Paradise Regained (Authentic Original Classic) [Paperback]

John Milton (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0768425603 | ISBN-13: 978-0768425604 | Publication Date: October 1, 2007

I, WHO erewhile the happy Garden sung By one man's disobedience lost, now sing Recovered Paradise to all mankind, By one man's firm obedience fully tried Through all temptation, and the Tempter foiled In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed, And Eden raised in the waste Wilderness. Thou Spirit, who led'st this glorious Eremite Into the desert, his victorious field Against the spiritual foe, and brought'st him thence By proof the undoubted Son of God, inspire, As thou art wont, my prompted song, else mute, And bear through highth or depth of Nature's bounds, With prosperous wing full summed, to tell of deeds Above heroic, though in secret done, And unrecorded left through many an age: Worthy to have not remained so long unsung

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John Milton was born in London on December 9, 1608, and studied at the University of Cambridge. He originally planned to become a clergyman, but abandoned those ambitions to become a poet. Political in his writings, he served a government post during the time of the Commonwealth. In 1651, he went completely blind but he continued to write, finishing Paradise Lost in 1667, and Paradise Regained in 1671. He died in 1674.
Christopher Ricks is professor of humanities at Boston University and most recently author of Dylan’s Visions of Sin.
Susanne Woods is a Provost nad Professor of English at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, and Chair of the professional Northeast Milton Seminar. Her doctorate is from Columbia University and she has taught at the University of Hawaii, Franklin & Marshall College, and at Brown University, where she maintains an affiliation. Her books include Natural Emphasis: English Versification from Chaucer to Dryden (1984), and Lanyer: A Renaissance Woman Poet (1999), and she has published numerous articles on Milton and other English renaissance poets.

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

From AudioFile

PARADISE REGAINED is concerned with the devil's temptation of Christ in the wilderness. It's a substantial subject; nonetheless, the work is often seen by critics as a coda to Milton's masterwork, PARADISE LOST. Anton Lesser, a longtime member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, takes us inside Milton's seventeenth-century blank verse with remarkable clarity and emotion. One can almost hear Milton grappling with the English Civil War, the Reformation, and his personal quest to express Christ's divinity through heightened yet comparatively modest phrases. Lesser's voice is completely at one with Milton's subject matter, meter, and language. After three centuries, this work is much more accessible than one might think. B.P. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 159 pages
• Publisher: Destiny Image (October 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0768425603
• ISBN-13: 978-0768425604
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,613,708 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

97 of 105 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic work, July 15, 2003

By 

FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained (The Signet Classic Poetry Series) (Paperback)

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 greater Man
Restore us and regain the blissful seat
Sing, Heavenly Muse...

Not a lot people know that 'Paradise Lost' has as a much lesser known companion piece 'Paradise Regained'; of course, it was true during Milton's time as it is today that the more harrowing and juicy the story, the better it will likely be remembered and received.

This is not to cast any aspersion on this great poem, however. It has been called, with some justification, the greatest English epic poem. The line above, the first lines of the first book of the poem, is typical of the style throughout the epic, in vocabulary and syntax, in allusiveness. The word order tends toward the Latinate, with the object coming first and the verb coming after.

Milton follows many classical examples by personifying characters such as Death, Chaos, Mammon, and Sin. These characters interact with the more traditional Christian characters of Adam, Eve, Satan, various angels, and God. He takes as his basis the basic biblical text of the creation and fall of humanity (thus, 'Paradise Lost'), which has taken such hold in the English-speaking world that many images have attained in the popular mind an almost biblical truth to them (in much the same way that popular images of Hell owe much to Dante's Inferno). The text of Genesis was very much in vogue in the mid-1600s (much as it is today) and Paradise Lost attained an almost instant acclaim.

John Milton was an English cleric, a protestant who nonetheless had a great affinity for catholic Italy, and this duality of interests shows in much of his creative writing as well as his religious tracts. Milton was nicknamed 'the divorcer' in his early career for writing a pamphlet that supported various civil liberties, including the right to obtain a civil divorce on the grounds of incompatibility, a very unpopular view for the day. Milton held a diplomatic post under the Commonwealth, and wrote defenses of the governments action, including the right of people to depose and dispose of a bad king.

Paradise Lost has a certain oral-epic quality to it, and for good reason. Milton lost his eyesight in 1652, and thus had to dictate the poem to several different assistants. Though influenced heavily by the likes of Virgil, Homer, and Dante, he differentiated himself in style and substance by concentrating on more humanist elements.

Say first -- for Heaven hides nothing from thy view,
Nor the deep tract of Hell -- say first what cause
Moved our grand Parents, in that happy state,
Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall off
From their Creator and transgress his will,
For one restraint, lords of the world besides?

Milton drops us from the beginning into the midst of the action, for the story is well known already, and proceeds during the course of the books (Milton's original had 10, but the traditional epic had 12 books, so some editions broke books VII and X into two books each) to both push the action forward and to give developing background -- how Satan came to be in Hell, after the war in heaven a description that includes perhaps the currently-most-famous line:

Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in hell:
Better to reign in hell, that serve in heav'n.

(Impress your friends by knowing that this comes from Book I, lines 261-263 of Paradise Lost, rather than a Star Trek episode!)

The imagery of warfare and ambition in the angels, God's wisdom and power and wrath, the very human characterisations of Adam and Eve, and the development beyond Eden make a very compelling story, done with such grace of language that makes this a true classic for the ages. The magnificence of creation, the darkness and empty despair of hell, the manipulativeness of evil and the corruptible innocence of humanity all come through as classic themes. The final books of the epic recount a history of humanity, now sinful, as Paradise has been lost, a history in tune with typical Renaissance renderings, which also, in Milton's religious convictions, will lead to the eventual destruction of this world and a new creation.

A great work that takes some effort to comprehend, but yields great rewards for those who stay the course.

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Milton Accessible, January 21, 2000

By 

Thomas A. Copeland (Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained (Signet Classics) (Paperback)

Ricks provides the most helpful and least pedantic footnotes since James Holly Hanford's edition. They are unobtrusive and on the same page as the text. The text itself is reliable and in modern spelling, but Milton's apostrophes have been retained to make certain that the pronunciations he specified (for metrical reasons) are indicated. There could, perhaps, be wider margins for making annotations.

47 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shakespeare's Successor, March 26, 2000

By 

Sean Ares Hirsch - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained (Signet Classics) (Paperback)

Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare were indeed grand masters of literature for all time. "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained" is enough to put John Milton in the same category. Like Marlowe and Shakespeare, Milton demonstrates extreme scholarship and a superb mastery of the language. It is interesting how Milton takes figures that are mentioned briefly in the scriptures and turns them into major characters. It is also frightening how Milton was able to make God and Satan 3 dimensional as opposed to simply good (in God's case) and evil (in Satan's case). This book is not for everyone. But if you do not mind an unorthodox portrayal of God and Satan and if you want to enjoy beautiful language, superb images, dramatic confrontations, and powerful images, you must read this masterpiece composed with superb and delicate skill.