Paradise Lost

by John Milton

Overview

Beginning with the story of Satan after he was expelled from Heaven along with his followers, Paradise Lost details Satan’s journey to the Garden of Eden and his intent to destroy God’s new creation. The poem also depicts the perspectives of both Adam and Eve, examining their personalities and motivations before and after Eve’s fateful temptation.

After publishing Paradise Lost, author John Milton was immediately recognized and lauded as one of the greatest English poets. Paradise Lost has since influenced numerous poets and writers, including many of the Romantics, William Blake, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and T. S. Eliot.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781443437806
Publisher:	HarperCollins Canada
Publication date:	09/02/2014
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
File size:	405 KB

About the Author

John Milton was a seventeenth-century English poet, polemicist, and civil servant in the government of Oliver Cromwell. Among Milton’s best-known works are the classic epic Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, considered one of the greatest accomplishments in English blank verse, and Samson Agonistes.

Writing during a period of tremendous religious and political change, Milton’s theology and politics were considered radical under King Charles I, found acceptance during the Commonwealth period, and were again out of fashion after the Restoration, when his literary reputation became a subject for debate due to his unrepentant republicanism. T.S. Eliot remarked that Milton’s poetry was the hardest to reflect upon without one’s own political and theological beliefs intruding.

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PARADISE LOST the printer to the reader
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Copyright © 2003 John Milton.
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Note on the Text

Paradise 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

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Barbara Lewalski is the doyenne of the community of Milton scholars, but she also remains committed to the enterprise of teaching. In this exemplary edition of Paradise Lost both qualities are in evidence: the text is scrupulous and the scholarship rigorous, but both the introduction and the notes are accommodated to the needs of students who will be coming to the poem for the first time. This is an edition that will please students and professors alike, and its sheer quality is a tribute to Barbara Lewalski's passion to provide readers with all the help they need to understand the greatest of all English poems."
–Gordon Campbell, University of Leicester

"Teachers and scholars will welcome Barbara Lewalski’s Blackwell edition of Paradise Lost, one not only informed by the erudition of a prominent and highly respected Miltonist but advantaged by her sound decision to reproduce the original language, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and italics of the 1674 text."
–Edward Jones, Editor, Milton Quarterly

"For the student or general reader, looking for an old-spelling edition that is faithful to the original punctuation, this edition has much to recommend it. Its annotation is crisp, purposeful and well-judged."
–Thomas N. Corns, University of Wales, Bangor

"A superb teaching text. Lewalski’s edition respects Milton’s original poem and offers supremely clear introductions, bibliography and special material to guide the student reader and educated lay person alike to new discoveries in a work that, quite simply, has it all: good, evil, God, Satan, humans, angels, love, despair, war, politics, sex, duty, and sublime poetry—set in a cosmic landscape that inspires wonder and seduces new readers in every generation."
–Sharon Achinstein, Oxford University

Editorial Reviews

Even a dozen critical essays, representative of the postmodern wave that has largely displaced liberal humanism in English studies in the years in which they were written (1970-96), do not dethrone Satan as the flawed hero of Milton's masterwork. Contributors vivisect, yet manage to convey, the contemporary relevance of the seminal 17th century epic poem with interpretations from Marxist/ historicist, feminist, psychoanalytic, and poststructuralist approaches. The editor provides a concisely informative introduction to the English Revolution and modern contexts for deconstructing . Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknew.com)

Booknews

Who better than the distinguished literary historian of conscience to produce an edition of Milton’s masterpiece? In his incisive introduction, Abraham Stoll wears his considerable learning lightly, managing to explain in a few words how Milton’s particular interest in liberty and free will structure his long poem, and how bold and confrontational Milton was when he opposed the dominance of predestination Calvinism and placed arguments he had used to defend the unlicensed printing press in the mouth of Eve asking Adam for the right to roam throughout the Garden of Eden. The edition contains carefully thought-out footnotes and a series of appendices containing relevant images, extracts from the Bible, and notes Milton made of his plans for Paradise Lost. Overall, this is a splendid new edition that brings the poem to life for the modern reader.” — Andrew Hadfield, University of Sussex

From the Publisher