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Paradise Lost


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  • 3 weeks later...

The book was published in 1667, which was a few years after the Restoration of Charles II. Things must have become a bit more relaxed, religiously. I would not have thought it was safe to write fiction on sacred books.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Although I am not following it very well the vocabulary is recognisably modern English. Shakespeare often seemed like a foreign language to me, particularly when I was at school. With Paradise Lost, it is not that I do not understand the vocabulary; it is that I keep on switching off. I do not pick up on many of the references. Most of these references are biblical, Old Testament, a bit of New Testament and Apocrypha. I suspect Paradise Lost is like James Joyce's Ulysses in that you need to study a whole degree to understand it properly.

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  • 2 weeks later...

God made Adam, then he made Eve in Book VIII. Now in Chapter IX they have to spend all their time gardening. Doesn't sound much like paradise to me. I am not into gardening. What are they gardening with? Surely they have not had time to develop metal implements yet.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The gardening tools were explained a little further on.

 

Adam and Eve have eaten the forbidden fruit. If I understood correctly they then have a game of doctors and nurses. What I do not understand is that the only real knowledge this fruit of the tree of knowledge has given them is that they were not wearing any clothes. Why does it matter? There is no one else around. They have already seen each other naked. God already knows and the angels are above that sort of thing. I suppose it is a metaphor for something.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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