Sublime

John Milton—later the author of Paradise Lost—published a pamphlet in which he argued against a law passed by Parliament requiring printers to secure licenses from the government for everything they printed. No book should be censored before publication, Milton argued (though it might be condemned after printing), because truth could only be establ

This first book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject, man’s disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he was placed:

49 Fifty years ago, for example, Henry A. Murray claimed that “Melville’s Satan is the spitting image of Milton’s hero . . . the stricken, passionate, indignant, and often eloquent rebel angel of Paradise Lost, whose role is played by Ahab.”50 On such an interpretation Melville’s Moby Dick takes the place of Milton’s God, and Ahab’s prideful, passi