Author C. S. Lewis examines John Milton's "Paradise Lost" and the epic genre, discussing epic technique, subject matter, and style and the elements of Milton's story.
In 1967 Milton studies was divided into two camps: one claiming (per Blake and Shelley) that Milton was of the devil's party, the other claiming (per Addison and C. S. Lewis) that the poet's sympathies were obviously with God and his loyal angels. Fish has reconciled the two camps by subsuming their claims in a single overarching thesis.
The classic epic poem from John Milton of Satan's war with heaven and his eventual temptation of humanity. A plan is laid out to save humankind which culminates in the last book Paradise Regained.
A highly readable and illustrated introduction to the work of Milton, which provides both a biographical account of the poet and his influences, and a critical survey of his poetry.
John Milton’s epic story of cosmic rebellion and the beginning of human history has long been considered one of the greatest and most gripping narratives ever written in English. Yet its intensely poetic language, now-antiquated syntax and vocabulary, and dense allusions to mythical and Biblical figures make it inaccessible to many modern readers. This is, as the critic Harold Bloom wrote in 2000, “a great sorrow, and a true cultural loss.” Dennis Danielson aims to open up Milton’s epic for a twenty-first-century readership by providing a fluid, accessible rendition in contemporary prose alongside the original. The edition allows readers to experience the power of the original poem without barriers to understanding.
Answerable Style was first published in 1953. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. By the use of both new and traditional techniques of critical analysis, Arnold Stein presents in this volume of six essays a fresh interpretation of Milton's epic. Beginning with the assumption that style is "answerable" to idea, he has tried to trace Milton's epic vision as it is bodied forth in patterns of structure (the ideas tested in action) and patterns of expression (the ideas tested in style). Mr. Stein explains: "My approach is in part based on an attempt to accept as fact both that I am a twentieth century reader and that this is a seventeenth-century poem. Milton is, I think, illuminated by some modern critical considerations; and some of those considerations are in turn illuminated, and some are found wanting."