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Paradise Lost (Norton Critical Editions)
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Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
Author: John Milton
Publisher: W. W. Norton
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Our Price: $14.63
You Save: $ 1.62 ( 10% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
Author: John Milton
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Average Customer Rating:
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Paradise Lost (Norton Critical Editions) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 821.4
EAN: 9780393924282
ISBN: 0393924289
Label: W. W. Norton
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 624
Publication Date: 2004-12-19
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Studio: W. W. Norton
Dewey Decimal Number: 821.4
EAN: 9780393924282
ISBN: 0393924289
Label: W. W. Norton
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 624
Publication Date: 2004-12-19
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Studio: W. W. Norton
Editorial Review of Paradise Lost (Norton Critical Editions)
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 of Paradise Lost (Norton Critical Editions)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: This Specific Edition
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The definitive Paradise Lost resource
Review: It is a laborious read, but John Milton's Paradise Lost is worth it. First published in 1667, Paradise Lost remains, many contend, the greatest poem ever published in English, and Milton is deemed second only to Shakespeare among the pantheon of English writers. When reading Milton, be prepared for hundreds of references to Greek and Roman mythology that few of us (myself included) are familiar with as well as works saturated in biblical references and allusions and much obscure vocabulary. Happily, this Norton Critical Edition includes hundreds of notes--footnotes, so there is no disruptive flipping back and forth! This edition also offers dozens of critical essays on Paradise Lost, some dating back to its publication, a couple of Milton's prose works and an extensive glossary. Whether reading for pleasure or for (school) credit, this NCE of Paradise Lost is a godsend.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: an Invaluable text
Review: I ordered this text to help write a paper, and it has ended up serving as my primary text for my research. The text is at least as good as any of the other editions I have looked at, the footnotes are top-notch, and the critical articles are some of the siminal works. My only gripe is that there are no visual markers in the text for the footnotes, they are simply at the bottom of the page, signified by line number. Because of this, I sometimes don't realize that there are footnotes on a particular line, but this is a minor problem.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Great edition, except. . .
Review: I love Norton Critical Editions. Or I try to. Gordon Teskey's new edition of Paradise Lost is for the most part worthy of the praise it has received in other reviews on this site. However, it has one unpardonable flaw, which is the editor's tampering with Milton's poetic line. Teskey and the Norton editors have for some reason decided to make it "easy to read" by adding parentheses to complex syntactical passages that Milton wrote on purpose to be. . . I dunno. . . hard? This move to simplify the syntax alters not only the experience of the poem but, worse, its meaning. Take for example these famous lines of Satan's from Book I, the first words spoken in Hell:
If thou beest he but O how fall'n! how changed
From him who in the happy realms of light
Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine
Myriads, thought bright! if he whom mutual league,
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope. . .
The meaning of the lines is confusing because Satan himself is confused, and now speaking for the first time a fallen language. The "he" from line one gets dropped until line four, when Satan remembers what he's talking about after wandering through a few memories of his life before the fall. The reader is supposed to feel the confusion and torment of this run-on sentence. But Teskey uses parentheses to clean up the very mess Milton wanted Satan to make of the sentence:
If thou beest he (but O how fallen! how changed
From him who in the happy realms of light
Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine
Myriads, though bright) if he whom. . .
This effectively dumbs down the poem and drastically changes it. And there is way too much of it in this edition. It is common enough to modernize spelling and syntax in editions of early modern poetry, but this is a bit too much. Readers don't buy this book because they want an easy read; most readers, even students, don't mind if it is a little hard and confusing in parts. Mostly, I bet they want to see what Milton and not his editors wrote.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Justifying Milton's Ways
Review: I am always glad for an occasion to tread "with wand'ring steps and slow" through the lines of "Paradise Lost" yet once more. When I found out that Gordon Teskey, to my mind the great poet's strongest reader in many years, had edited a new Norton Critical Edition, I knew it was time to travel the path again. As his predecessor Scott Elledge did for a previous generation, Professor Teskey has created an edition and charted a reading experience of enormous richness for contemporary students and general readers alike, and forged a tool of unique value for teachers at all levels. The text is well edited, as it must be, with helpful but judicious modernization of some spelling. The footnotes are measured, thorough but never gratuitously scholastic, to serve the process of active reading. This is not an easy poem and no editor can change that, but one travels through it faster, though steady at speed, with Professor Teskey at one's side. The critical apparatus is also strikingly well done, with modern essays usefully divided by topics, such as 'On Satan' and 'On Feminism', in a manner that will serve all audiences well. Along with retaining essays by past titans of Milton criticism, from Marvell to T.S. Eliot, as well as much of the canonical modern criticism present in earlier Norton editions, this volume includes some of the best critical voices of the last twenty years, among them William Flesch, Regina Schwartz, Archie Burnett, Julia Walker and Mary Ann Radzinowicz. But these new contributions have been chosen, it seems to me, with a very judicious focus on their own lasting canonical value, rather than merely on their more recent dates of publication. Whether out of deference or editorial privilege, Professor Teskey saves the last word for himself in a short selection from an essay that has since become a chapter in his new book, "Delirious Milton" (Harvard, 2006), in which he charts a history of philosophical modernity through an inspired analysis of Milton's view of creation, divine and human. Whether you are coming to "Paradise Lost" for the first or the twentieth time, make this edition your primary text and make Professor Teskey's new study the next book you read. If you do, you'll experience a very fortunate fall followed by a delirium of the happiest sort.
Review Summary: This Specific Edition
Review: 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.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The definitive Paradise Lost resource
Review: It is a laborious read, but John Milton's Paradise Lost is worth it. First published in 1667, Paradise Lost remains, many contend, the greatest poem ever published in English, and Milton is deemed second only to Shakespeare among the pantheon of English writers. When reading Milton, be prepared for hundreds of references to Greek and Roman mythology that few of us (myself included) are familiar with as well as works saturated in biblical references and allusions and much obscure vocabulary. Happily, this Norton Critical Edition includes hundreds of notes--footnotes, so there is no disruptive flipping back and forth! This edition also offers dozens of critical essays on Paradise Lost, some dating back to its publication, a couple of Milton's prose works and an extensive glossary. Whether reading for pleasure or for (school) credit, this NCE of Paradise Lost is a godsend.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: an Invaluable text
Review: I ordered this text to help write a paper, and it has ended up serving as my primary text for my research. The text is at least as good as any of the other editions I have looked at, the footnotes are top-notch, and the critical articles are some of the siminal works. My only gripe is that there are no visual markers in the text for the footnotes, they are simply at the bottom of the page, signified by line number. Because of this, I sometimes don't realize that there are footnotes on a particular line, but this is a minor problem.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Great edition, except. . .
Review: I love Norton Critical Editions. Or I try to. Gordon Teskey's new edition of Paradise Lost is for the most part worthy of the praise it has received in other reviews on this site. However, it has one unpardonable flaw, which is the editor's tampering with Milton's poetic line. Teskey and the Norton editors have for some reason decided to make it "easy to read" by adding parentheses to complex syntactical passages that Milton wrote on purpose to be. . . I dunno. . . hard? This move to simplify the syntax alters not only the experience of the poem but, worse, its meaning. Take for example these famous lines of Satan's from Book I, the first words spoken in Hell:
If thou beest he but O how fall'n! how changed
From him who in the happy realms of light
Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine
Myriads, thought bright! if he whom mutual league,
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope. . .
The meaning of the lines is confusing because Satan himself is confused, and now speaking for the first time a fallen language. The "he" from line one gets dropped until line four, when Satan remembers what he's talking about after wandering through a few memories of his life before the fall. The reader is supposed to feel the confusion and torment of this run-on sentence. But Teskey uses parentheses to clean up the very mess Milton wanted Satan to make of the sentence:
If thou beest he (but O how fallen! how changed
From him who in the happy realms of light
Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine
Myriads, though bright) if he whom. . .
This effectively dumbs down the poem and drastically changes it. And there is way too much of it in this edition. It is common enough to modernize spelling and syntax in editions of early modern poetry, but this is a bit too much. Readers don't buy this book because they want an easy read; most readers, even students, don't mind if it is a little hard and confusing in parts. Mostly, I bet they want to see what Milton and not his editors wrote.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Justifying Milton's Ways
Review: I am always glad for an occasion to tread "with wand'ring steps and slow" through the lines of "Paradise Lost" yet once more. When I found out that Gordon Teskey, to my mind the great poet's strongest reader in many years, had edited a new Norton Critical Edition, I knew it was time to travel the path again. As his predecessor Scott Elledge did for a previous generation, Professor Teskey has created an edition and charted a reading experience of enormous richness for contemporary students and general readers alike, and forged a tool of unique value for teachers at all levels. The text is well edited, as it must be, with helpful but judicious modernization of some spelling. The footnotes are measured, thorough but never gratuitously scholastic, to serve the process of active reading. This is not an easy poem and no editor can change that, but one travels through it faster, though steady at speed, with Professor Teskey at one's side. The critical apparatus is also strikingly well done, with modern essays usefully divided by topics, such as 'On Satan' and 'On Feminism', in a manner that will serve all audiences well. Along with retaining essays by past titans of Milton criticism, from Marvell to T.S. Eliot, as well as much of the canonical modern criticism present in earlier Norton editions, this volume includes some of the best critical voices of the last twenty years, among them William Flesch, Regina Schwartz, Archie Burnett, Julia Walker and Mary Ann Radzinowicz. But these new contributions have been chosen, it seems to me, with a very judicious focus on their own lasting canonical value, rather than merely on their more recent dates of publication. Whether out of deference or editorial privilege, Professor Teskey saves the last word for himself in a short selection from an essay that has since become a chapter in his new book, "Delirious Milton" (Harvard, 2006), in which he charts a history of philosophical modernity through an inspired analysis of Milton's view of creation, divine and human. Whether you are coming to "Paradise Lost" for the first or the twentieth time, make this edition your primary text and make Professor Teskey's new study the next book you read. If you do, you'll experience a very fortunate fall followed by a delirium of the happiest sort.