Paradise Lost By John Milton (Paperback, 2003)

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John Milton's celebrated epic poem exploring the cosmological moral & spiritual origins of man's existence Paradise Lost has been fully revised with an introduction by John Leonard in Penguin Classics In Paradise Lost Milton produced poem of epic scale conjuring up a vast awe-inspiring cosmos & ranging across huge tracts of space & time populated by a memorable gallery of grotesques & yet in putting a charismatic Satan & naked innocent Adam & Eve at the centre of this story he also created an intensely human tragedy on the Fall of Man Written when Milton was in his fifties
- blind bitterly disappointed by the Restoration & in danger of execution
- Paradise Lost's apparent ambivalence towards authority has led to intense debate about whether it manages to 'justify the ways of God to men' or exposes the cruelty of Christianity John Leonard's revised edition of Paradise Lost contains full notes which elucidates Milton's biblical classical & historical allusions & discuss his vivid highly original use of language & blank verse John Milton (1608-1674) spent his early years in scholarly pursuit In 1649 he took up the cause for the new Commonwealth defending the English revolution both in English & Latin
- & sacrificing his eyesight in the process He risked his life by publishing The Ready & Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth on the eve of the Restoration (1660) His great poems were published after this political defeat If you enjoyed Paradise Lost you might like Dante's Inferno also available in Penguin Classics' An endless moral maze introducing literature's first Romantic Satan' John Carey' Paradise Lost is to my mind the greatest poem in English' Philip Pullman author of His Dark Materials trilogy