A Guidebook to Paradise Lost

(Paperback)

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Description

Paradise Lost has excited and provoked poets and critics for over 300 years. This introduction provides an accessible route into Milton's influential epic poem, guiding students through each of the twelve books by a combination of close textual analysis and summary of key themes and techniques. Without assuming prior knowledge, Nutt helps navigate the book's biblical and classical background and its relationship to seventeenth-century history. Focusing on developing the reading skills needed to approach this important and complex poem independently, A Guide to Paradise Lost is essential reading for all students of Milton.

Reviews

"For a self-proclaimed 'guidebook' Nutt's volume eschews the gimmicks that lend so many introductory works an air of accessibility at the cost of intellectual depth: he is assuredly not writing Paradise Lost for Dummies. There are no bullet points, cartoons, or inset boxes featuring trivia about the Barebones Parliament or Arminian soteriology. Instead we have a substantial and tightly-packed volume, though Nutt's prose style is clear and accessible. Nutt excels at looking at the poem over his audience's shoulder, so to speak. He recognizes that the big philosophical, political, and theological questions Milton explores are inseparable from the nuances of language, metaphor, and even syntax; readers are made to see that comprehending the latter will give a much better chance of comprehending the former." - Milton Quarterly

Author Bio

JOE NUTT is currentlyPrincipal Consultant at CfBT Education Trust and previously taught English at the City of London School. He isthe author of An Introduction to Shakespeare's Late Plays and John Donne: The Poems.