What in Me Is Dark: The Revolutionary Afterlife of ‘Paradise Lost’

In this excellent debut study, Reade, an English professor at Northeastern University London, traces the legacy of John Milton’s 1667 epic poem Paradise Lost by examining its influence on 12 famous figures. Arguing that Thomas Jefferson related to the depiction of Satan’s revolutionary zeal, Reade notes that while serving as American ambassador to France in the 1780s, the future president wrote that Milton’s unrhyming poetry represented an “expression of freedom” from the fetters of tradition, complementing in style the content of Satan’s speeches against heaven’s tyranny. Elsewhere, Reade describes how George Eliot weaved Paradise Lost references into Middlemarch to draw parallels between protagonist Dorothea Brooke’s disillusionment with her older, scholarly husband, who neglects to support her intellectual potential, and Milton’s unhappy marriage to a younger woman. The most fascinating entries deal with more recent individuals, detailing how Malcolm X saw Milton’s Satan as a stand-in for European Christian colonizers and how Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson’s mistaken belief that the poem privileges the spiritual over the political misses its antimonarchical message. The bravura closing chapter ties the individuals’ disparate interpretations together by considering them as a fitting realization of Milton’s pluralism. This edifying analysis testifies to the enduring power of literature. Photos. Agent: Kat Aitken, Lexington Literary. (Dec.)