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Paradise Lost

by John Milton

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  • Barker, A. E., ed., Milton: Modern Essays in Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965, 483 p. (Collection of essays by noted critics that provide stimulating introductions to the works or highlight significant issues in Milton scholarship; includes articles on Paradise Lost by Douglas Bush, A. B. Chambers, C. S. Lewis, and Irene Samuel.)
  • Blamires, Harry, Milton's Creation: A Guide through Paradise Lost. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1971, 308 p. (Escorts the reader through the text, providing general notes on the poem, clarifying difficult passages, and offering detailed analyses of crucial passages.)
  • Broadbent, J. B., Some Graver Subject: An Essay on Paradise Lost. London: Chatto and Windus, 1960, 303 p. (Claims that, from a historical point of view, Paradise Lost is a reactionary work, and also that Milton presents his subject matter in an intellectual rather than a mystical manner.)
  • Burden, Dennis, The Logical Epic: A Study of the Argument of Paradise Lost. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967, 117 p. (Examines how Milton treats his subject matter in light of the constraints presented in his source materials, and argues that in writing his poem Milton had to scrutinize the Bible with an eye to its rationality and logic.)
  • Bush, Douglas, Paradise Lost in Our Time. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1957, 117 p. (Four essays originally delivered as lectures discussing the reaction against Milton in the mid-twentieth century, and exploring the work's religious and ethical themes, characters and drama, and poetical texture.)
  • DiCesare, Mario A., "Paradise Lost and the Epic Tradition," Milton Studies I (1969): 31-50. (Examines some of the ways in which Milton, following Virgil, modified the epic tradition.)
  • Empson, William, Milton's God. London: Chatto and Windus, 1961, 249 p. (Influential study that paints a grim portrait of God in Paradise Lost.)
  • Fessenden, Tracy, "‘Shapes of Things Divine’: Images, Iconoclasm, and Resistant Materiality in Paradise Lost," Christianity and Literature 48, No. 4 (Summer 1999): 425-43. (Suggests that Milton counters the negative position on images set forth in his prose tracts, instead creating the possibility that images could be redeemed.)
  • Fish, Stanley, "‘Not so much a Teaching as an Intangling’: The Good Temptation," in Surprised by Sin: The Reader in “Paradise Lost,” second edition, pp. 38-56. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998. (Argues that the challenges of reading Paradise Lost force the reader into the position of Adam and Eve.)
  • Fish, Stanley Eugene, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, 361 p. (Argues that “the uniqueness of the poem's theme—man's first disobedience and the fruit thereof—results in the reader's being simultaneously a participant in the action and a critic of his own performance.”)
  • Fixler, Michael, "The Apocalypse Within Paradise Lost," in New Essays on Paradise Lost, pp. 131-78, edited by Thomas Kranidas. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. (Suggests that Milton based Paradise Lost on an elaborate systematic transformation of the Apocalypse or Revelation of St. John.)
  • Frye, Northrop, The Return of Eden. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965, 151 p. (Essays discussing the epic structure, style, and themes of the poem.)
  • Gardner, Helen, A Reading of Paradise Lost. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965, 131 p. (Detailed reading of the epic with discussions of Milton's creation of an intensely dramatic universe, the poem's extraordinary scope of space and time, and Satan as a tragic figure.)
  • Gulden, Ann Torday, "Is Art ‘Nice’? Art and Artifice at the Outset of Temptation in Paradise Lost," Milton Quarterly 34, no. 1 (March 2000): 17-24. (Contrasts the art of Eve with the artifice of Satan; employs the Renaissance medium of emblems for comparison.)
  • Hill, Christopher, "The Fall of Man," in Milton and the English Revolution, pp. 341-53. London: Faber and Faber, 1977. (Considers the relationship between Milton's concept of the Fall and the failure of the English Revolution.)
  • Jordan, Matthew, Milton and Modernity: Politics, Masculinity, and Paradise Lost. New York: Palgrave, 2001, 225 p. (Political interpretation which posits Milton as a proto-modern with respect to his ideas about the rights of individuals and a limited egalitarianism.)
  • Kermode, Frank, ed., The Living Milton: Essays by Various Hands. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960, 179 p. (Collection of essays by distinguished scholars, many of which are frequently reprinted; includes essays on Paradise Lost.)
  • Kietzman, Mary Jo, "The Fall into Conversation with Eve: Discursive Difference in Paradise Lost," Criticism 39, No. 1 (Winter 1997): 55-88. (Emphasizes conversation in Eden as the dominant mode for developing subjectivity; suggests that Adam and Eve are compelled to create language adequate to their experiences.)
  • Klemp, P. J., Paradise Lost: An Annotated Bibliography. Magill Bibliographies. Lanham, Md.: The Scarecrow Press, 1996, 249 p. (Bibliography with descriptions of secondary sources organized by subject and individual book in the epic.)
  • Klemp, P. J., ed., The Essential Milton: An Annotated Bibliography of Major Modern Studies. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1989, 474 p. (Bibliography of secondary criticism on Milton, with a section devoted to works on Paradise Lost.)
  • Knoppers, Laura Lunger, "Rewriting the Protestant Ethic: Discipline and Love in Paradise Lost," ELH 58, no. 3 (Fall 1991): 545-59. (Links Milton's depiction of marriage and self-realization to nascent capitalism and the development of Weber's Protestant work ethic.)
  • Kranidas, Thomas, ed., New Essays on Paradise Lost. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969, 180 p. (Important volume of essays with articles by Stanley Fish, John T. Shawcross, and A. B. Chambers.)
  • Leonard, John, Naming in Paradise: Milton and the Language of Adam and Eve. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990, 304 p. (Study of the poem's language.)
  • Lewis, C. S., A Preface to Paradise Lost. London: Oxford University Press, 1942, 143 p. (One of the most important and original works of Milton criticism that touches on various subjects, including the poem's solemn tone, Christian orthodoxy, Eve's pride, Adam's uxoriousness, and Milton's God; Lewis claims also that the final two books form a “grave structural flaw.”)
  • Lifson, Martha R., "Creation and the Self in Paradise Lost and the Confessions," Centennial Review 19, no. 3 (1975): 187-97. (Compares Milton's and Augustine's methods for describing the development of the self and salvation, focusing especially on Milton's prologues.)
  • Lindenbaum, Peter, "Lovemaking in Milton's Paradise," Milton Studies VI (1975): 277-306. (Asserts that Milton's emphasis on Adam and Eve's lovemaking before the fall encourages readers to view sexual love as the “sum of prelapsarian bliss” and appreciate the complexities in Adam's decision to disobey God because of his love for Eve.)
  • MacCaffrey, Isabel Gamble, Paradise Lost as “Myth.” Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959, 229 p. (Argues that Milton uses the myth of the cyclic journey to portray humanity's movement from an original state of glory (creation) to exile (the fall) and back to God (redemption).)
  • Magro, Maria, "Milton's Sexualized Woman and the Creation of a Gendered Public Sphere," Milton Quarterly 35, No. 2 (2001): 98-112. (Studies of Milton's divorce tracts along with Paradise Lost to illuminate how Milton fashions an ideal femininity.)
  • Martin, Thomas L., "On the Margin of God: Deconstruction and the Language of Satan in Paradise Lost," Milton Quarterly 29, no. 2 (May 1995): 41-7. (Applies a Derridean method of deconstruction to Paradise Lost in order to assert the possibility of a middle ground between a purely authoritarian text and a language with no boundaries or controls.)
  • Martz, Louis L., "Paradise Lost: The Journey of the Mind," in The Paradise Within: Studies in Vaughn, Traherne, and Milton. New Haven, CONN: Yale University Press, 1964, pp. 103-67. (Claims that Paradise Lost is concerned with “a renewal of human vision” and that the epic's narrator looks toward a recovery of paradise.)
  • Nyquist, Mary, "Gynesis, Genesis, Exegesis, and the Formation of Milton's Eve," in Cannibals, Witches, and Divorce: Estranging the Renaissance, edited by Marjorie Garber, pp. 147-208. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. (Considers Milton's Eve as the poet's attempt to reconcile the two distinct creation stories of Genesis.)
  • Rajan, Balachandra, ed., Paradise Lost: A Tercentenary Tribute. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969, 140 p. (Volume of critical essays including contributions by noted critics such as Northrop Frye, Arthur E. Barker, and Hugh MacCallum.)
  • Raleigh, Sir Walter, "Paradise Lost: The Actors. The Later Poems," in Milton, pp. 126-174. London: Edward Arnold, 1900. (Considers that the poem's epic value comes from Satan's character and achievement, argues that Milton bases his universe on political rather than religious principles, sees Milton's God as a “Whimsical Tyrant,” and praises Milton's power of style despite his pedantic treatment of abstract thought.)
  • Raleigh, Sir Walter, "Paradise Lost: The Scheme," in Milton, pp. 77-125. London: Edward Arnold, 1900. (Claims that Milton in the poem “serves Satan,” and says that while the poem does not concern modern readers “it is not the less an eternal monument because it is a monument to dead ideas.”)
  • Ricks, Christopher, "The Milton Controversy," in Milton's Grand Style, pp. 1-21. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963. (Defends Paradise Lost against critics who find its style flawed and inconsistent.)
  • Ricks, Christopher, Milton's Grand Style. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963, 154 p. (Offers a detailed analysis of the style of Paradise Lost, and answers critics who have called the language of the work monotonous, ritualistic, and unsubtle.)
  • Schulman, Lydia Dittler, "Paradise Lost and the Language of Revolution," in Paradise Lost and the Rise of the American Republic, pp. 141-79. Boston, Mass.: Northeastern University Press, 1992. (Examines how American revolutionary leaders adapted the rhetoric of Milton to the republican cause.)
  • Steadman, John, Epic and Tragic Structure in Paradise Lost. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976, 189 p. (Asserts that Milton beautifully accommodates the temptation story to an ideal of the epic form, and that he invests the traditional heroic poem with Christian matter and meaning.)
  • Steadman, John, Milton's Epic Characters: Image and Idol. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959, 343 p. (Explores the intellectual background of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained with particular emphasis on problems of characterization.)
  • Stein, Arnold, "Imagining Death: The Ways of Milton," Milton Studies XXIX (1992): 105-20. (Examines Milton's thoughts on death as revealed in Paradise Lost and other works.)
  • Stein, Arnold, Answerable Style: Essays on Paradise Lost. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1953, 166 p. (Important general study reprinted in numerous volumes of critical essays. Stein discusses, among other things, the character of Satan, the war in heaven, grotesque imagery, the archetype of the garden, and the cosmic and domestic drama of the epic.)
  • Summers, Joseph H., The Muse's Method: An Introduction to Paradise Lost. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962, 227 p. (Introductory reading of Paradise Lost with each chapter offering a different method or approach toward the epic. Summers includes a textual analysis of the opening lines, an examination of the uses of grotesque parody and comedy, a discussion of the definition of “good” or “Perfection,” and a discussion of the centrality of the “Two Great Sexes.”)
  • Tillyard, E. M. W., Studies in Milton. London: Chatto and Windus, 1950, 176 p. (A frequently reprinted study that considers such themes as the Fall, Adam and Eve's disobedience, the couple's reconciliation, and the character of Satan.)

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Paradise Lost, John Milton (Poetry Criticism)
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