READING GUIDES TO LONG POEMS J READING o GUIDES Series Editors: Isobel Armstrong & Sally Bushell h TO LONG n The series enables readers to re-engage with the long poem as a vital POEMS form. Volumes provide generous extracts, or in some cases complete M poems, from significant works combined with a reading guide and i teaching tips from enthusiastic lecturers who have taught the poem. l t o A hands-on guide to this famous epic poem n ’ s Noam Reisner leads readers through the complexities of Milton’s celebrated and challenging narrative poem as well as introducing them to key critical P views. The guide combines an introduction to the poem’s main thematic a and stylistic concerns together with discussion of important selected r a passages (substantial extracts from the text are included) and provides d readers with a basic set of critical tools with which to interpret the text. i s Key Features e L • Detailed discussion of select passages from the poem divided into three John Milton’s interrelated sections – ‘concepts and themes’, ‘style and form’ and o s ‘historical-political context’ – for easy reference t • Provides a general guide to teaching the text – first time teachers will find many suggestions for teaching as well as templates for teaching the poem in different course formats Paradise Lost • Up-to-date annotated bibliography Noam Reisneris a Lecturer in the Department of English and American Studies at Tel Aviv University. N A READING GUIDE o a m R e i s n e r ISBN 978 0 7486 4000 3 Edinburgh University Press 22 George Square Edinburgh E EH8 9LF d www.euppublishing.com i n Cover image: iStockphoto b Noam Reisner Cover design: www.paulsmithdesign.com u r g h John Milton’s Paradise Lost RREEIISSNNEERR PPRRIINNTT..iinndddd ii 0011//0033//22001111 1111::1144 Reading Guides to Long Poems Published: John Milton’s Paradise Lost: A Reading Guide Noam Reisner Hbk: 978 0 7486 3999 1 Pbk: 978 0 7486 4000 3 Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene: A Reading Guide Andrew Zurcher Hbk: 978 0 7486 3956 4 Pbk: 978 0 7486 3957 1 Homer’s Odyssey: A Reading Guide Henry Power Hbk: 978 0 7486 4110 9 Pbk: 978 0 7486 4109 3 Forthcoming: Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh: A Reading Guide Michele Martinez Hbk: 978 0 7486 3971 7 Pbk: 978 0 7486 3972 4 Alfred Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam: A Reading Guide Anna Barton Hbk: 978 0 7486 4135 2 Pbk: 978 0 7486 4134 5 RREEIISSNNEERR PPRRIINNTT..iinndddd iiii 0011//0033//22001111 1111::1144 John Milton’s Paradise Lost A Reading Guide Noam Reisner Edinburgh University Press RREEIISSNNEERR PPRRIINNTT..iinndddd iiiiii 0011//0033//22001111 1111::1144 © Noam Reisner, 2011 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 10.5/13 Sabon by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 3999 1 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 4000 3 (paperback) The right of Noam Reisner to be identifi ed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. RREEIISSNNEERR PPRRIINNTT..iinndddd iivv 0011//0033//22001111 1111::1144 Contents Preface vi Series Editors’ Preface ix 1. Mapping and Making Paradise Lost 1 2. Text, Commentary and Analysis 30 3. Teaching the Text 142 4. Bibliography 153 Index 163 RREEIISSNNEERR PPRRIINNTT..iinndddd vv 0011//0033//22001111 1111::1144 Preface Paradise Lost rewards a lifetime of reading and re-reading, but it is also a daunting poem which initially can disorient and alienate fi rst-time readers. Among long narrative poems, Paradise Lost is certainly one of the longest and most intimidating in the English canon. Many stu- dents are daunted not only by the sheer length of the epic, but also by the perceived ‘heaviness’ of the theological and biblical subject matter, the sprawling baroque artifi ciality of the poetry, Milton’s ostentatious pedantry and classicism, and his Latinate syntax and diffi cult idiom. As a consequence, it is a common schoolroom practice to ease students into the epic by breaking it up into discrete units, usually focusing fi rst on the most pleasing aspects of the poem for modern readers – namely Satan’s vividly realised character in the early books and the captivat- ing story of Adam and Eve’s fall from God in the Garden of Eden in Books IX and X. As a result, many important sequences in the poem deemed by popular consensus (and even some critical opinion) too dif- fi cult or of inferior poetic quality are often neglected or even ignored, with the obvious result of sabotaging the proper coherence of Milton’s overall didactic argument in the poem. The following Reading Guide to Paradise Lost approaches the perceived problem of the poem’s length by offering fi rst-time readers and students a detailed analytical overview, or map, of the poem as a whole, together with a corresponding map for negotiating important landmarks in the vast body of academic criticism on the poem. The two sets of maps are inseparable; the various criti- cal debates which surround different aspects of the poem raise a set of very useful, and usually insoluble, questions which in turn crystallise, through the heated debates they inspire, the poem’s unique claims on our imagination. The analyses and discussions provided in this Guide are representative rather than exhaustive and aim to demonstrate the wide scope of interpretation Paradise Lost invites. To grasp Milton’s RREEIISSNNEERR PPRRIINNTT..iinndddd vvii 0011//0033//22001111 1111::1144 Preface vii vision in its complex totality and to engage with the demanding ques- tions it poses about the fallen human condition requires from the reader both patience and constant attention to detail. The main aim of this Guide is to alert readers to the complex interpretative choices the poem demands of them, and to provide a basic set of tools with which to approach these acts of interpretation by situating Milton’s great epic historically and intellectually in its time, and exploring some of its major themes as they emerge from these contexts. In writing this Guide I have incurred many particular as well as more general debts to former teachers, present colleagues and numerous students. Although the emphases and syntheses in the materials of this Guide and some of the more discrete observations are my own, what follows is above all a tribute to the monumental scholarship and insight of the poem’s modern editors and the cumulative efforts of a wide community of Milton scholars who in their diverse body of work best embody the sheer range of interpretation the poem continues to excite. Although it is not possible to acknowledge all such debts individually in such a Guide, the vast majority of my scholarly debts are recorded in the annotated bibliography in Chapter 4. From a more personal per- spective, I wish to register my enduring gratitude: to my teachers John Carey and the late A. D. Nuttall, who made my initial encounter with Paradise Lost a more forgiving and fascinating experience than it might have been; to Colin Burrow for his continued advice and support; and to Sally Bushell who trusted me with this project and saw it through with diligence and a great generosity of spirit. I would also like to acknowl- edge my research assistants on this project, Ron Ben-Tovim and Olga Barenboim, who between them transcribed and proofread many of the passages from the poem reproduced in this Guide. Miss Barenboim also acted as a keen student reader, making many helpful suggestions. And last but not least, this Guide is primarily indebted to my students in two different universities and two very different countries who taught me much as we ventured together across the Miltonic gulf of chaos – this Guide is for them. In transcribing passages from the poem I have relied on the lightly modernised edited text of the poem prepared by John Leonard for his Penguin Classics edition. I wish to thank Penguin Classics for giving me permission to replicate a substantial amount of this text for the purpose of analysis and discussion. It is recommended that students who wish to read this Guide alongside the poem itself do so with reference to this edition (for more on different editions of the poem see the bibliography). In writing this Guide the following conventions have been observed: all RREEIISSNNEERR PPRRIINNTT..iinndddd vviiii 0011//0033//22001111 1111::1144 viii Paradise Lost: A Reading Guide quotations from the Bible are from the Authorised Version. Full biblio- graphical details are given in notes only to those items not listed in the annotated bibliography (Chapter 4) while items so listed are given in short title form. All references to Milton’s prose are to The Complete Prose Works of John Milton, 8 vols, general ed. Don M. Wolfe (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1953–1980), henceforth designated with the abbreviation CPW. All references to Milton’s poetry other than Paradise Lost are to John Milton: The Complete Poems, ed. John Leonard (London: Penguin Classics, 1998). RREEIISSNNEERR PPRRIINNTT..iinndddd vviiiiii 0011//0033//22001111 1111::1144 Series Editors’ Preface The form of the long poem has been of fundamental importance to literary studies from the time of Homer onwards. The Reading Guides to Long Poems series seeks to celebrate and explore this form in all its diversity across a range of authors and periods. Major poetic works – The Odyssey, The Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost, The Prelude, In Memoriam, The Waste Land – emerge as defi ning expressions of the culture which produced them. One of the main aims of the series is to make contemporary readers aware of the importance of the long poem for our literary and national heritage. How ‘long’ is a long poem? In ‘The Philosophy of Composition’ Edgar Allan Poe asserted that there is ‘a distinct limit, as regards length, to all works of literary art – the limit of a single sitting’. Defi ned against this, a long poem must be one which exceeds the limit of a single sitting, requiring sustained attention over a considerable period of time for its full appreciation. However, the concept of poetic length is not simply concerned with the number of lines in a poem, or the time it takes to read it. In ‘From Poe to Valéry’ T. S. Eliot defends poetic length on the grounds that ‘it is only in a poem of some length that a variety of moods can be expressed . . . These parts can form a whole more than the sum of the parts; a whole such that the pleasure we derive from the reading of any part is enhanced by our grasp of the whole.’ Along with Eliot, the series editors believe that poetic length creates a unique space for a varied play of meaning and tone, action and refl ection that results in particular kinds of reading and interpretation not possible for shorter works. The Reading Guides are therefore concerned with communicat- ing the pleasure and enjoyment of engaging with the form in a range of ways – focusing on particular episodes, tracing out patterns of poetic imagery, exploring form, reading and re-reading the text – in order to allow the reader to experience the multiple interpretative layers that the RREEIISSNNEERR PPRRIINNTT..iinndddd iixx 0011//0033//22001111 1111::1144