Orlando Reade teaches

Resolution Out of Despair: John Milton's Paradise Lost

6 online sessions beginning March 16 at 1pm EST

John Milton’s Paradise Lost, perhaps the most influential poem in the English language, comes from the experience of political defeat. It was written in the 1660s, after the fall of England’s short-lived democratic republic, a project to which Milton had devoted most of his adult life. Not only that: the poet had gone blind some years earlier and couldn’t read or write without assistance. At a time when he might easily have given in to despair, Milton wrote an intricate and expansive poem, describing the origins and history of humankind, spanning Heaven, Hell, and the entire universe, and attesting to his enduring hope for a society built on the principles of freedom and equality.

Orlando Reade studied at Cambridge and Princeton, where he received a PhD in 2020. For a period of five years, he taught in prisons in New Jersey. His writings on contemporary art and literature have appeared in publications including The Guardian, The Nation, and Literary Hub. His first book, What in Me is Dark: The Revolutionary Afterlife of Paradise Lost, was published in 2024. He is now Assistant Professor of English at Northeastern University London.