It was definitely hard going. I had multiple browser tabs open, the heavily annotated modern library version, and my years of Catholic upbringing to guide me through it all and it was definitely a journey. I read it right after reading Dante’s divine comedy and while the comedy and they both really blew me away. Half of Paradise Lost (and Dante too for that matter) is just really deep references to the Aeneid, the Iliad, the odyssey, and Ovid’s metamorphoses.

After two weeks, I’m on the last chapter of paradise lost by John Milton! It was a weird read to end my summer of working through several of the epic poems. It’s one of the most beautifully written poems I’ve ever read, but Jesus Christ has it been a weird and difficult read. My fav part was when Jesus out of nowhere rides in on a chariot and chases satan off the edge of heaven. Genuinely not enough talk about how some of this shit felt like a weird fever dream twist.