Paradise LostParadise Lost remains as challenging and relevant today as it was in the turbulent intellectual and political environment in which it was written. This edition aims to bring the poem as fully alive to a modern reader as it would have been to Milton's contemporaries. It provides a newly edited text of the 1674 edition of the poem--the last of Milton's lifetime--with carefully modernized spelling and punctuation. Marginal glosses define unfamiliar words, and extensive annotations at the foot of the page clarify Milton's syntax and poetics, and explore the range of literary, biblical, and political allusions that point to his major concerns. David Kastan's lively Introduction considers the central interpretative issues raised by the poem, demonstrating how thoroughly it engaged the most vital--and contested--issues of Milton's time, and which reveal themselves as no less vital, and perhaps no less contested, today. The edition also includes an essay on the text, a chronology of major events in Milton's life, and a selected bibliography, as well as the first known biography of Milton, written by Edward Phillips in 1694. |
From inside the book
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... Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, as the Cherubim guard Paradise. One of a set of engravings by Michael Burghers. Cover design by Abigail Coyle Interior design by Jennifer Plumley Composition by Professional Book Compositors, Inc ...
... Adam and Eve are truly “sufficient” to withstand the temptation and completely “free” to stand or fall can it possibly be their own fault. But the poem makes us wonder about both. Their sufficiency is called into question before the end ...
... Adam and Eve's sufficiency, any more than it does to the assertion of their freedom. God asserts that man is free, but we must wonder if he is only “free to fall.” God's very certainty that Satan “shall pervert, / For man will hearken ...
... Adam's “original lapse, true liberty / Is lost” (12.83–84); the faithful are persecuted, and “tyranny must be” (12.95). Yet if in these dispiriting times “works of faith / Rarely be found” (12.536–37), still there are those solitary ...
... Adam's praise of Eve as he first contemplates her fallen—“O fairest of creation, last and best / Of all God's works” (9.896–97)—at once recognizes her excellence and suggests, like the familiar feminist joke, that her belated creation ...
Contents
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The Life of Milton | 407 |
A Chronology of the Main Events in Miltons Life | 425 |