Showing posts with label John Milton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Milton. Show all posts

Friday, 12 August 2016

Milton vs. Shakespeare: Is the Christian faith tragic or comic?

I had the pleasure of giving a short dinner speech at Campion College this week. I compared Milton's tragic vision to Shakespeare's comic vision, and argued that these are two alternative ways of understanding history theologically. The audio is available here.

Thursday, 18 December 2008

Paradise Lost: parallel prose edition

Continuing our celebratory Milton theme, let me tell you about this very unusual – and quite remarkable – new book. Dennis Danielson, one of the world’s most distinguished interpreters of Milton (and a brilliant interpreter of Milton’s theology), has translated the whole of Paradise Lost into prose!

Paradise Lost: Parallel Prose Edition (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2008), 559 pp. (thanks to Regent College for a copy)

Milton’s poetry is notoriously difficult. T. S. Eliot famously remarked that Milton “invent[s] his own poetic language.” Every linguistic idiosyncrasy, Eliot said, “is a particular act of violence which Milton has been the first to commit”; his poetic style is “a perpetual sequence of original acts of lawlessness.” Milton’s verse is therefore “poetry at the farthest possible remove from prose” – thus explaining both its sheer difficulty and the extraordinary capacity of the language to captivate and beguile.

I must admit, I was at first skeptical when I heard about Danielson’s new edition. Sure, everyone admits that Paradise Lost is difficult. But conventional scholarship tries to meet this difficulty by arming students with annotations, introductions, and various other scholarly aids. In contrast, Danielson’s approach is startlingly unorthodox: he simply translates the poetry into prose. And after perusing this edition – once I had recovered from the initial shock – I have to say I’m very impressed.

Danielson’s edition contains no scholarly apparatus. You simply have the full text of the poem on one page, with a prose translation on the facing page. The translation is not a substitute for the text, then – but it’s an easy, enjoyable way for readers to interpret a given passage and to follow the larger movement of the narrative. In a poem like this, difficult interpretive decisions lurk around every corner (or behind every bush); so Danielson’s prose can also be profitably read as an extended interpretive commentary on the poem – albeit a commentary which artfully conceals its own immense learning and scholarly sophistication.

Of course, reading a prose translation like this will still introduce a regrettable distance between the reader and the poetry; but I suspect such distancing is even more pronounced where one’s reading is mediated by textual commentary and elaborate footnotes “in terrible array / Of hideous length.” A prose interpretation like Danielson’s at least encourages the reader to enjoy the poem, not merely to work at it; to become absorbed in the poem’s own peculiar world and in its strange, compelling narrative.

Let me give a few examples of Danielson’s translation. From the poem’s famous opening passage, here is Milton describing Satan’s fall from heaven:

Him the Almighty Power
Hurld headlong flaming from th’ Ethereal Skie
With hideous ruine and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire,

Who durst defie th’ Omnipotent to Arms.

And here is Danielson’s rendering on the facing page: “But Omnipotence hurled him, flaming, from the dizzy height of heaven into the lost and fathomless depths, there, ruined and burnt out yet still on fire, to wear the unbreakable chains he earned by daring the Almighty to take up arms.”

For another example, here’s Milton describing the animals in Eden – the animals play together while Adam and Eve rest after a day’s work:

About them frisking playd
All Beasts of th’ Earth, since wilde, and of all chase
In Wood or Wilderness, Forrest or Den;

Sporting the Lion rampd, and in his paw

Dandl'd the Kid; Bears, Tygers, Ounces, Pards
Gambold before them, th’ unwieldy Elephant
To make them mirth us’d all his might, and wreathd
His Lithe Proboscis; close the Serpent sly
Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine

His breaded train, and of his fatal guile

Gave proof unheeded; others on the grass
Coucht, and now fild with pasture gazing sat,

Or Bedward ruminating: for the Sun

Declin’d was hasting now with prone carreer

To th’ Ocean Iles, and in th’ ascending Scale

Of Heav’n the Starrs that usher Evening rose.

And here’s Danielson: “All the animals of the earth (since become wild) and of every terrain, whether wood, wilderness, jungle or plain, frisked and played about with them. The lion reared up in sport, and in his paw he dandled a young goat as one might a small child. Bears, tigers, lynxes, and leopards frolicked in front of them. The unwieldy elephant used all his might to make them laugh and coiled his limber trunk. Nearby the sly snake, twisting and turning, wove his sinuous length into subtle knots, unheeded evidence of fateful cunning. Others reposed on the grass and, having grazed their fill, sat merely observing or sleepily chewing their cud. For the sinking sun was hastening now on its course toward the horizon and the islands of the west; and ascending the staircase of the heavens rose the stars that usher in the evening.”

Or, once more, here is Milton describing the world’s creation:

Darkness profound
Cover’d th’ Abyss: but on the watrie calme
His brooding wings the Spirit of God outspred,
And vital vertue infus’d, and vital warmth
Throughout the fluid Mass, but downward purg’d

The black tartareous cold Infernal dregs
Adverse to life: then founded, then conglob’d

Like things to like, the rest to several place
Disparted, and between spun out the Air,

And Earth self ballanc’t on her Center hung.

And here is Danielson: “Profound darkness obscured the abyss; but the Spirit of God stretched out his brooding wings upon the watery stillness, infusing that fluid mass with the power and warmth of life, flushing downward the dark abysmal cold infernal dregs, life’s antithesis. Then he fused like things with like, molding them into a sphere; and to the rest he assigned separate regions. Between them he spun out the air, and in its midst he hung the earth, balanced on nothing but itself.”

You can see what I mean when I say that this prose translation may actually help readers to stay closer to the text than they would when their reading is mediated by a clutter of scholarly footnotes and interpretive comments. In spite of the inherent limitations of prose, and in spite of the ways in which Milton’s style eludes any single rendering, Danielson nevertheless succeeds remarkably in drawing your attention back to the shape of the narrative action and to the structure of Milton’s own language.

Those with an expert knowledge of Paradise Lost will find Danielson’s prose to be a fascinating and engaging interpretation of the text. And those reading the poem for the first time – or teaching it – will find this edition to be an elegant and surefooted help, an aid which is delightful in its own right, and which “timely interposes” in those moments of poetic difficulty.

Wednesday, 10 December 2008

On Blake and the Bible (and Milton)

A post by Kim Fabricius (This was Kim’s “vote of thanks” after Christopher Rowland’s lecture yesterday for the Theological Society in Swansea. Rowland spoke on “William Blake and the Bible” – if you’re interested, you can download the lecture as a PowerPoint presentation from the Oxford website.)

William Blake was my first true literary love. (Before Blake I’d merely slept around.) We met when I majored in English. I still have my copy of Northrop Frye’s magnificent study of Blake, Fearful Symmetry. And after I’d graduated and hit the road to Europe and Asia in 1971, along with Shakespeare the only other book I carried in my rucksack was a one-volume collection of the works of Blake and John Donne. (And if that seems an unlikely pairing, you obviously don’t see the connection between the two most interesting things in life: God – and sex!)

And then, homeless and broke in London a few years later, crashing and sponging at a friend’s flat in Pimlico, I used to spend many a day blowing my mind on Blake’s visual art in the Tate Gallery just down the road.

And when I became a Christian in the late 1970s, this prophet who so accurately pinpointed the pernicious social consequences of the empiricist and utilitarian philosophies of the Enlightenment, and who exposed with searing indignation the fatal link between the church’s moral teaching, repressed human sexuality, and a culture of death – well, for me, Blake’s heroic status only grew the greater.

The word is vision. Chesterton declared: “Critics say his [Blake’s] visions were false because he was mad. I say he was mad because his visions were true.” Absolutely! “Mad” in the way St. John the Divine was mad (no coincidence, then, that Professor Rowland has written a brilliant commentary on the book of Revelation). “Mad” in a way that neither the legalism of conservative Christians, nor the reasonableness of the liberals, can comprehend. Such is the impoverishment of the contemporary Christian imagination for which the Bible is either an inerrant rulebook or a religious resource book, but not, as it was for Blake, an inspired and inspiring narrative for re-configuring the world.

So thank you, Professor Rowland, for so profoundly and pictorially riveting us tonight with a fabulous lecture. And what a providential evening on which to give it: Milton, whose company Blake often kept (he said that Milton had left heaven and entered his foot in the form of a comet) – it is, this very day, the 400th anniversary of Milton’s birth. Finally, perhaps the highest compliment that I, as a minister in the URC, can pay you: I shall henceforth regard you, with Milton and Blake, as an “honorary” Nonconformist!

Tuesday, 9 December 2008

Celebrating Milton's birthday: on Milton and politics

Four hundred years ago today, England’s great poet was born: John Milton. I celebrated privately this morning by solemnly reciting the opening 50 or 60 lines of Paradise Lost. So why don’t you pause for a moment to read it as well. To read this poem is to participate in a miracle.

By way of celebration, the New Zealand journal, The Turnbull Library Record has devoted a special issue to Milton, including the public lecture which I presented in Wellington earlier this year: “Milton and the Theology of Secular Politics,” The Turnbull Library Record 41 (2008), 3-15. The article discusses Milton’s political thought in the context of contemporary political theory (with special reference to Rowan Williams’ lecture on sharia law). Here’s an excerpt:

“If Milton’s work discloses contradictions inherent in rights-based political doctrines, it would be a complete misunderstanding to imagine that we could somehow “fix” these contradictions simply by being still more tolerant and still more inclusive. But it would perhaps be a step in the right direction if we recognised – in contrast to liberal thinkers like Rawls – that there is no metaphysical foundation for any political order, no “mere nature” which could authorise or establish that order, no value-free “reason” by which competing comprehensive doctrines could be adjudicated. Instead of searching for ideal speech-conditions or universal criteria of justice and rationality, perhaps what’s needed today is a political sphere where contests of values can be staged openly, and where political exclusions can be recognised for what they are – exclusions arising from political decision, not from any neutral “reasonableness,” much less from any “natural” or metaphysical foundation. The search for political foundations and for a rational consensus is precisely an attempt to naturalise the contingent decisions and power relations by which every political order is established. […]

“To return to Rawlsian language, whether a specific comprehensive doctrine can exist legitimately in the political sphere is determined not by whether it measures up to some universal standard of reasonableness; instead, this can be decided only in the process of political debate itself. The political is precisely the sphere in which confrontation between rival values can be staged openly. It is the sphere in which solutions can be negotiated without recourse to metaphysical foundations, or universal reason, or the righteous violence of the regenerate few.”

Thursday, 7 August 2008

Milton in Brisbane, and other events

Here in Brisbane, I’ve been organising a symposium to mark the 400th anniversary of Milton’s birth. If you’re in the area, you might like to come along either to the public lecture (next Thursday) or to the day of public readings from Milton’s works (next Sunday). One of our visiting speakers, Stephen Fallon, will also be featured tomorrow in the Weekend Australian, and in next Wednesday’s excellent radio program, Late Night Live.

There’ll be plenty more Miltoniana in New Zealand as well, with another Milton conference this December. And if you still want more of the Reformed tradition, there are some good upcoming conferences on Schleiermacher, John Owen, and Herman Bavinck.

Tuesday, 22 July 2008

Milton, heresy, toleration

The latest issue of the Journal of the History Ideas includes my article on Milton and toleration: “‘Following the Way Which Is Called heresy’: Milton and the Heretical Imperative,” JHI 69:3 (2008), 375-93. (If you’d like a copy, just email me.) This is part of a larger project I’m currently working on, exploring the theological basis of the secularisation of politics in the 17th century. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“If the underlying basis of a free society is the practice of individual religious choice, what then becomes of those who refuse to engage in this practice? What becomes of Roman Catholics, who simply refuse to become heretics in Milton’s (positive) sense – that is, they refuse to make the individual conscience the locus of religious authority? In Milton’s conception of English society, such persons are clearly excluded: their refusal of individualistic choice is tantamount to a repudiation of the entire social order, so that the possibility of their toleration by the state cannot even be entertained. In other words, Milton’s relativization of heresy, if carried out as a social program, would lead to precisely the same impasse as Locke’s theory of toleration: the practice of subjective Protestant piety gives rise to the right to toleration, but the resulting construction necessarily excludes those who do not practice such piety, or who practice the wrong kind….

“I am not suggesting that Milton’s conception of toleration is merely ‘inconsistent,’ or that his otherwise rational theory of toleration is hampered by an unfortunate remainder of religious prejudice. On the contrary, Milton’s theory of toleration is theological through and through. The right to toleration is grounded on a specific Protestant understanding of the nature of faith; and the exception to this right is inextricably connected to the whole logic of toleration. Indeed, the normative ‘centre’ of Milton’s theory is constituted precisely by its exception, by its exclusion of certain groups who are declared incapable of moral participation in the sphere of politics, and who thus forfeit the right to toleration.”

Monday, 16 June 2008

In New Zealand

I’ll be spending a chilly week down in New Zealand, giving some talks in Dunedin and Wellington. So if you’re in the neighbourhood, you might like to come along and join us. Here’s the schedule:

Wednesday 18 June, University of Otago
11 am: Seminar on Milton and liberal politics with the English and Political Studies departments
2 pm: Seminar on Karl Barth’s interpretation of Paul with the Theology department

Thursday 19 June, National Library, Wellington
6 pm: The 2008 Founder Lecture: “The Invention of Reason: Milton and the Theology of Secular Politics,” held in the National Library auditorium

Friday, 13 June 2008

Three quotes on loneliness

It is not good for man to be alone. Hitherto all things [in Genesis] that have been named, were approved of God to be very good: loneliness is the first thing which God’s eye named not good.”
        —John Milton, Tetrachordon (1645).

“Loneliness has little to do with what we do or where we do it, whether we’re married or unmarried, optimists or pessimists, heterosexual or homosexual. Loneliness has to do with the sudden clefts we experience in every human relation, the gaps that open up with such stomach-turning unexpectedness. In a brief moment, I and my brother or sister have moved away into different worlds, and there is no language we can share…. It is in the middle of intimacy that the reality of loneliness most dramatically appears.”
        —Rowan Williams, A Ray of Darkness (1994), pp. 121-26.

“I’m a stranger here and no one sees me –
Except you.”
        —Bob Dylan “Nobody ’Cept You” (1973)

Tuesday, 22 January 2008

Milton's 400th birthday

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Milton, the greatest poet who has ever lived. There will be lots of celebratory events around the world throughout 2008 (I myself am co-organising a conference here in Brisbane). If you’re lucky enough to be in Oxford this year, the Bodleian Library has a terrific exhibition entitled Citizen Milton.

And over at Cambridge, there’ll be an extraordinary range of events at Christ’s College (this was Milton’s own college). There’s a series of public lectures – the first, on 30 January, is by Quentin Skinner. There are two library exhibitions, Living at This Hour and Milton in the Old Library. And there’ll be performances of Comus and Paradise Lost, as well as a performance of Handel’s oratorio L’Allegro, Il Penseroso, ed Il Moderato (which is based on Milton’s poems).

Later in the year, keep an eye out for the release of a major new edition of Milton’s works, published by Oxford UP, as well as Yale UP’s new Milton Encyclopedia.

If you’ve never read his great poem, Paradise Lost, then you can’t even begin to imagine what you’re missing out on. If you’d like to read it, there’s an excellent online Milton Reading Room, or you might prefer to check out the lovely illustrated edition introduced by that lively modern Miltonian, Philip Pullman (who writes without fetters because he is of the angels’ party without knowing it). And one of my own essays on Milton is also available as a free download from the Milton Quarterly website.

In short, there’s never been a better time to get into John Milton. As far as I’m concerned, life without Paradise Lost would not even be worth living (it would not even be life) – without Milton, I could only sigh and pine:

        “How can I live without thee? How forgo
        Thy sweet converse and love so dearly joined,
        To live again in these wild woods forlorn?” (PL 9.908-10)

Friday, 12 October 2007

Devil's advocate: on reincarnating Milton's Satan

If you were to ask who is the greatest of all fictional characters, then Milton’s Satan would have to be very close to the top of the list. The Satan of Paradise Lost (1667) is an utterly powerful and singular character – and he has cast a long shadow over subsequent literary history. Thus some of our greatest modern characters (e.g. Melville’s Ahab) are in fact precisely reincarnations of Milton’s Satan.

But my own favourite contemporary incarnation of Milton’s Satan is found not in literature, but in the 1997 film Devil’s Advocate. The Satan-character in this film (a lawyer named “John Milton”) is modelled very closely on Paradise Lost, and he is brilliantly brought to life by Al Pacino. Like Milton’s Satan, this lawyer is above all a rhetorician – he loves to make long, egocentric speeches. He’s fascinated by himself and by his own unique place in the cosmos: “I’m the hand up Mona Lisa’s skirt. I’m a surprise, Kevin. They don’t see me coming.”

Like Milton’s Satan, this Satan-figure is a champion of human rights and freedoms: “I’ve nurtured every sensation man’s been inspired to have. I cared about what he wanted and I never judged him. Why? Because I never rejected him. In spite of all his imperfections, I’m a fan of man! I’m a humanist. Maybe the last humanist.” Yep, this Satan is one hell of a nice guy.

Further, he is, like Milton’s Satan, a seductive tempter who is always whispering in someone’s ear, enticing people with promises of becoming like God: “You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire; you build egos the size of cathedrals; fibre-optically connect the world to every eager impulse; grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold-plated fantasies, until every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own God – and where can you go from there?”

The big difference, however, is that Al Pacino’s Satan is a rapacious womaniser, whereas Milton’s Satan is (more profoundly) a sexually impotent voyeur who is tormented by the sight of Adam and Eve’s lovemaking. And Devil’s Advocate would have been a much better film if Satan had turned out to be impotent (like the sadomasochistic Frank Booth in Blue Velvet).

Anyway, the most creative and most insightful aspect of Devil’s Advocate is that, while Milton’s Satan was depicted as a heroic parliamentary leader, Al Pacino’s Satan is the head of a big New York law firm. He is a lawyer through and through, “always negotiating.” Indeed, he is nothing less than a pure embodiment of law itself.

Thus this Satan tells his son: “the law, my boy, puts us into everything. It’s the ultimate backstage pass, it’s the new priesthood, baby! Did you know there are more students in law school than lawyers walking the earth? We’re coming out, guns blazing! The two of you, all of us, acquittal after acquittal after acquittal – until the stench of it reaches so high and far into heaven, it chokes the whole fucking lot of them!”

This is superb satire (and we all love to satirise lawyers), but it’s also a profoundly Miltonic twist – a direct identification of law with the Satanic, and thus a paradoxical identity between law and lawlessness. And it’s hard not to be reminded here of the challenging Pauline thought that even God’s own law can become one of the demonic “cosmic elements” (Gal. 4:3, 9) which enact human enslavement. In the same way, do not our contemporary “rights” and “freedoms” function precisely as a cosmic Law whose sole aim is to reduce us to the status of consumer-slaves – i.e., is there not here, too, a precise identity between Law and the demonic?

Wednesday, 6 December 2006

John Milton on the calling of the disabled

England’s greatest poet, John Milton, suffered from glaucoma, which led to his total blindness by the age of 43. In one of his sonnets (Sonnet XIX), Milton struggled to come to terms with his blindness in relation to his profound sense of personal vocation. He believed God had called him to be England’s poet and prophet: but what would become of this vocation now that he was blind?

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o’er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”

In this sonnet, Milton finds resolution not by downplaying the severity of his impairment, nor by giving up his sense of divine calling, but by enlarging his understanding of what it means to be called by God. God has many servants who can carry out his will. He does not “need” any person’s talents and abilities, since all such abilities are already “his own gifts.” Our role, then, is simply to offer service in God’s royal court; our role is to be ready to serve whenever God might call. Such service is performed not only by those who “speed” over land and sea; it is equally performed by those who merely “wait” in willing readiness: “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

In this way, Milton both lamented his blindness and affirmed the integrity and authenticity of his vocation. To be called by God is not the same as achieving things for God. To be called by God is to wait on God, to be ready for God’s voice.

Wednesday, 19 July 2006

Milton's theology of freedom

My new book, Milton’s Theology of Freedom, was released today, so you might like to request a copy for your library. The book’s chapters are:

Introduction
1. The Theology of Freedom: A Short History
2. The Satanic Theology of Freedom
3. Predestination and Freedom
4. The Freedom of God
5. Human Freedom and the Fall
6. Grace, Conversion and Freedom
Conclusion

And here’s an excerpt from the preface:

This book offers a new reading of Milton’s poetic thought in the light of a detailed examination of post-Reformation theology. It aims to clarify and enrich our understanding of Milton’s epic, Paradise Lost, and to open new perspectives on to the fascinating complexities of Protestant theology in the seventeenth century. I hope the result will, therefore, be of interest both to Milton scholars and to students of post-Reformation theology.

What Albert Schweitzer once said of the Enlightenment writer Reimarus may with equal truth be said of John Milton: “He had no predecessors; neither had he any disciples.” Milton’s poetry and thought tower above their time and context, consistently inviting historical explication, yet refusing to be explained away by any historical determinant. His poetry continues to resist interpretive determinisms, while his thought continues to challenge theological and philosophical determinism. Milton’s work is thus a monument to the freedom of the individual and to the irreducible singularity of the creative impulse. Acknowledging this creativity and individuality is not, however, to argue that Milton’s thought existed in a vacuum. On the contrary, Milton absorbed entire traditions of linguistic, literary and theological discourse; and having absorbed them, he transmuted them and freely pressed them into the service of his own creative vision. Paradoxically then, the historical and contextual positioning of Milton is essential if we are fully to appreciate his uniqueness and individuality.

It is, for instance, only by recognising Milton’s appropriation of the epic tradition that we can appreciate the achievement of Paradise Lost, a work that transforms and transcends this tradition. Similarly, we can understand Milton’s theological achievement only when we situate his thought within the context of the theological traditions to which he was indebted, especially the traditions of post-Reformation Protestantism. In exploring Milton’s relationship to that theological context, I therefore endeavour to highlight the creative freedom of his own theological thought. In two respects, then, this book is a study of freedom: it is a study of Milton’s theological vision of freedom in Paradise Lost; and it is also a study of the freedom of Milton’s own theological creativity as embodied in the poem.

I should indicate at the outset that my own theological horizons are shaped principally by the traditions of Nicene trinitarianism and Reformed Protestantism—traditions of which Milton himself was by no means uncritical. As a result, I have often found myself disagreeing with Milton’s theological formulations. Such disagreement has, however, remained silent throughout this study, since my purpose is not to contest, but to listen to Milton himself as openly and as sympathetically as possible. In any case, regardless of the criticisms I might make of Milton’s theology, I feel only profound admiration for the work of this poet and thinker. If it is true that Milton had neither predecessors nor disciples, it is also true that he had few peers. His profound intuition, penetrating insight and uncompromising individualism set him apart from other writers and thinkers of his time. For this reason, I have found my engagement with Milton to be a unique challenge and a unique joy.

Monday, 20 March 2006

Prevenient grace descending

In case any of you are interested in obscure Puritan controversies regarding prevenient grace, regeneration and conversion, I have just published an article about all this in the new issue of Milton Quarterly: “Prevenient Grace and Conversion in Paradise Lost,” Milton Quarterly 40:1 (2006), 20-36.

Here’s a few lines from Milton’s Paradise Lost, on the conversion of Adam and Eve after their fall:

Thus they in lowliest plight repentant stood
Praying, for from the Mercy-seat above
Prevenient Grace descending had remov’d
The stony from their hearts, and made new flesh
Regenerate grow instead, that sighs now breath’d
Unutterable, which the Spirit of prayer
Inspir’d, and wing’d for Heaven with speedier flight
Than loudest Oratory. (11.1-8)

Ah, the experience of reading Milton’s poetry is like being born again!

Wednesday, 1 March 2006

Milton's theology of freedom

My book on Milton’s Theology of Freedom is due for release in July, and details are now available online. Obviously monographs like this are too expensive for most individuals to buy; but you might like to ask your library to get a copy.

Wednesday, 28 September 2005

Thou, O Spirit

And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer
Before all Temples th’ upright heart and pure,
Instruct me, for Thou know’st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad’st it pregnant: What in me is dark
Illumine

—John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), 1.17-23.

Thursday, 1 September 2005

Philip Pullman and Paradise Lost

What is the best book ever written in English? Easy answer: John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost (1667). Today Oxford University Press released a new edition of Paradise Lost. It features an introduction by the popular novelist Philip Pullman, author of the highly acclaimed (and highly theological) fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials.

Here are the details: John Milton, Paradise Lost, introduced by Philip Pullman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 384pp., hbk., ISBN 019280619X. And here’s part of the promotional blurb:

“In his general introduction Pullman describes the power of the poem, its achievement as a story, how we should read it today, and its influence on him and His Dark Materials.... The book is beautifully produced, printed in two colours throughout, illustrated with the twelve engravings from the first illustrated edition published in 1688.” If you have never read Paradise Lost, now’s your chance to mend your ways.

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