Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
What in Me Is Dark: The Revolutionary Afterlife of Paradise Lost

What in Me Is Dark: The Revolutionary Afterlife of Paradise Lost

Reade, Orlando

Paperback

Literary CriticismPoetry Criticism

Publisher Price: $18.00

ISBN10: 1662603401
ISBN13: 9781662603402
Publisher: Astra House
Published: Nov 4 2025
Pages: 272
Weight: 0.50
Height: 0.90 Width: 5.70 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
Enlightening and enthusiastic. --Ed Simon, The New York Times Book Review

Now in paperback, a highly original hybrid of literary criticism and political history, telling of the enduring, surprising and ever-evolving relevance of Milton's epic poem through the scandalous life of its creator and the revolutionary lives that were influenced by it.

What in Me Is Dark tells the unlikely story of how Milton's epic poem came to haunt political struggles over the past four centuries, including the many different, unexpected, often contradictory ways in which it has been read, interpreted, and appropriated through time and across the world, and to revolutionary ends. The book focuses on twelve readers--including Malcolm X, Thomas Jefferson, George Eliot, Hannah Arendt, and C.L.R James--whose lives demonstrate extraordinary and disturbing influence on the modern age.

Drawing from his own experiences teaching Paradise Lost in New Jersey prisons, English scholar Orlando Reade deftly investigates how the poem was read by people embedded in struggles against tyranny, slavery, colonialism, gender inequality, and capitalist exploitation. It is experimental nonfiction at its finest; rich literary analysis and social, cultural and political history are woven together to make a clarifying case for the undeniable impact of the poem.

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