Criticism > Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism > Collier, John - Jay Martin (review date 23 June 1973)

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Jay Martin (review date 23 June 1973)

SOURCE: Martin, Jay. “Praise for the Blighted and Blasted.” New Republic 168, no. 25 (23 June 1973): 28-29.

[In the following review, Martin finds Milton's Paradise Lost predictable and unsatisfying.]

Although John Collier has titled his new book Milton's Paradise Lost and announces that he intends to reproduce “Milton's concept” in a screenplay, in almost every respect this work is unlike Milton's; and only in appearance is it a screenplay. It is all John Collier and entirely romance.

For a starter Collier replaces Milton's Ptolemaic System with a physically correct galactic universe through which Satan plummets like a stricken astronaut. Then he substitutes for the sword of God “an electronic barrier” which sweeps the gateway of Eden. But these are incidental to his real intention, which is not to revise but to reverse Milton's poem. Collier rejects the two beliefs...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Josiah Titzell (review date 5 April 1931)
   2. Dudley Carew (review date 5 May 1931)
   3. Herschel Brickell (review date 1931)
   4. Basil Bunting (review date August 1932)
   5. Rolfe Scott-Thomas (review date 20 October 1932)
   6. New Statesman and Nation (review date 12 November 1932)
   7. The Spectator (review date 18 November 1932)
   8. David Garnett (review date 8 April 1933)
   9. Iris Barry (review date 7 May 1933)
   10. John Cournos (review date 28 June 1933)
   11. Wyndham Lewis (review date 8 June 1934)
   12. William Rose Benét (review date 4 August 1934)
   13. The Nation (review date 8 August 1934)
   14. Fanny Butcher (review date 22 September 1934)
   15. C. J. Eustace (review date September 1934)
   16. Geoffrey West (review date 12 December 1934)
   17. Ben Ray Redman (review date 1 February 1941)
   18. Otis Ferguson (review date 3 February 1941)
   19. Paul Theroux (essay date 26 November 1972)
   20. New Republic (review date 9 December 1972)
   21. Jay Martin (review date 23 June 1973)
   22. John Updike (essay date 20 August 1973)
   23. Anthony Burgess (essay date 1973)
   24. Tom Milne (essay date spring 1976)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright