Der englische Dichter John Milton schuf Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts mit seinem Versepos »Das verlorene Paradies« eines der bedeutendsten Werke der europäischen Literatur. In für die damalige Zeit untypischen Blankversen erzählt es von den wiederholten Versuchen Satans, Gott seine Macht zu entreißen. Als Satan in Schlangengestalt ins Paradies eindringt und den Sündenfall Adams und Evas provoziert, ist der Garten Eden schließlich verloren. Miltons kunstvolle Komposition von »Paradise Lost« blieb lange Zeit Wegweiser für die englische Literatur.
Composed after the collapse of his political hopes, Milton's great poems Paradise Lost , Paradise Regained , and Samson Agonistes are an effort to understand what it means to be a poet on the threshold of a post-theological world. The argument of Delirious Milton , inspired in part by the architectural theorist Rem Koolhaas's Delirious New York , is that Milton's creative power is drawn from a rift at the center of his consciousness over the question of creation itself. This rift forces the poet to oscillate deliriously between two incompatible perspectives, at once affirming and denying the presence of spirit in what he creates. From one perspective the act of creation is centered in God and the purpose of art is to imitate and praise the Creator. From the other perspective the act of creation is centered in the human, in the built environment of the modern world. The oscillation itself, continually affirming and negating the presence of spirit, of a force beyond the human, is what Gordon Teskey means by delirium. He concludes that the modern artist, far from being characterized by what Benjamin (after Baudelaire) called "loss of the aura," is invested, as never before, with a shamanistic spiritual power that is mediated through art.
This Norton Critical Edition is designed to make Paradise Lost accessible for student readers, providing invaluable contextual and biographical information and the tools students need to think critically about this landmark epic.
