Milton And The Making Of Paradise Lost

William Poole recounts Milton's life as England’s self-elected national poet and explains how the greatest poem of the English language came to be written. How did a blind man compose this staggeringly complex, intensely visual work? Poole explores how Milton’s life and preoccupations inform the poem itself—its structure, content, and meaning.

“An authoritative, and accessible, introduction to Milton’s life and an engaging examination of the process of composing Paradise Lost” (Choice). In early 1642 Milton promised English readers a work of literature so great that “they should not willingly let it die.” Twenty-five years later, the epic poem Paradise Lost appeared in print. In the interim, however, the poet had gone totally blind and had also become a controversial public figure―a man who had argued for the abolition of bishops, freedom of the press, the right to divorce, and the prerogative of a nation to depose and put to death an unsatisfactory ruler. These views had rendered him an outcast. William Poole devotes particular attention to Milton’s personal life: his reading and education, his ambitions and anxieties, and the way he presented himself to the world. Although always a poet first, Milton was also a theologian and civil servant, vocations that informed the composition of his masterpiece. At the emotional center of this narrative is the astounding fact that Milton lost his sight in 1652. How did a blind man compose this intensely visual work? Poole opens up the world of Milton’s masterpiece to modern readers, first by exploring Milton’s life and intellectual preoccupations and then by explaining the poem itself―its structure, content, and meaning. “Poole’s book may well become what he shows Paradise Lost soon became: a classic.” —Times Literary Supplement “Smart and original . . . Demonstrates with astonishing exactitude how Milton’s life and―most impressively of all―his reading enabled this epic.” ―The Spectator “This deeply learned and lucidly written book . . . makes this most ambitious of early modern poets accessible to his modern readers.” ―Journal of British Studies

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To explore the early-eighteenth-century view of the 'sublime Milton', the author analyzes the work of five readers of Paradise Lost during the years 1701-34: Joseph Addison, the only writer of the five who attained any lasting fame; and John Dennis, by far the most important - and overlooked - of the early Miltonists.

A guide through Paradise Lost___