A Guidebook to Paradise Lost

by Joe Nutt

Overview

Paradise Lost has excited and provoked poets and critics for over 300 years. This introduction provides an accessible route into Milton's influential epic poem, guiding students through each of the twelve books by a combination of close textual analysis and summary of key themes and techniques.

Without assuming prior knowledge, Nutt helps navigate the book's biblical and classical background and its relationship to seventeenth-century history. Focusing on developing the reading skills needed to approach this important and complex poem independently, A Guide to Paradise Lost is essential reading for all students of Milton.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350308725
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	09/28/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	429 KB

About the Author

JOE NUTT is currently Principal Consultant at CfBT Education Trust and previously taught English at the City of London School. He is the author of An Introduction to Shakespeare's Late Plays and John Donne: The Poems.
JOE NUTT is Lead Consultant at CfBT Education Trust, and previously taught English at the City of London School, UK.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
Milton and his England: The Historical and Biographical Context of Paradise Lost
Religious Mythology
Epic Voyage
Redemption and Free Will
Paradise Perturbed
Wilful Transgression
War in Heaven
Genesis
Divine Love and Love Divine
Wiles and Wilfulness
Crime and Punishment
Loss of Paradise
Banishment and Hope
Further Activities and Reading.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

For a self-proclaimed 'guidebook' Nutt's volume eschews the gimmicks that lend so many introductory works an air of accessibility at the cost of intellectual depth: he is assuredly not writing Paradise Lost for Dummies. There are no bullet points, cartoons, or inset boxes featuring trivia about the Barebones Parliament or Arminian soteriology. Instead we have a substantial and tightly-packed volume, though Nutt's prose style is clear and accessible. Nutt excels at looking at the poem over his audience's shoulder, so to speak. He recognizes that the big philosophical, political, and theological questions Milton explores are inseparable from the nuances of language, metaphor, and even syntax; readers are made to see that comprehending the latter will give a much better chance of comprehending the former.' – Milton Quarterly

Editorial Reviews

"For a self-proclaimed 'guidebook' Nutt's volume eschews the gimmicks that lend so many introductory works an air of accessibility at the cost of intellectual depth: he is assuredly not writing Paradise Lost for Dummies. There are no bullet points, cartoons, or inset boxes featuring trivia about the Barebones Parliament or Arminian soteriology. Instead we have a substantial and tightly-packed volume, though Nutt's prose style is clear and accessible. Nutt excels at looking at the poem over his audience's shoulder, so to speak. He recognizes that the big philosophical, political, and theological questions Milton explores are inseparable from the nuances of language, metaphor, and even syntax; readers are made to see that comprehending the latter will give a much better chance of comprehending the former." - Milton Quarterly

From the Publisher