Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost was John Milton's great epic in blank verse, a form of poetry which had been very little used in English until then.
Publication
The first edition of Paradise Lost, in ten books, was published in 1667; the now standard twelve book version was published in 1674. In his lifetime Milton received a total of £10.00 for his work on Paradise Lost.[1]
Outline
Reputation
From the beginning, the book had steady sales, despite its author being out of political favour. John Dryden, although politically and religously opposed to Milton, described it as “undoubtedly one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced.”[2] In the next century, Samuel Johnson called it "a poem, which, considered with respect to design, may claim the first place, and with respect to performance the second, among the productions of the human mind", asking "what other author ever soared so high, or sustained his flight so long?"[3] The poetry of Milton served as a profound inspiration to the Romantic poets, including Wordsworth, Shelley (e.g., Prometheus Unbound), Keats (e.g., the two Hyperion poems) and William Blake (e.g., The Four Zoas). In the 20th century, Milton's poetry fell out of favour, as the Metaphysical poets came into fashion, though T.S. Eliot rather condescendingly noted that poets can study Milton “with profit to their poetry and to the English language”,[4] but Christopher Ricks decisively restored his reputation with his extended essay on Milton's Grand Style.[5]
- ↑ Gordon Campbell, "Milton, John (1608–1674)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2008).
- ↑ See the Prefatory Essay in Dryden’s The State of Innocence, 1674.
- ↑ Johnson, S. Lives of the Poets. 1779
- ↑ Eliot, T.S., "Milton II" in Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot (London: Faber and Faber, 1980), p. 274.
- ↑ Ricks, C. Milton's Grand Style. Oxford University Press. 1978