by Barbara K. Lewalski (Author), John Milton (Author)
In this authoritative edition of John Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost is presented in the original language of its 1674 publication, with explanatory annotations and word glosses.
- Edited by one of the world's leading Milton scholars, the author of the acclaimed The Life of Milton (Blackwell 2000), which won the Milton Society of America's James Holly Hanford Book Award
- Offers readers the opportunity to experience the brilliance and beauty of Paradise Lost as it was experienced by his contemporaries
- Presents Paradise Lost in its original 1674 form
- Incorporates accidentals (spelling and punctuation) from the 1674 edition
- Recovers Miltonic rhythms, pronunciations, and sound qualities often lost in modern editions
- Annotates names, places, biblical and literary allusions, and unfamiliar words
- Includes illustrations by John Baptista Medina from the 1688 Folio edition
Back Jacket
This authoritative edition of Milton's great epic, Paradise Lost, presents the poem in the original language (spelling and punctuation) of its 1674 publication. It thereby recovers pronunciations, sonorities, and rhythms often lost in modernized editions. Barbara K. Lewalski offers readers the opportunity to experience the brilliance and beauty of Paradise Lost as that poem was experienced by Milton's contemporaries.
Beginning with a brief historical and critical introduction, Lewalski also provides judicious explanatory annotations that clarify names and places, identify biblical and literary allusions, and gloss unfamiliar words. She includes as well a textual apparatus of variant readings, a select bibliography, and several illustrations from the 1688 Folio edition.
Lewalski's Paradise Lost is the first of three paperback volumes presenting authoritative texts of the complete poetry and major prose of John Milton in original language, thereby making these texts readily available to students and scholars.
Author Biography
Barbara K. Lewalski is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English Literature and of History and Literature at Harvard University. She is author of the definitive critical biography, The Life of Milton (Blackwell, 2000), which won the Milton Society of America's James Holly Hanford Book Award, and which has been widely celebrated. Her many other publications include Paradise Lost and the Rhetoric of Literary Forms (1985); Milton's Brief Epic: The Genre, Meaning and Art of Paradise Regained (1966); and Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric (1979).