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Paradise Lost is a beautiful and intricate poem. I would highly recommend reading it with an accompanying text that drills into the context and all the intricate literary and historical references. I read it in a British Literature class (one of the best university courses I ever took, shout-outs to Prof. Siobahn Caulkin, a brilliant teacher) and Milton's creativity and his ability to work with form and tradition still sticks with me today.

On the side: I'd highly recommend taking notes on fictional books you read like Keats has done in his margins. It helps to see how novels are all tied together like complex machines of tone, theme, foreshadowing, and payoff. It also helps to solidify just what the heck you're reading into words.

Beautiful and intricate, but also hard to love. Milton is a spectacular poet, but there's something about the poem that kept me from appreciating it beyond its aesthetics. It's similar to Dante's epic in that sense, lovely and complex, but also so lofty and serious that it felt like it wasn't written for mere mortals like me.

That said, I still think it deserves its place in world literature as one of the testaments to human creativity.

>but also so lofty and serious that it felt like it wasn't written for mere mortals like me.

Well, it was written with the well-educated, versed in classics and latin and (then) contemporary social/political references, "Italian" audience of its time in mind...

I found parts of it tough going the first time but I should revisit it sometime.
Not exactly a prerequisite, but you'll appreciate it more if you've read the Bible, the Aeneid, the Iliad, and the Odyssey.
Interesting. What accompanying text/reference do you recommend to use with Paradise Lost?
If you know your Bible, Aeneid, Illiad, and Odyssey, you are off to a good start.

I had a professor whose approach welded historical narratives into the works we were reading. In the absence of a good Medieval or English Literature Professor, I'd recommend something like The Connell Guide [1] or the Oxford guide [2]. If you're looking for an all in one with very good marginalia and footnotes, I found the latest Norton Anthology series to be very good (and usually considered the academic definitive). You'd need to find the volume that has Paradise Lost in it, however.

[1]: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Connell-Guide-Miltons-Paradise-Adva...

[2]: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Oxford-Student-Texts-Milton-Paradis...