"Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." Blind, broken by the death of his wife and bitterly disappointed by the Restoration, Milton dictated his sweeping biblical epic Paradise Lost to a series of helpers. While the struggle between God and Satan rages across the cosmos, the human tragedy of Adam and Eve the temptation and fall is movingly depicted in language unsurpassed in its musicality and beauty. A staggering and audacious undertaking...

The DVD is an in-depth study of four literary masterworks by Homer, Milton and Chaucer that includes expert commentary, critical analysis, and atmospheric dramatized scenes. "The Odyssey" tells of the wanderings of Odysseus on his adventurous way back to Ithaca. The program explores the background to the author, a mysterious figure that some say was blind, others that he never existed at all.

"One girl must unlock the secrets within Paradise Lost to save her father's life"--

Milton and the Making of Paradise Lost tells the story of John Milton's life as England's self-elected national poet and explains how the single greatest poem of the English language came to be written. In early 1642 Milton--an obscure private schoolmaster--promised English readers a work of literature so great that "they should not willingly let it die." Twenty-five years later, toward the end of 1667, the work he had pledged appeared in print: the...

In this brilliant biography, an acclaimed Oxford professor rediscovers a poet whose rich contradictions confound his monumental image and immerses us in the rhythms and textures of his world, from his childhood into his idiosyncratic belief system and his strange, electrifying imagination.

"John Milton, a former British assassin, treks through the Michigan wilderness into the town of Truth. He is not looking for trouble, but trouble's looking for him. He finds himself up against a small-town cop who has no idea with whom he is dealing, and no idea how dangerous he is. But Milton is double crossed and badly injured. Unarmed and alone, he flees into the remote Porcupine Mountains with a a posse on his tail. His enemies thought they could...