The State of Innocence The State of Innocence The State of Innocence was intended to be performed as an opera, with the libretto written in 1674, (first published in 1677) by John Dryden. It is basically a musical stage adaptation of John Milton's epic poem "Paradise Lost", a tribute to Milton rather than a satire of the poem. That Dryden was an admirer of Milton's is surprising as the two men were politically opposed. Milton was against the restoration of the British monarchy, while the royalist Dryden was created England’s first Poet Laureate by the restored Charles II. So great an admirer of Milton
The Story of Kullervo centre of Tolkien's efforts in 1914, as he was "trying to turn one of the stories [of the "Kalevala"] — which is really a very great story and most tragic – into a short story" ("Letters", October 1914, #1). "The Story of Kullervo" was edited by Verlyn Flieger, published in 2010 in "Tolkien Studies", and republished in book form in August 2015 by HarperCollins. The Story of Kullervo "The Story of Kullervo" is a prose version of the Kullervo cycle in the Karelian and Finnish epic poem "Kalevala", written by J. R. R. Tolkien when he was an undergraduate at