 First edition | |
| Author | C.S. Lewis |
|---|---|
| Language | English language |
| Genre | Preface, Literary criticism |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Publication date | 1942 |
| Publication place | England |
A Preface to Paradise Lost is one of C. S. Lewis's most famous scholarly works.[1] The book had its genesis in Lewis's Ballard Matthews Lectures,[2] which he delivered at the University College of North Wales in 1941.[2] It discusses the epic poem Paradise Lost, by John Milton.[3]
Lewis's work responds to Denis Saurat's work Milton: Man and Thinker, which had celebrated "Milton the man, as well as the centrality of the 'personal' (Milton's heresies), to an understanding of the epic".[4] Lewis disagrees with this point of view:
Lewis dismisses what he calls Milton's "private thoughts," "idiosyncratic and accidental as they are," as well as the "heresies" that "reduce themselves to something very small". Lewis's Paradise Lost rather is defined as "Augustinian and Hierarchical," and also, as he writes with a slight nudge and a wink, "Catholic" (although he does immediately acknowledge that he's using the term, in its ordinary sense, to mean "universal," not "Roman Catholic").[4]
- ^ It is still regarded as influential: see Dominic Head, ed. The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, 3rd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 646.
- ^ a b Lambdin, Laura (2007). Arthurian Writers: A Biographical Encyclopedia (1 ed.). Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood. pp. 255, 261. ISBN 978-0313346828.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
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