Adam and Eve
John Milton
Read by LibriVox Volunteers
LibriVox volunteers bring you 15 recordings of Adam and Eve (From “Paradise Lost,” Fourth Book) by John Milton. This was the Weekly Poetry project for
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 (though written nearly ten years earlier) in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse. A second edition followed in 1674, redivided into twelve books (in the manner of the division of Virgil's Aeneid) with minor revisions throughout and a note on the versification; most of the poem was written while Milton was blind, and was transcribed for him.
Milton first presents Adam and Eve in Book IV with impartiality. The relationship between Adam and Eve is one of "mutual dependence, not a relation of domination or hierarchy." While the author does place Adam above Eve in regard to his intellectual knowledge, and in turn his relation to God, he also grants Eve the benefit of knowledge through experience. ( Summary from Wikipedia) (0 hr 17 min)
Chapters
Reviews
Amante
Despite the explanatory statement before the reading begins, is there any doubt the poem is the foundation for misogyny, especially the last line. The only reason to read such writings is to greater realize that such foundational thought remains prevalent today. Milton should be read only to witness the wrongfulness of a past age and his zeitgeist.