Full Description
Reviled as a regicide, isolated in a personal darkness, and aging, John Milton did not relinquish his voice. He somehow used that tireless voice, rather, to create Paradise Lost, one of the enduring masterpieces of English literature. Despite its difficulties-idiosyncratic syntax, densely packed ideas, capacious structure, and epic form-the poem still has the power to dislodge modern readers from our ordinary habits of reading and push us to experience new perspectives and new ideas. This new edition, based on the 1674 text, guides readers through the poem's interpretive challenges with a compact but thorough introduction and a readable and helpfully annotated text. Illuminating contextual materials, including related works by Milton, classical and biblical sources, material on the composition of the poem, and illustrations of Paradise Lost from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, are also included.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Note on the TextParadise Lost
Andrew Marvell, 'On Paradise Lost'
The Verse
Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
Book 4
Book 5
Book 6
Book 7
Book 8
Book 9
Book 10
Book 11
Book 12
In Context
Reproductions of the 1674 Paradise Lost
The Cosmography of Paradise Lost
Illustrations of Paradise Lost
Selections from the Bible
Genesis 1-3: The Creation
Genesis 18: Angels and God
Job 1: Satan
John 1.1-14: The Son
1 Timothy 2.8-15: Eve in the New Testament
Revelation 12: The War in Heaven
from Hesiod, Theogony
John Milton's Early Plans for Paradise Lost
from John Milton, Areopagitica (1644)
from John Milton, De Doctrina Christiana (c. 1658-74)
from The Epistle
from Chapter 2, Of God
from Chapter 5, Of the Son of God
from Chapter 7, Of the Creation
from Chapter 30, Of the Holy Scripture
Permissions Acknowledgments
