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.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 12 reviews)

A cosmic battle

I used the Norton critical edition edited by Scott Elledge

We will discover in these pages a profound rendering of the cosmic battle between good and evil, man's fall through disobedience to God, and Satan's perversion on mankind.

Each line serves a purpose, so in order to inhale this sublime poem to its fullest it will be necessary to slow down. Immensely valuable to understanding this difficult poem is the editor's explanatory summery going into each of the twelve books (chapters) and the numerous footnotes.

The second half of the book contains a biography, an historical evolution, other writings, and a critical analysis of Milton by multiple revered authors with a wide degree of beliefs.

Wish you well
Scott
December 17, 2008

Worse than the old Norton--no longer the edition of choice

People I admire have told me they consider Teskey a brilliant scholar, but what he has done with this Norton Critical Edition is a real disappointment. In short, the annotations, the ancillary texts, and the critical readings are all less helpful than the old Norton edition (edited by Scott Elledge). Elledge sometimes could be a bit pedantic, giving too many Latin etymologies and such. But Teskey has simply abandoned the original audience (first-time readers of Paradise Lost). He doesn't gloss such difficulties as "ravin," "all I," and the odd etymological use of "pontifical." He omits such indispensable ancillae as Elledge's 33-page selection from Milton's "On Christian Doctrine" (and also Doctrine & Discipline of Divorce, and much else). He takes the best critical readings (Lewalski, Fish) and cuts them down to excerpts too tiny to matter much.

That really concludes my argument against choosing Teskey. He also commits howlers in Latin, Greek ("Greek leukos also means joyful"), and English ("tradition" in X.578 construed as a verb; faulty modernizations like "condemn" for "contemn" in IX.306 and "shown" for "shone" in X.1096).

For a Norton Critical Edition (i.e., the extra primary and secondary texts), choose Elledge; its advantages in learning and help far outweigh any of its defects. Perhaps, though, the most helpful Paradise Lost edition for the target audience (first-time reader, well-annotated) is now David Scott Kastan's generous reworking of Merritt Hughes' edition.
November 23, 2008

product no-show

I sent for this product many weeks ago and have received nothing. My email to the seller went unanswered. This is my first disappointment with using Amazon.com for book purchases; I hope it will be the last.
September 16, 2008

Soooo good

I took a course on /Paradise Lost/ this past semester. It's such a fruitful read. I get excited just thinking about it. If you are a huge geek like me about any of the following things, I recommend biting the bullet and reading this poem:
*the Bible, particularly Genesis
*the classics
*Philip Pullman's /His Dark Materials/ series. (Read them together! It makes the reading of each piece so much richer! I suggest this to Milton scholars as well.)
*feminist/gender studies
*any literature or popular culture that addresses the fall from grace after Milton does
*anything else you can think of to be geeky about

You could read /Paradise Lost/ through the lens of pretty much any interest, it's that dense. Of course that means it's a bit challenging, but it's worth spending time studying. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!
June 26, 2008

This Specific Edition

I needed this book for a graduate course on Milton in a hurry. The bookstore ran out of copies and the professor insisted on this Norton critical edition. No other would do. It was brand new at a great price (better than the bookstore) with really fast shipping. I'm really satisfied with this purchase.
October 30, 2007

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