Approaches to Paradise Lost

This volume gathers together the papers given at a conference at University of Western Ontario in honour of the Tercentenary of Paradise Lost. The contributors, all eminent Milton scholars of international reputation, include Roy Daniells, Northrop Frye, Hugh MacCallum, Arthur E. Barker, and Balachandra Rajan. Their essays here provide a coherent and masterly study of one of the land marks of English literature.

The series of lectures were delivered at the University of York in 1966 and 1967 to make the occasion of the three hundredth anniversary of Paradise Lost (1667). There is one addition of the series – Mr. J.B. Trapp’s contribution containing twenty-eight illustrations which comprise one of the largest collections of iconography of the Fall of Man. All the lectures are published in the order they were delivered; this order was not premeditated and neither was the nature of the series. The lecturers were simply invited to speak on Paradise Lost: the particular approach was subject only to their interests. The variety is wide, ranging from literary and doctrinal aspects of the work to its musical and iconographic extensions.

The initial aim has been achieved. As the editor states, This tribute to Milton is a joint Anglo-American enterprise, in keeping with our ever-increasing awareness that our study of Paradise Lost (as all of great literature) is advanced most when we expose ourselves to one and another’s’ insights.