Anyone had to read Paradise Lost?

I read it - for my high school senior English literature class (AP English Literature, so I suppose it counts as a college class) this past year I had to choose an epic from a given list to read outside of class ("independent reading") and write a research paper on it. I chose Paradise Lost because of its Christian story and such. The paper I wrote was based on Milton's claim that he would justify God's ways to man (I argued that he did), and I focused a lot on the contemporary political situation (the English Civil War, Cromwell, the Restoration, etc.) and religious situation (Church of England, Puritans), and on Satan's (and God's) portrayal.

Regarding the topic of Satan's portrayal, which I think is one of the main things people talk about when they talk about Paradise Lost, I think I pretty much agree with C.S. Lewis's comments on Satan's portrayal, that Milton shows a "Satanic predicament" - suffering from a sense of "injur'd merit," feeling that one deserves more than what one has, and that one should be his/her own ruler. Lewis says that we humans do not possess the "real high virtues" of the "good" characters, but our vices make it easy for us to relate to Satan's portrayal. Lewis calls Satan a "personified self-contradiction" because of his rebellion against the source of his power and because he becomes a tyrant over his fallen angel army, while saying that he is a good leader.

I haven't done extensive research since writing that paper, so there are many opinions that I haven't read!

It's good stuff.

I read it in high school too, as part of my European Literature class. We didn't read the WHOLE thing though, only parts. Naturally, pretty much everyone in the class used Spark Notes hahahaha
... Actually, they might have told us to do that

Yeah. I read it last year. I didn't like it tbh. But I don't like most books so that's prolly on me & not the book

I had to go through it in high school. I wasn't questioning my faith though.