This Second Edition of a perennial favorite in the Norton Critical Edition series represents that osie revision of is predecesse. The rext spelling and use of capital letters and italics, which have been modern-ized. The original punctuation has been retained because it may indicate Milton's intended phrasing. In addition, the footnotes have been augmented by translations of many of the passages from Homer, Virgil, and Ovid to which Milton alludes.
"Biographical, Historical, and Literary Backgrounds," completely recast and reconstituted, now supplies materials for the study of the contemporary religious and political issues, as well as the private concerns, that preoccupied Milton during the thirty years before the publication of his epic poem. The materials include a brief biography of Milton and selections from his early poems and prose, notably a substantial portion of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce.
"Criticism" is arranged under two headings. "Great Writers on Mil-ton, 1688-1929," including critiques by Dryden, Voltaire, Johnson, Coleridge, Arnold, Woolf, and others, suggests who put, and kept, Paradise Lost in the so-called canon of acknowledged masterpieces. "Re-cent Criticism" collects eleven essays (six of them new) that present a variety of perspectives on Paradise Lost by Robert M. Adams, Harold Bloom, William Empson, Stanley Fish, Northrop Frye, Janet Halley, Christopher Hill, Frank Kermode, Barbara Lewalski, Christopher Ricks, and James Grantham Turner.
A new Chronology and an updated Selected Bibliography are also in-cluded.
THE EDITOR: SCOTT ELLEDGE was Goldwin Smith Professor of English Emeritus at Cornell University. He is the editor of Milton's "Lycidas": An Approach to Criticism; Eighteenth-Century Critical Essays; the Norton Critical Edition of Tess of the D'Urbervilles; and Wilder Than the Sky: Poems to Grow Up With. He is the author of E. B. White: A Biography (Norton).
ABOUT THE SERIES: Each Norton Critical Edition includes an authoritative text, contextual and source materials, and a wide range of interpretations from contemporary perspectives to the most current critical theory—as well as a bibliography and, in most cases, a chronology of the author's life and
COVER ILLUSTRATION: Adam and Eve (painting on panel) by Lucas Cranach, signed and dated 1526. Lee Collection, Courtauld Institute Gal-leries, London. Reproduced by permission.
