Esteemed literary critic Harold Bloom calls John Milton the greatest poet of the 17th century and the most powerful in the language after Shakespeare and Chaucer. Milton remains a radical example of the influence of an exemplary mind upon itself. Written just after the Restoration period in England, Milton's blank-verse epic, Paradise Lost , dramatized humankind's "fortunate fall" from grace and earned him a permanent place in the canon. This new entry in the Bloom's Classic Critical Views series looks at Milton throughout the centuries, lending a vital critical eye to this poet, and features a chronology of his life, an introduction by Professor Bloom, and an index for quick reference.