Author Description

The sensitive delicacy of the style of Paradise Lost is not as universally acknowledged as its sublimity. This book shows how Milton's Grand Style creates what Bagehot called a 'haunting atmosphere of enhancing suggestions'. There was subtlety as well as strength in Milton's control of word-order, word-play, metaphor, simile, and allusion. Certainly Milton's earliest editors were as aware of his delicacy as of his grandeur, and this book draws on their fine criticism for both stimulus and warrant.