Revisions from the Restoration to the Romantics

Highly ambitious for himself, the younger Milton hoped to produce a great poem “so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die” (YP 1:810). Paradise Lost – in many ways the greatest and last of the English epics – had a profound effect on subsequent literary history. Its rich and complex influence is too vast a subject to distill within a short account, but a brief look at the ways selected writers from the Restoration to the Romantic period revised or reworked Milton's poem can show how it continued to live on and serve as a powerful creative stimulus.

We can begin with Milton's own “brief epic” Paradise Regained (1671), a four-book poem again focused on the drama of temptation – Satan's spectacular temptations of Jesus in the wilderness (the chief biblical source is Luke 4:1–13). This intensely inward poem about the triumphs of the second Adam over his guileful adversary, however, lacks much of the epic machinery of Paradise Lost. Milton's Jesus is unknown, contemplative, private and poor – hardly the traditional aristocratic epic hero who defines himself by great acts of martial prowess. Moreover, the solitary Jesus can express uncertainty (“Where will this end?,” 2.245) as he proceeds to unravel the meaning of his prophetic vocation as Messiah. And yet Jesus's “deeds” are “Above Heroic” (1.14–15): in his spiritual warfare with Satan, he exemplifies yet once more how mighty weakness can overcome “Satanic strength” (1.161).