John Milton’s Paradise Lost Mourned a Revolution Betrayed
Blind, alone, and reeling from the failures of the English Revolution, Milton wrote an epic reflection on political defeat and the possibility of hope.

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“In the dark times / will there also be singing?” asked Bertolt Brecht in 1939. The answer, of course, is yes: “There will also be singing. / About the dark times.” Why has poetry been so important in periods of political defeat? This is a question I thought about often when I was teaching in […]