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Title: A misreading.
Review: By making the embodiment of evil heroic Paradise Lost undermines our concept of the heroic. The poem does not represent evil as heroic. It represents the traditional virtues of the heroic as evil. Pullman has misread this completely and has framed the poem within this misreading.... "better to reign in hell than serve in heaven" is a fine line, noble, staunch, heroic, but it is also a lie as to the minions who hear it it collapses into "better to serve in hell than serve in heaven," which is facile.Pullman's trilogy is very well written, but is, in part, a fleshed out misreading of Paradise Lost. That is fine, and I enjoyed reading it. But it is irritating when Pullman presents Milton as some kind of ally in this misreading, which Pullman does with this edition of Paradise Lost, and which Milton is not.
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