Reading Paradise Lost [Hardcover]

Casting a fresh perspective on the greatest long poem in English, David Hopkins guides the reader through the inspiring poetic landscape of Milton’s great epic Paradise Lost, a work of literature which has compelled and fascinated readers down the ages and which offers enduring insight into the human condition 

• A welcome aesthetic focus on the poetic experience of reading Paradise Lost rather than its religious or political context
• Provides a nuanced, unified vision of the poem from a celebrated authority on English poetry of the period
• Includes consideration of the poem's earlier champions and critics
• Passionately advocates Paradise Lost's continuing artistic and philosophical relevance

Preface vii

1 Paradise Lost: Poem or Problem ? 1

2 God, Satan, and Adam 23

3 Eden 43

4 The Fall 63

Further Reading 85

Index to lines and passages from Paradise Lost 91

Index to main text and notes 93

Written in lucid, unpretentious prose, (Reading Paradise Lost) has ... the character of a first-rate lecture. It opens an uncluttered path into 'the distinctive imagined world' of Paradise Lost and is a guide to understanding it as a long narrative poem. There is a place for such a book in Milton studies, specifically for students coming to the poem for the first time, before they move on to the large handbooks. The championing of the early critics gives the book a distinctive edge and the original and persuasive ideas of the first chapter will be of particular interest to Milton scholars. (Milton Quarterly, May 2014)

In true Miltonic styl3O