Paradise Lost (Norton Critical Editions) (Paperback)

by John Milton (Author), Gordon Teskey (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
This Norton Critical Edition is designed to make Paradise Lost accessible for student readers, providing invaluable contextual and biographical information and the tools students need to think critically about this landmark epic. Gordon Teskey's freshly edited text of Milton's masterpiece is accompanied by a new introduction and substantial explanatory annotations. Spelling and punctuation have been modernized, the latter, importantly, within the limits imposed by Milton's syntax.

"Sources and Backgrounds" collects relevant passages from the Bible and Milton's prose writings, including selections from The Reason of Church Government and the full text of Areopagitica.

"Criticism" brings together classic interpretations by Andrew Marvell, John Dryden, Victor Hugo, and T. S. Eliot, among others, and the most important recent criticism and scholarship surrounding the epic, including essays by Northrop Frye, Barbara Lewalski, Christopher Ricks, and Helen Vendler.

A Glossary and Selected Bibliography are also included.

About the Series: No other series of classic texts equals the caliber of the Norton Critical Editions. Each volume combines the most authoritative text available with the comprehensive pedagogical apparatus necessary to appreciate the work fully. Careful editing, first-rate translation, and thorough explanatory annotations allow each text to meet the highest literary standards while remaining accessible to students. Each edition is printed on acid-free paper and every text in the series remains in print. Norton Critical Editions are the choice for excellence in scholarship for students at more than 2,000 universities worldwide.

About the Author
Gordon Teskey is Professor of English at Harvard University. He is the author of Delirious Milton: The Poet in the Modern World and Allegory and Violence, and co-editor of Unfolded Tales: Essays on Renaissance Romance.

Product Details

• Paperback: 624 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.; 3rd revised edition (December 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393924289
• ISBN-13: 978-0393924282
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #65,007 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

73 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Great edition, except. . . , March 19, 2007

By	Alcofribas Nasier (Chinon, France) - See all my reviews

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.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Justifying Milton's Ways, September 22, 2006

By	James Green (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

37 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the effort, December 4, 2005

By	Dan (Flanders, NJ) - See all my reviews

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.