth-century english poet show why Milton takes his places beside Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, and Virgil. They ring with the unmistakable clarity of genius, with majesty of language, splendor and wealth of detail, and with the deep conviction of a powerful mind. — The new annotations for this Mentor edition in... more »clude the more interesting textual variations of the poems; and record, for the first time in any edition, the far-flung repetitions of phrases, and the scattered fixed epithets withing (and between) Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes.« less
Most interesting to me is the character of Satan. Christ and God here are two-dimensional sketches, whereas Milton gives Satan complex motivation, much more engaging than run-of-the-mill comic-book iniquity. Enjoy!