Paradise Lost
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Review
Meticulously edited, full of tactful annotations that set the stage for his work and his times, this edition brings Milton, as a poet and a thinker, vividly alive before us. --Robert Hass, winner of the National Book Award
In this landmark edition, teachers will discover a powerful ally in bringing the excitement of Milton s poetry and prose to new generations of students. --William C. Dowling, Rutgers University
This magnificent edition gives us everything we need to read Milton intelligently and with fresh perception. --William H. Pritchard, Amherst College --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
In this landmark edition, teachers will discover a powerful ally in bringing the excitement of Milton s poetry and prose to new generations of students. --William C. Dowling, Rutgers University
This magnificent edition gives us everything we need to read Milton intelligently and with fresh perception. --William H. Pritchard, Amherst College --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Product Description
In Paradise Lost Milton produced poem of epic scale, conjuring up a vast, awe-inspiring cosmos and ranging across huge tracts of space and time. And yet, in putting a charismatic Satan and naked Adam and Eve at the centre of this story, he also created an intensely human tragedy on the Fall of Man. Written when Milton was in his fifties - blind, bitterly disappointed by the Restoration and briefly in danger of execution - Paradise Lost's apparent ambivalence towards authority has led to intensedebate about whether it manages to 'justify the ways of God to men', or exposes the cruelty of Christianity.
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First Sentence
This first book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject, man's disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he was placed: then touches the prime cause of his fall, the serpent, or rather Satan in the serpent; who revolting from God, and drawing to his side many legions of angels, was by the command of God driven out of Heaven with all his crew into the great deep. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
This first book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject, man's disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise wherein he was placed: then touches the prime cause of his fall, the serpent, or rather Satan in the serpent; who revolting from God, and drawing to his side many legions of angels, was by the command of God driven out of Heaven with all his crew into the great deep. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
As Blake so rightly says, Milton's Satan is the true hero of PL - however unwittingly and however horrified Milton might have been to think it. Rebellious, over-reaching, full of pride and arrogance, he yet leaps off the page at us with his intelligence and his rhetoric and his plots.
In a way it's not that surprising: taking classical epic as his model, Milton creates an anti-hero in the mould of Achilles, also driven by pride and the urge to impose himself on his world. One of the many pleasures of Milton's great narrative poem is precisely the identifications of classical epic conventions and the innovative uses to which he puts them.
It seems it's not fashionable to read poetry these days, especially not narrative poetry (as opposed to `personal' lyric) but it's a huge shame to miss out on writing as thrilling as Milton's. With his great rolling sentences and complex diction it might take a little while to get into his rhythm but the effort is well worth it. From the opening scene where Satan and his minions are thrown out of heaven, to the quiet ending as Adam and Eve walk hand in hand away from Eden, Paradise Lost truly is a reading experience to savour.
In a way it's not that surprising: taking classical epic as his model, Milton creates an anti-hero in the mould of Achilles, also driven by pride and the urge to impose himself on his world. One of the many pleasures of Milton's great narrative poem is precisely the identifications of classical epic conventions and the innovative uses to which he puts them.
It seems it's not fashionable to read poetry these days, especially not narrative poetry (as opposed to `personal' lyric) but it's a huge shame to miss out on writing as thrilling as Milton's. With his great rolling sentences and complex diction it might take a little while to get into his rhythm but the effort is well worth it. From the opening scene where Satan and his minions are thrown out of heaven, to the quiet ending as Adam and Eve walk hand in hand away from Eden, Paradise Lost truly is a reading experience to savour.
33 of 36 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A work almost without parallel in terms of length and epic nature, the blind Milton beautifully captures what he believes in relation to the creation story. Using a blend of Greek myth from his extensive knowledge of classical literature, polemic verse which is at times intoxicating (particularly in the presentation of the quasi-hero Satan), and his own religious convictions, Milton presents at once a complex and enthralling tale. It also seems to reveal his inner difficulties with the subject matter, as the many fascinating contradictions regarding pre destination and Adam and Eve¡¦s position as free beings suggest. William Blake pointed out that the ease which Milton found talking about Satan instead of God suggested that he was like many other poets, ¡¥of the devils party without knowing it.¡¦ To read it is a pleasure devotedly to be wished (the best version is probably the Penguin Classics), but expect to be challenged and provoked in equal measure. This edition is without a doubt the best you can buy, with an outstanding introduction, ¡¥Table of Dates,¡¦ ¡¥Further Reading¡¦ section, and a ¡¥Note on the text.¡¦ The Notes at the back of the book are nearly always insightful and useful, and try as much as possible to be accurate about the possibly source for each of Milton¡¦s numerous literary references, most of them to the Classical authors and to Greek mythology. Highly Recommended.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
This is not an exact or complete replica of the current Penguin Classics edition [ISBN 0-140-42439-3] Paradise Lost (Penguin Classics). Apart from the different cover and absent back cover, this Kindle mobi edition leaves out the following sections from the Penguin Classics edition: Introduction; Table of Dates; Further Reading; Note on the Text; Marvell 'On Paradise Lost'; and the detailed Notes section provided at the end of the Penguin Classics edition. The text of this edition also leaves out Milton's 'Argument's which precede each Book of Paradise Lost. Line numbers are omitted in the presentation of the text (compared with Penguin's which provides line numbers at intervals of 5 lines) - though one common fault of Kindle editions is that line numbers are usually jammed into the body of the text disruptively instead of being placed on hanging indents to the left of the column of verse. In the Penguin Classics printed edition the text has been partially modernized - spelling has been modernized, most capitals reduced [a word in all capitals is reduced to a capital for the first letter only, words whose first letters are capitalized are all in lower case], and most italics removed. This Kindle edition appears to retain the spelling and typographical stylistics of 17th century printed editions, though without any italicisation. My review evaluation of three stars represents the loss of the additional material present in the printed Penguin Classics edition, rather than value for money, which at 49p seems reasonable enough.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Effort Required, But Worth It
I really enjoyed this excellent poem. It was a lot of effort owing to a few factors some of which are due to Milton himself and others due to the edition. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Harry the book monkey
OK, I'm converted ...
I read this work as I followed Prof John Roger's excellent (and rather charming) online lectures from YaleOnline. I was doing this as a sort of self-educational duty. Read more
Published 18 months ago by E. Clarke
An Extraordinary Mind
An entire lifetime of scholarship on display in one epic poem describing man's fall from God's grace. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Brownbear101
The greatest
Forget Shakespeare - this is almost certainly the greatest work of literature in the English language. Read more
Published on 11 Mar 2010 by Oracle
Excellent work, average edition
Although "Paradise Lost" is one of the great works of the English language and should be read by every serious literary mind, I found the Penguin edition somewhat lacking. Read more
Published on 6 Mar 2008 by Helen Walter
Classic work
Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till on... Read more
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till on... Read more
Published on 9 Dec 2005 by Kurt Messick
just incredible
I rank Milton's talents which are at their very best in Paradise Lost with the all time greats of English and world literature. Read more
Published on 7 Sep 2005
A book that is seriously misjudjed
When I first heard of Paradise Lost Ithought it would be boring and extremely hard to read. But you can imagine my shock when I started to read the first few lines and found that... Read more
Published on 18 Feb 2005 by "bettyboopchocolate"
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