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Paradise Lost (Norton Critical Editions)

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I love Norton Critical Editions. Or I try to. Gordon Teskey's new edition of Paradise Lost is for the most part worthy of the praise it has received in other reviews on this site. However, it has one unpardonable flaw, which is the editor's tampering with Milton's poetic line. Teskey and the Norton editors have for some reason decided to make it "easy to read" by adding parentheses to complex syntactical passages that Milton wrote on purpose to be. . . I dunno. . . hard? This move to simplify the syntax alters not only the experience of the poem but, worse, its meaning. Take for example these famous lines of Satan's from Book I, the first words spoken in Hell:

If thou beest he but O how fall'n! how changed
From him who in the happy realms of light
Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine
Myriads, thought bright! if he whom mutual league,
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope. . .

The meaning of the lines is confusing because Satan himself is confused, and now speaking for the first time a fallen language. The "he" from line one gets dropped until line four, when Satan remembers what he's talking about after wandering through a few memories of his life before the fall. The reader is supposed to feel the confusion and torment of this run-on sentence. But Teskey uses parentheses to clean up the very mess Milton wanted Satan to make of the sentence:

If thou beest he (but O how fallen! how changed
From him who in the happy realms of light
Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine
Myriads, though bright) if he whom. . .

This effectively dumbs down the poem and drastically changes it. And there is way too much of it in this edition. It is common enough to modernize spelling and syntax in editions of early modern poetry, but this is a bit too much. Readers don't buy this book because they want an easy read; most readers, even students, don't mind if it is a little hard and confusing in parts. Mostly, I bet they want to see what Milton and not his editors wrote.

I am always glad for an occasion to tread "with wand'ring steps and slow" through the lines of "Paradise Lost" yet once more. When I found out that Gordon Teskey, to my mind the great poet's strongest reader in many years, had edited a new Norton Critical Edition, I knew it was time to travel the path again. As his predecessor Scott Elledge did for a previous generation, Professor Teskey has created an edition and charted a reading experience of enormous richness for contemporary students and general readers alike, and forged a tool of unique value for teachers at all levels. The text is well edited, as it must be, with helpful but judicious modernization of some spelling. The footnotes are measured, thorough but never gratuitously scholastic, to serve the process of active reading. This is not an easy poem and no editor can change that, but one travels through it faster, though steady at speed, with Professor Teskey at one's side. The critical apparatus is also strikingly well done, with modern essays usefully divided by topics, such as 'On Satan' and 'On Feminism', in a manner that will serve all audiences well. Along with retaining essays by past titans of Milton criticism, from Marvell to T.S. Eliot, as well as much of the canonical modern criticism present in earlier Norton editions, this volume includes some of the best critical voices of the last twenty years, among them William Flesch, Regina Schwartz, Archie Burnett, Julia Walker and Mary Ann Radzinowicz. But these new contributions have been chosen, it seems to me, with a very judicious focus on their own lasting canonical value, rather than merely on their more recent dates of publication. Whether out of deference or editorial privilege, Professor Teskey saves the last word for himself in a short selection from an essay that has since become a chapter in his new book, "Delirious Milton" (Harvard, 2006), in which he charts a history of philosophical modernity through an inspired analysis of Milton's view of creation, divine and human. Whether you are coming to "Paradise Lost" for the first or the twentieth time, make this edition your primary text and make Professor Teskey's new study the next book you read. If you do, you'll experience a very fortunate fall followed by a delirium of the happiest sort.

Milton is hard to read. There's no way around it. He was incredibly well versed in Latin and Greek and the famous epics, and intentionally set out to imitate that style with this Christian poem. Thus, some of the sentences are close to thirty lines or more, and are almost unintelligible at first. I am a Latin scholar, so I am used to seeing this kind of writing, but Paradise Lost could be challenging to the uninitiated. That being said, it is definitely worth the effort. Milton set out not just to tell the story of the Fall of Man but also to "justify the ways of God to men." It is frequently remarked that God is a secondary character and Satan is the most well-developed. I think this may be the same technique used by Dante to draw in the reader and have them commit the same sin as the characters. And this is what is most enjoyable about Milton: trying to unravel the many layers.

If you are a Christian, this book may ask some interesting questions. Milton was definitely pious, but he did have some interesting personal beliefs that may or may not have agreed with doctrine at the time.

If you are just a fan of the classics and great literature, I'm sure you will find Paradise Lost to be among the best poems in history, and certainly the best in English.

Finally, the Norton Critical Edition is superior in that it contains about 300 pages of criticisms and background information, all of which aid to one's understanding and enjoyment of the poem.

People I admire have told me they consider Teskey a brilliant scholar, but what he has done with this Norton Critical Edition is a real disappointment. In short, the annotations, the ancillary texts, and the critical readings are all less helpful than the old Norton edition (edited by Scott Elledge). Elledge sometimes could be a bit pedantic, giving too many Latin etymologies and such. But Teskey has simply abandoned the original audience (first-time readers of Paradise Lost). He doesn't gloss such difficulties as "ravin," "all I," and the odd etymological use of "pontifical." He omits such indispensable ancillae as Elledge's 33-page selection from Milton's "On Christian Doctrine" (and also Doctrine & Discipline of Divorce, and much else). He takes the best critical readings (Lewalski, Fish) and cuts them down to excerpts too tiny to matter much.

That really concludes my argument against choosing Teskey. He also commits howlers in Latin, Greek ("Greek leukos also means joyful"), and English ("tradition" in X.578 construed as a verb; faulty modernizations like "condemn" for "contemn" in IX.306 and "shown" for "shone" in X.1096).

For a Norton Critical Edition (i.e., the extra primary and secondary texts), choose Elledge; its advantages in learning and help far outweigh any of its defects. Perhaps, though, the most helpful Paradise Lost edition for the target audience (first-time reader, well-annotated) is now David Scott Kastan's generous reworking of Merritt Hughes' edition.

I am not a Milton scholar and my comments need to be understood in that light.

Having read the previous Norton Critical Edition (edited by Scott Elledge, (C) 1993; Paradise Lost (Norton Critical Editions)) several years ago, I was looking forward to reading this new one (edited by Gordon Teskey). The new edition is printed on heavier paper, which is nicer to read and less prone to bleed through when I write on it. But to maintain the same size and heft, the newer edition is about 100 pages shorter (587 vs 685). Almost all the critical essays are carried over from one edition to the next. But omitted material includes:

A number of Milton's other writings, including 7 sonnets and excerpts from a number of his essays.

An essay about the religious and political issues at the time of Milton

A brief biography of Milton

Explanations of Milton's conceptions about the universe, Physiology and Psychology, Reason, the Scale of Nature, Angels, God, Freedom, etc.

A more complete set of relevant readings from the Bible (the new one omits the readings from Matthew, Luke, John, Timothy, and James).

I found these materials enormously helpful in understanding Milton and Norton's decision to delete them makes the new edition much less useful. I would have preferred, personally, that they delete some of the critical essays about PL, rather than the explanatory materials to help readers get through the book in the first place.

Finally, Teskey's notes are not nearly as helpful. About half of them discuss how the syllables of Milton's words should be counted. Here's a comparison of the notes to book one, lines 43-46, in each edition. From Teskey, page 5:

44: Pow'r: power, pronounced with one syllable: 'paar.'
45: ethereal: has three syllables: 'eth-ear-yal.'
46: hideous has two syllables: 'hid-jus.'

and so forth. Some of his notes explain odd words, ideas, or allusions to biblical or classical texts. I am certain that his emphasis on explaining Milton's syllabification is important to some readers, but it matters little to me.

By comparison, Elledge's notes almost never discuss syllabification. They are full of information explaining the text. From the same set of lines (p. 9):

43: Impious. The L word means disrespectful of one's parents or one's country as well as of one's god.
44: ethereal: (Gk aithein to ignite, blaze) of the ether, the element supposed to fill the outer regions of the universe; not earth, fire or water, it was not earthly but heavenly, and eternal.
46: This image of a meteorite is more distinct in the description of Satan's fall at 745 ("like a falling star"). hideous: causing dread or horror. ruin (L ruere to fall violently) ruins, rubble; fall destruction. combustion. Cf Combustible. line 233.

Elledge's notes are fuller, richer, and far more helpful to me. Knowing what "etheral" means and how it fits into Milton's cosmology is far more interesting and helpful than knowing that he pronounced it with three syllables.

In short, I would encourage folks to look for a copy of Elledge's version of this Norton's Critical edition. I found it far more helpful than Teskey.

Perhaps when Norton issues a second edition of Tewsky's work, they will restore some of the missing material; until they do, I will continue to use Elledge.

Paradise is certainly one of the greatest achievements of English literature. And as an editor, Tesky seems to disregard this fact. First of all, he omits critical punctuation from the poem, which can seriously alter your understanding of what is going on:

"[God} made the stars/ And set them in the firmament of heav'n/ T'illuminate the earth and rule the day/ In their vicissitude and rule the night/ And light from darkness to divide." (VII. 348-52)

This is clumsy editing, and cross referencing other editions will show that the comma between "the night" and "and light" is retained; without it, the sentence makes little sense.

This is only one example of the gross injustices done to Milton's poem: parentheses where parentheses do not belong, misspellings, unnecessary footnotes (literally half of the footnotes you will find merely tell you that two words are elided), and omissions of information that could be helpful. It seems as if Tesky delights in telling you things you either already know or can infer from the context. Tesky's modernization of Paradise Lost is awkward and ill-managed, insulting to the unfamiliar student, and to the memory of Milton.

Tesky does, however, include a glossary of biblical and mythological terms which may be unfamiliar to many (but which were much more recognizable to Milton's contemporaries), and this is hardly found in many editions of Paradise Lost. Tesky also gives critical articles on subjects as diverse as the character of Satan, gender distinctions, and even the agency of the angel Abdiel. While there is alot to learn from this edition, scarcely any of it comes from Tesky himself; he ends up doing more damage than good. In my opinion, stay away from this edition.

It is a laborious read, but John Milton's Paradise Lost is worth it. First published in 1667, Paradise Lost remains, many contend, the greatest poem ever published in English, and Milton is deemed second only to Shakespeare among the pantheon of English writers. When reading Milton, be prepared for hundreds of references to Greek and Roman mythology that few of us (myself included) are familiar with as well as works saturated in biblical references and allusions and much obscure vocabulary. Happily, this Norton Critical Edition includes hundreds of notes--footnotes, so there is no disruptive flipping back and forth! This edition also offers dozens of critical essays on Paradise Lost, some dating back to its publication, a couple of Milton's prose works and an extensive glossary. Whether reading for pleasure or for (school) credit, this NCE of Paradise Lost is a godsend.

I ordered this text to help write a paper, and it has ended up serving as my primary text for my research. The text is at least as good as any of the other editions I have looked at, the footnotes are top-notch, and the critical articles are some of the siminal works. My only gripe is that there are no visual markers in the text for the footnotes, they are simply at the bottom of the page, signified by line number. Because of this, I sometimes don't realize that there are footnotes on a particular line, but this is a minor problem.

Nice edition of this work. Has good footnotes, and contains much besides the poem itself, including information on Milton's life, and a section on sources that Milton used, and "classic" and modern criticism of the work.

I used the Norton critical edition edited by Scott Elledge

We will discover in these pages a profound rendering of the cosmic battle between good and evil, man's fall through disobedience to God, and Satan's perversion on mankind.

Each line serves a purpose, so in order to inhale this sublime poem to its fullest it will be necessary to slow down. Immensely valuable to understanding this difficult poem is the editor's explanatory summery going into each of the twelve books (chapters) and the numerous footnotes.

The second half of the book contains a biography, an historical evolution, other writings, and a critical analysis of Milton by multiple revered authors with a wide degree of beliefs.

Wish you well
Scott