Paradise Lost by John Milton, Poetry, Classics

by John Milton

Overview

Milton takes us immediately into the action of the tale, gliding over what we all know from the Bible, developing the story's background as he goes. We learn how Satan came to be in Hell after the war in heaven, see warfare and the ambitions of the angels -- come to know God's wisdom, power, and His wrath. Milton gives us characters who personify Death, Chaos, Mammon, and Sin, and they interact with more traditional figures -- Adam, Eve, Satan, and, yes, God. If you have not read Paradise Lost, it's likely that you're already familiar with a lot of it -- it's a tale that's become a part of our culture. To understand it truly, you need to read this book. The writer and critic Samuel Johnson wrote that Paradise Lost shows off "[Milton's] peculiar power to astonish" and that "[Milton] seems to have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know what it was that Nature had bestowed upon him more bountifully than upon others: the power of displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid, enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781598181661
Publisher:	Aegypan
Publication date:	07/01/2006
Pages:	296
Sales rank:	309,880
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.81(d)

About the Author

John Milton (1608 - 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, man of letters and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), written in blank verse. Milton's poetry and prose reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day. Writing in English, Latin, Greek and Italian, he achieved international renown within his lifetime and his celebrated Areopagitica (1644)-written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship-is among history's most influential and impassioned defenses of free speech and freedom of the press.

Table of Contents

From the Preface to the First Edition
Preface to the Second Edition
Abbreviations
Selected Journal of Abbreviations
Chronological Table of Milton's Life and Chief Publications INTRODUCTION
Composition
Printing History
Text
Punctuation Sources and Models
Language and Style
Metrical Structure
Numerical Composition
Time Scheme
Astronomy
Theology
Politics and Allegory
Criticism
Portraits and Illustrations PARADISE LOST
The Printer to the Reader
In Paradisum AmissanOn Paradise Lost
The Verse
Dryden's Epigram

Editorial Reviews

This Oxford edition of the Milton standard sports heavy paper and a ribbon marker, plus an intro by Philip Pullman on the work's influence on his own writing. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

[A]n exemplary job both of presenting the major topics of Paradise Lost and of entering the selva oscura of Milton criticism. . . . Students and scholars alike will appreciate the balanced approach to the complexities, difficulties, and conundrums of Milton's poem and the criticism on it. Kastan's prose is not just lively but chiseled, and it is destined to affect students. --Patrick Cheney, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900

Kastan is an exemplary editor, attuned to emerging critical currents, yet steeped in the scholarship of an earlier tradition, aware of the text's provenance and reception, alert to its topicality. His introduction, a model of theoretically informed, politically committed, historically grounded criticism, makes this edition of Paradise Lost all you would expect from one of the most erudite and perceptive figures in the field. --Willy Maley, Modern Language Review

This is a superb edition, a model of careful editing and judicious annotation. --Leslie Brisman, Department of English, Yale University

From the Publisher