Paradise Lost: An Ode to God’s Grace
Paradise Lost: An Ode to God’s Grace

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to unfold the way in which Milton, a Puritan in the real sense of the word, moulds the Adamic myth into very original shapes. Milton enacts a shift of the sacred towards the secular, by combining religious and pagan elements. The remarkable aspect of the poem, however, is not the way Milton humanizes the most abstract mythological characters, or his diverging from the Scripture as regards Satan and the Adamic pair presented as a typically Puritan family, but the fact that he rejects the Calvinist doctrine, emphasizing God’s grace, by which man can be saved. This is the most fundamental aspect of the poem, because God’s grace and man’s faith go hand in hand and work his salvation, in spite of his fallen condition.

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