Guidebook to Paradise Lost

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

"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

• PrefaceAcknowledgementsMilton and his England: The Historical and Biographical Context of Paradise LostReligious MythologyEpic VoyageRedemption and Free WillParadise PerturbedWilful TransgressionWar in HeavenGenesisDivine Love and Love DivineWiles and WilfulnessCrime and PunishmentLoss of ParadiseBanishment and HopeFurther Activities and Reading.