Penguin Classic Editions of any book are truly great. One should also note that Signet Classics is also Penguin but this version should only be brought if Penguin Classics is not available. Of course, one has to evaluate one's purpose for the book but Penguin always has notes and good Intros for their books.

I purchased this book for a paper in which I had to choose a chapter and write about it. This version is really clear but is written as Milton would have written it so some of the old English is annoying but there are notes and major parts. The only problem I have with this edition is that there are no chapter titles so you really do not know what each cahpter is about unless you read it.

One of the many results of the increased literacy rate is the ability for every Tom, Dick or Harry to consider themselves literary experts and to opine on the supposed faults of great literature, presuming that it should serve merely their basest pleasures. The correct response to such vulgarity is to rebuke, letting them make their solitary way till one greater man restore them. Before the charge of arrogance is levelled against me, I must too opine that this attitude of literary snobbery should be applied to each one of us when we approach the genius of Milton and Paradise Lost, relenting to the sensation of humility as this epic poem enters our mind. Only by reading in such a frame of mind, can one truly appreciate and enjoy the poetry of Milton.

Paradise Lost is Milton's attempt to recount the debacle of Satan in Heaven, and his role in the Fall of Humanity. While Milton grandly presents his work as an attempt to `justify the ways of God to men' regarding His motivations for our expulson from Paradise, the focus of Paradise Lost is firmly upon Satan and his emotional turmoil at losing Heaven, only to see a creature of dirt replace him as God's focus. From a Catholic perspective, one of the faults of Milton is that his anthropomorphism of the devil is almost too convincing, making Satan appear as a tragic, almost pathetic figure, rather than the merciless deceiver that he is. That is not to say that Milton portrays the devil in a positive frame, but attempts to offer reasons of insecurity, envy and self-righteous hostility for Satan's path of destruction; all too human traits, as many readers will find disconcerting.

As some have noted, while one's grasp and love of the English language should improve at the behest of Milton's poetry, it is unlikely that one will find any theological inspiration from this work. Heresies abound in Paradise Lost; hardly surprising due to the unorthodox religious convictions of Milton. Without condoning such-in my conviction-wicked ideas, one should attempt to read Milton, not as a theological treatise or an attempt to historically describe the Fall, but as a courageous attempt to venture into the midst of the spiritual, the power of emotion and the capability of both unto despair.

A classic which all will do well to read.

John Milton's "Paradise Lost" is a timeless classic. It's imagery, based itself upon 1500 years of previous Christian-cultural imagery, has shaped how the Western world views Christianity, sin, the fall, life, death, heaven, and hell.

The open-minded non-Christian reader would do well to read "Paradise Lost" to become a literate student of Christian imagery. The Christian, willing to work through the descriptive poetry, will gain new insight into Creation, Fall, and Redemption. In many ways, Milton bridges eras (the Middle Ages and the Reformation), cultures (Southern Europe and Northern), and religious groups (Catholic and Protestant).

It's interesting how much "folk theology" owes itself to Milton's "Paradise Lost." Modern views of the Devil, in particular, are often unknowingly based upon the poetic images from Milton. Fortunately, Milton is at his best in describing Satan, first as the unfallen Lucifer with all his glorious, God-created brilliance, and then as the fallen False Seducer in all his distorted and tormenting deceit.

For example, Milton speaks of how revenge, dark requital, propelled Satan's monstrous motives:

To waste his whole Creation, or possess all as our own, and drive as we were driven, the puny habitants, or if not drive, seduce them to our Party, that their God may prove their foe, and with repenting hand abolish his own works. This would surpass common revenge, and interrupt his joy in our confusion and our joy upraise in his disturbance; when his darling Sons hurled headlong to partake with us, shall curse their frail Original, and faded bliss, faded so soon (Milton, Paradise Lost, p. 40).

Surpassing common revenge, Satan lives to spite the Author of life.

By Satan, and in part proposed: for whence, but from the Author of all ill could spring so deep a malice, to confound the race of mankind in one root, and Earth with Hell to mingle and involve, done all to spite the great Creator? (Milton, Paradise Lost, p. 41).

Milton's depiction of the temptation in the Garden displays psychological brilliance and biblical insight into the nature of the human personality as designed by God and depraved by sin. Perhaps only C. S. Lewis' "Screwtape Letters" matches Milton's understanding of Satanic seduction.

For instance, so whose fault their fall? Milton, imagining God's words to Christ, declares:

For man will hearken to his glozing lies, and easily transgress the sole Command, sole pledge of his obedience. So will fall he and his faithless Progeny. Whose fault? Whose but his own? Ingrate, he had of me all he could have; I made him just and right, sufficient to have stood, though free to fall (Milton, Paradise Lost, p. 63).

Well put. Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. Made just and right and able to choose. Adam and Eve had all they could have from the generous hand of God, yet they transgressed the sole command, the sole pledge of loving, trustful obedience. Loving allegiance they chose to grant to non-god rather than to Father God.

Whatever could possess them to trade their birthright for one bite of the one forbidden fruit? When we last spied earth's Villain, he was tumbling toward hell. Having lost the battle for heaven, his hostility and hate triggers a new plan. Why a second siege on heaven's gates, when earth's shores suggest easier prey? As Milton envisioned it:

Nor will occasion want, nor shall we need with dangerous expedition to invade Heaven, whose high walls fear no assault or siege, or ambush from the Deep. What if we find some easier enterprise? There is a place (if ancient and prophetic fame in Heaven err not), another World, the happy seat of some new Race called Man, about this time to be created like to us, though less in power and excellence, but favored more of him who rules above. So was his will pronounced among the Gods, and by an oath, that shook Heaven's whole circumference, confirmed (Milton, Paradise Lost, pp. 39-40).

Readers also could benefit from his less known work, "Paradise Regained." Many have mentioned how difficult it is to write a riveting book about Heaven since the drama of evil is defeated and thus the tension is deflated. Yet Milton captures one possible vision of a future Paradise/Heaven as well as most. (Randy Alcorn's book "Heaven" is, in my opinion, the best modern book on the topic).

John Milton's "Paradise Lost" is a timeless classic. It's imagery, based itself upon 1500 years of previous Christian-cultural imagery, has shaped how the Western world views Christianity, sin, the fall, life, death, heaven, and hell. The open-minded non-Christian reader would do well to read "Paradise Lost" to become a literate student of Christian imagery. For the Christian, willing to work through the descriptive poetry, will gain new insight into Creation, Fall, and Redemption.

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of Soul Physicians, Spiritual Friends, and Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction.

The poem is mysterious and gorgeous. I'm reading very slowly, re-reading a lot, dipping in, adding a couple of new lines at a time. The brief notes in this edition mostly gloss difficult words, citing the OED, which is a good way to go. The spelling is modernized, but contractions, which help form the rhythm, are retained.

There's enough already said about why and how Milton wrote this book, so I don't have anything to say about that. It's a story most people will be familiar with, and any surprises will involve the beauty of the language or a random, surprising insight into a character's motivation. In the end, Milton deserves to be called the greatest writer in English because of the pure strength and beauty of each individual sentence.

This is undoubtedly a difficult book to read. I teach a small bit in a sophomore high school English class, and I tell them, "This will be the most complex text you will encounter this year." We have to practice unpacking sentences one at a time and stating them in our own words in order to get their meaning. It's a slow process, and one that most adults will also need to go through.

But it's all worth it! Reading Milton might or might not change your view of God and man, but absorbing him will change your love of language. The words are vivid and powerful and beg to be read aloud. If you like your poetry Great in the sense of sounding larger than life and tackling humanity's major questions, Milton is it. (And, in my opinion, he even takes out other wonderful poets that I also love, including Dante, Virgil, Homer, and Shakespeare).

Justly placed at the head of the canon of Western literature behind Shakespeare and Dante by Harold Bloom, Milton stands as a towering creative genius in English literature and epic poetry.

Milton conceived of his vast epic as a way to justify the 'ways of God to man.' Strangely, the character of Satan is absolutely central to this epic more so even than Adam and the rest of humanity, and often one can't help comparing Satan and his journeys and battles against misfortune as akin to those of other great literary heroes, such as Prometheus, Odysseus or Aeneas. I feel in a way the message of Milton is more than just good Protestant Christian apologetics; if you read his passionate and brilliant defense of freedom of the press and of thought in works like Aeropagitica, I am sure Milton in a way showed the power of free choice and what heights it allows any being to soar to, even those who are damned. I always get a sense from reading Milton a great trust in the human spirit and an expectation to rise against tyranny.

While ultimately I feel Milton does not really justify the 'ways of God to man' in an intellectually satisfying way, and his vision lacks the brilliant unity of that of Dante, Milton is certainly a poet and genius of first order and probably the greatest writer in English after Shakespeare. His poetry contains great depth and beauty, not just the Paradise Epics but many other poems as well, and his learning and erudition are immense.

In Milton there is a great confidence in human reason and in the individual to prevail in the face of disaster and hardship. One can't help but admire Satan's stubborness and determination in the face of so much which goes against him, and his incredible efforts to achieve his goals. If you ever wanted an example of 'self-help' look no further than the devil in Milton; despite the most hopeless situations he never gives up. Perhaps conciously or unconciously Milton embodies in Satan and also in Samson our own present confidence in our creative abilities and our determination and intelligence to overcome any obstacles in our way, and perhaps in a world as turbulent as ours, that isn't such a bad hope to have after all.

Sufficiency is fluid. There is nothing that in Paradise Lost that can be described as simple. But sufficiency in the eyes of God, Adam and the various obedient angels consists of doing God's will and using the gift of free will given to all his sentient creatures to extol his greatness. Before the falls, both of the rebel angels and of Adam and Eve, the relation between God and his creations is almost always one to one and direct. God makes his creatures sufficient to withstand any and all evil, but by investing all with free will gives them the choice of whether or not to embrace the evil. Suffiency lies within all sentient creatures to do God's will, but one can only be proved sufficient by doing God's will. In short, to be sufficient in God's eyes is to do his will--no matter what!

That suffiency is fluid is vaguely clear through out the poem. There is never one definition of perfectly righteous or good behavior. Satan and the rebel angels needed only to accept Messiah as God and King; Adam and Eve needed only not eat of the tree of knowledge; Michael, Gabriel, and company had to take part in that farce of fight for heaven; Enoch, Noah, Moses and Jesus showed their suffiency by standing up for God against humanly impossible odds. The lists of lesser examples in the poem are too numerous to recite and keep this essay readable, but it is more than reasonable to conclude that depending on the situation anything from indifferent obedience to militant martyrdom will be sufficient. But, constant obedience is always the rule.

The same rule of suffiency should be applied to Paradise in a slightly modified form. God is the greatest of planners because he knows all. Knowing all, he makes plans for every consequence of every action. Had Adam and Eve resisted Satan in the garden, then it would have proved sufficient for two beings who did not know good or evil. That would have proved enough of a mockery to the aims of Satan, but after the fall God ordains it necessary to show that everything Satan ever does to mankind is utterly futile and leads only to more punishment and increase of pain. The fact that he will make the supreme greatness of mankind come from evil means shows his power to be without end, and Satan's unwillingness to accept this is what will ultimately destroy him and his host of rebels at history's conclusion.

The entire question of suffiency of all virtues is the meditation of Milton from the poem's beginning to the close. What is constantly necessary to remember in this poem is the distinction between virtue, or power, and true virtue, power used to celebrate and defend good. Milton uses this distinction to turn epic virtues on their head by investing Satan with so many of them. Satan is fearless, uncompromisingly defiant, willing to fight by whatever means are provided to him and he is inspiring. We can see shades of Aeneas, Odysseus, Scaevola, the Earl of Kent from King Lear, and numerous other literary and historical figures that seethed with defiance and did everything in their power to defy and defy and defy. What all characters put forth have in common though is that they used their powers in defense of people, home, freedom, and friendship. Satan uses the power still invested in him, his "courage never to submit or yield" to try to destroy, not create. Comically, he even seems to realize that he can, at best, be a mild irritant to God this way:

...If then his Providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labour must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still find means of evil,
Which oft-times may succeed, so as perhaps
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb
His inmost counsels from their destined aim. (I, 162-68)

This is power so completely abused that it barely requires further explication. Suffice it to say though, this is the same valor that we find in Adam when we are introduced to him for the first time in book IV, and that he disdains using in book IX when he chooses to follow Eve's lead by eating the forbidden fruit. Where the true virtue of the obedient angels and the classical epic heroes lies in their motivation for undertaking feats of violence, Satan's hatefulness, which grows as he further resists God, lies in the fact that he uses all his powers and intellect in the service of conquest, destruction, and wickedness. As becomes clear by the poem's end, when Michael shows Adam the tyranny of Nimrod, valor when in the service of wickedness is not a true virtue. True virtue and greatness can only come through God's favor.

Here it seems appropriate to move from suffiency in beings and their actions to the suffiency of Paradise. As Raphael points out in book VII, creation of the world and mankind took place in order show Satan and the rebel angels their superflousness by filling what they could have defined as a void when they were banished from Heaven. God loves all his creatures for the obedience and love they show him. But part of the nature of being omnipotent is that nothing is inexpendible and no thing is outside of his purview. Existence itself is by God's sufferance and for any permanence of good to come of a beings existence this must be accepted as indisputable. Milton's Satan would not be Milton's Satan if he accepted this necessity. He even had a chance to accept it in book II had he advised the Stygian council to accept the advice of Mammon--one who hates God as much as Satan:

...Let us not then pursue
By force impossible, by leave obtained
Unacceptable, though in Heav'n, our state
Of splendid vassalage, but rather seek
Our own good from ourselves, and from our own
Live to ourselves, though in this vast recess,
Free, and to none accountable, preferring
Hard liberty before the easy yoke
Of servile pomp. Our greatness will appear
Then most conspicuous, when great things of small,
Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse,
We can create, and in what place soe'er
Thrive under evil, and work ease out of pain
Through labour and endurance. (II, 249-262)

God's wrath is infinite when provoked, and expulsion from Heaven is the punishment for attempting to conquer Heaven. There is no reason to believe that his ire would have been raised had the rebel angels simply accepted their punishment, because the punishment and the concomitant agony that the disobedient angels suffer would have been sufficient. The further disobedience of Satan is what makes more punishment necessary, hence the periodic metamorphosis into serpents the rebels undergo after Satan's return from Earth. Again, suffiency of actions by God becomes defined solely by decisions made by his creations. By seducing Adam and Eve, Satan showed God that banishment was not sufficient to quell his pride. Also, Adam and Eve showed themselves insufficiently obedient to deserve Paradise. It became necessary for God to alter all of their conditions in order to punish Satan accordingly, further dash his pride. For Adam and Eve the punishment was death and the misery of history. They proved insufficient of Paradise, nothing in Paradise itself was imperfect, insufficient, let alone deficient, accept for them after the fall.

God is the creator of infinite possibility in all his sentient creatures. He should not be viewed as the writer of a book with a singular vision who preordains events to make a specific conclusion. That would be fate or destiny and God did not impose these upon human existence. God has total foreknowledge of all events, but he explains to Messiah that this is irrelevant because free will gives all his creations choice. They would be worthless otherwise because,

Not free, what proof could they have giv'n sincere
Of true allegiance, constant faith or love,
Where only what they needs must do, appeared,
Not what they would? What praise could they receive?
What pleasures I from such obedience paid,
When will and reason (reason also is choice)
Useless and vain, of freedom both despoiled,
Made passive both, had served necessity,
Not me. (III, 103-111)

There needs to be the constant possibility of evil arising for good to mean anything. Good is totally impotent without the contrast of evil, in fact it arguably can not exist without it. Automaton praise would not be real praise of God.

When discussion of the suffiency of Paradise comes up in any definition of suffiency we enter into very dangerous territory. Adam and Eve voice no complaints about Paradise; they do not imagine the possibility of being happier than they are prior to their fall. Disobedience to God remains a constant possibility because of the absolute existence of free will. The universe that Milton has created is one where the actions of individuals is never foreordained and one in which absolute obedience to God is the only path through which any good can ever u come to the individual. There is also never an instance where what God asks is even in modest proportion compared to what he gives. At the same time though, Milton makes absolutely clear that obedience to God does not protect either his dutiful from horrors. One need only remember the nightmare of Eve at the beginning of Book V, or the awful description by Raphael of the hollowing that he hears coming from Hell when he is dispatched there during creation. But God never exposes his creations to truly painful tests of their loyalty, not by any standard that fallen humankind. Paradise is perfectly sufficient for Adam and Eve in the state they are in just prior to their fall. Neither one truly aspires towards bettering themselves in a way that would increase their happiness and still maintain their total obedience to God. They proved insufficient to remain in Paradise, but Paradise may have proved insufficient for the beings they were to become had they not fallen.

Raphael conjectures when he meets Adam and Eve in Book V, that mankind may one day transubstantiate into a more spiritual being that will be able to cross the boundary between Paradise and Heaven.(493-503) He is not given any information by God save the fact that Satan is hanging around Paradise, so it is purely conjecture to assume that this is possibility. The same is also true of the conjectures that Michael makes about the once possible future of unfallen mankind in Book XI; the progeny of mankind would spread out of Paradise and into the world at large. Eden would have proved not large enough to hold all of mankind. I do not believe though that this is a reflection upon quality of Eden, but one upon its physical size. There is also no reason to believe that the progeny of Adam and Eve would have been just like them. They may very well have been designed to exist in a state closer to our own. Milton's God is the definition of infinite variety and it is impossible to quantify what he would have done if...

Ultimately in Paradise Lost questions of suffiency are nearly moot. Milton's initial purpose in the poem "to justify the ways of God to man," shows this better than anything else. God asks so little, but the stakes are so high for the fate of mankind that it becomes horrible to see just what happens. Since God is infinitely complicated just as he is infinitely powerful. It seems to me that Milton came to the conclusion that God could not be justified, let alone by human standards. God gives all and asks nearly nothing. When he is disobeyed, no one of his creations has the right to question the actions he takes. Through his ability to show just how simple the arrangement with God initially was, he shows how futile it is to try to justify anything he does prior to the fall.

I ordered it. It said it would come in 1-2 weeks, but came in 2 days. Amazing.

I didn't like it too well the first time I read this for a Milton class I took in school. But after reading it and exploring it a second time, I discovered that I am in love with it. The margins of my copy are so full you can barely read any of the actual poem. I am currently reading "Paradise Regained," which is also brilliant.

I had to read this book for a class. I love to read, but I never would have finished this without an instructor to guide me through it and classmates to discuss it with. But....I LOVED IT! It was great! If I'd tried to read it on my own, I wouldn't have made it through one sentence, but since I had assistance (someone to help me understand the references and the time period it was written in) I found reading it an absolute pleasure. I am SO glad I read this book/immense poem. Just don't try to do it alone!!! (Ditto with Divine Comedy which is also supremely excellent but impossible to grasp by one's self). You gotta read this, but do it in a group. Guess I've said enough!!!

I just finished the Penguin paperback version of this book with the foreward by John Leonard. Of course the Poem itself is wonderful, magnificent, and all that.

But I really wanted to say that the introduction by John Leonard is marvelous, as are all of the footnotes. I bought the Cliff's Notes, and yes, they added to my enjoyment of the work, but really, I personally enjoyed the Introduction more than the Cliffs' notes.