Stella P. Revard, Making All Things New: From ‘Paradise Lost’ to the ‘Ring’

November 2012, Volume 6, Number 3, 4–24.

The poet John Milton and the opera composer Richard Wagner were both revolutionaries who sought to reshape epic and music drama during the Classically oriented 17th and the Romantically driven 19th century respectively. Both were well trained in the classics and both turned to Homer and Greek drama to guide their ventures. Milton undertook the creation of a Christian epic from the hexaemeral materials of the Hebraic–Christian tradition; Wagner of an epic music drama from diverse Germanic cycles and sagas – and both attempted to infuse a classical order and spirit into their works. No one has ever suggested a direct link between Wagner‘s Der Ring des Nibelungen and Milton‘s Paradise Lost.