Acrostics in Milton’s poem have fascinated scholars, and I thought I might like to write another synopsized version of Paradise Lost in acrostic form that actually tells the story briefly. The idea was suggested by John Geraghty, a prominent collector of Milton books, art and ephemera. I am just beginning the project that I hope I can present it during National Poetry Month next year. I will also present two first edition illustrated books of William Blake, plus many other remarkable illustrated books. I do attempt things with Paradise Lost never done before. One was synopsizing it and then popularizing it in Heavy Metal Magazine. The synopsized book was on display in B. Dalton’s store window on 5th Avenue in mid- Manhattan and sold out. Another was the Gold Folio, and another was the Gold Scroll that reads like a Torah scroll (p.65). Then there was the Paradise Lost Costume ball in 2008 that got a major article in the New York Times. All were successful. We also have a major collection of Paradise Lost related materials, including first illustrated editions, an Elkington Shield that won a world fair award, etc. These will be on display when I produce the show related to the acrostic.

The Commentary, the first full version on Paradise Lost since the Richardsons' in 1734, combines numerous resources with features used for the first time. It includes the best commentary from Annotations like Patrick Hume's (1695), to the variorum editions of Newton (1749) and Todd (1801-42), and the modern professional editions culminating in Alastair Fowler's (1968). Other elements include an essay on the early pre-annotative criticism from 1668, including Marvell, Dryden, Dennis, and others; copious use of the OED; numerous cross-references to Milton's other works and passages in Paradise Lost; fourteen excurses and other contributions by the present editors. This Commentary is itself a research library for Paradise Lost. It uniquely presents biblical, classical, and vernacular citations: the ultimate rather than a more recent source is cited, so dating the comment; every cited passage is quoted, and every question is in English. Only a text of the poem is required. Earl Miner is Townsend Martin, Class of 1917, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Princeton University, William Moeck teaches English at Nassau Community College. Steven Jablonski is a public librari

In this first-ever anthology, more than 80 acrostics show the versatility of a storied poetic form that dates back to ancient times. Includes Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Edgar Allan Poe, and others.

Remembered Words is a selection of Alastair Fowler's essays on genre, realism, and the emblem (three interrelated subjects), published over six decades. It offers readers a way to arrive at a sense of how approaches to these subjects have changed over that period. Specifically, it shows how genre has come to be understood in terms of family resemblance theory. Remembered Words argues that realism can be seen as altering historically, so that Renaissance realism, for example, differs from those of later periods. Similar changes are traced in the emblem, which Fowler shows to be not only a particular genre, but an element of various kinds of realism. Famous passages in ancient literature are remembered in the familiar emblems of the Renaissance; and Renaissance emblems form the basis of metaphors in later literature. Meanwhile, the general approach of the critic and the reader has been altering over the years—as becomes evident when one takes into account the time-scale of sixty years (an unusually long working life for a critic). Modern theoretical approaches—which are often casually regarded as self-evident—may appear less inevitable and more arbitrary. This is not to say that they are necessarily wrong, just that they need to be argued for. Remembered Words is intended for senior undergraduates and for graduate students, who may use it to form ideas of Fowler's approach and that of his contemporaries and predecessors over the last half century.

This book reveals the ways in which seventeenth-century poets used models of vision taken from philosophy, theology, scientific optics, political polemic and the visual arts to scrutinize the nature of individual perceptions and to examine poetry’s own relation to truth. Drawing on archival research, Poetry and Vision in Early Modern England brings together an innovative selection of texts and images to construct a new interdisciplinary context for interpreting the poetry of Cavendish, Traherne, Marvell and Milton. Each chapter presents a reappraisal of vision in the work of one of these authors, and these case studies also combine to offer a broader consideration of the ways that conceptions of seeing were used in poetry to explore the relations between the ‘inward’ life of the viewer and the ‘outward’ reality that lies beyond; terms that are shown to have been closely linked, through ideas about sight, with the emergence of the fundamental modern categories of the ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’. This book will be of interest to literary scholars, art historians and historians of science.

Edited by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon John Milton’s Paradise Lost, an epic poem on the clash between God and his fallen angel, Satan, is a profound meditation on fate, free will, and divinity, and one of the most beautiful works in world literature. Extracted from the Modern Library’s highly acclaimed The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, this edition reflects up-to-date scholarship and includes a substantial Introduction, fresh commentary, and other features—annotations on Milton’s classical allusions, a chronology of the writer’s life, clean page layouts, and an index—that make it the definitive twenty-first-century presentation of John Milton’s timeless signature work.

Why do authors use pseudonyms and pen-names, or ingeniously hide names in their work with acrostics and anagrams? How has the range of permissible given names changed and how is this reflected in literature? Why do some characters remain mysteriously nameless? In this rich and learned book, Alastair Fowler explores the use of names in literature of all periods - primarily English but also Latin, Greek, French, and Italian - casting an unusual and rewarding light on the work of literature itself. He traces the history of names through Homer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Thackeray, Dickens, Joyce, and Nabokov, showing how names often turn out to be the thematic focus. Fowler shows that the associations of names, at first limited, become increasingly salient and sophisticated as literature itself develops.

As the twelve original essays collected in this volume demonstrate, to study the wit of seventeenth-century poetry is necessarily to address concerns at the very heart of the period's shifting literary culture. It is a topic that raises persistent questions of thematics and authorial intent, even as it interrogates a wide spectrum of cultural practices. These essays by some of the most renowned scholars in seventeenth-century studies illuminate important authors and engage issues of politics and religion, of secular and sacred love, of literary theory and poetic technique, of gender relations and historical consciousness, of literary history and social change, as well as larger concerns of literary production and smaller ones of local effects. Collectively, they illustrate the vitality of the topic, both in its own right and as a means of understanding the complexity and range of seventeenth-century English poetry.

Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (348-ca. 406) is one of the great Christian Latin writers of late antiquity. Born in northeastern Spain during an era of momentous change for both the Empire and the Christian religion, he was well educated, well connected, and a successful member of the late Roman elite, a man fully engaged with the politics and culture of his times. Prudentius wrote poetry that was deeply influenced by classical writers and in the process he revived the ethical, historical, and political functions of poetry. This aspect of his work was especially valued in the Middle Ages by Christian writers who found themselves similarly drawn to the Classical tradition. Prudentius's Hamartigenia, consisting of a 63-line preface followed by 966 lines of dactylic hexameter verse, considers the origin of sin in the universe and its consequences, culminating with a vision of judgment day: the damned are condemned to torture, worms, and flames, while the saved return to a heaven filled with delights, one of which is the pleasure of watching the torments of the damned. As Martha A. Malamud shows in the interpretive essay that accompanies her lapidary translation, the first new English translation in more than forty years, Hamartigenia is critical for understanding late antique ideas about sin, justice, gender, violence, and the afterlife. Its radical exploration of and experimentation with language have inspired generations of thinkers and poets since-most notably John Milton, whose Paradise Lost owes much of its conception of language and its strikingly visual imagery to Prudentius's poem.

Milton's Paradise Lost is one of the great works of literature, of any time and in any language. Marked by Milton's characteristic erudition it is a work epic both in scale and, notoriously, in ambition. For nearly 350 years it has held generation upon generation of scholars, students and readers in rapt attention and its profound influence can be seen in almost every corner of Western culture. First published in 1968, with John Carey's Complete Shorter Poems, Alastair Fowler's Paradise Lost is widely acknowledged to be the most authoritative edition of this compelling work. An unprecedented amount of detailed annotation accompanies the full text of the first (1667) edition, providing a wealth of contextual information to enrich and enhance the reader's experience. Notes on composition and context are combined with a clear explication of the multitude allusions Milton called to the poem's aid. The notes also summarise and illuminate the vast body of critical attention the poem has attracted, synthesizing the ancient and the modern to provide a comprehensive account both of the poem's development and its reception. Meanwhile, Alastair Fowler's invigorating introduction surveys the whole poem and looks in detail at such matters as Milton's theology, metrical structure and, most valuably, his complex and imaginary astronomy. The result is an enduring landmark in the field of Milton scholarship and an invaluable guide for readers of all levels.