Paradise Lost by Joseph Lanzara, Gustave Dore (Illustrator)

Product Details

Inklings

Long before he began writing Paradise Lost, John Milton was possessed with a literary passion. In The Reason of Church-Government (1642), he wrote that he desired to "perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die." Milton got his wish. Readers have both praised and debated Paradise Lost since its completion in 1663. Some have deplored it as a poetic travesty. Others have questioned the presumption of deflating God to a poetic--and inflating Satan to an epic--hero. Still others have hailed it as a masterpiece of art and truth fused "to justify the ways of God to men." Joseph Lanzara found himself in yet another camp--that of being enamored with the epic yet frustrated by its labyrinth of language. This author not only didn't let Paradise Lost die, he gave it new linguistic life. In Paradise Lost, The Novel, Lanzara has smoothed the convoluted epic lines into twentieth century prose. But Milton buffs should beware: Lanzara's work is not a Reader's Digest version of the epic. It is--as its title implies--a novel, with a beginning, a middle and an end. The elaborate epic similes have been stripped and the sequence of events rearranged to suit the novel format. For example, Lanzara extracted explanatory flashbacks that appear near the end of the epic and inserted them as chapters at the beginning of the book. This way we learn early on of Satan's revolt and the battle in heaven that lay the groundwork for creation, man and his ensuing fall. Despite the new genre, Lanzara's book is anything but vanilla narrative. His writing has an invisible poetic quality, an elevation of language that honors the original. Paradise Lost, The Novel just might further divide readers into two camps. Epic purists could consider it a mockery of something they see as sacrosanct as holy writ. Modern readers, however, may welcome it as a way to dip a toe into classical literature without getting wet. (Inklings, Fall 1995)