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A PREFACE TO PARADISE LOST A PREFACE TO PARADISE LOST by C. S. LEWIS

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON OXFORD NEW YORK

First published by Oxford University Press, London, 1942 First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1961 This reprint, 1969

I'RINTED IN THJ UNITED STATJ5 OF AMERICA

DEDICATION

To CHARLES WILLIAMS

DEAR w JLLIAMS,

When I remember what kindness I received and what pleasure I had in delivering these lectures in the strange and beautiful hillside College at Bangor, I fe el almost ungrateful to my Welsh hosts in ofering this book not to them, but to you. Yet I cannot do otherwise. To think of my own lecture is to think of those other lectures at Oxford in which you partly anticipated, partly confrmed, and most of all clarifed and matured, what I had long been thinking about Milton. The scene was, in a way, medieval, and may prove to have been historic. You were a vagu thrown among us by the chance of war. The appropriate beauties of the Divinity School pro­ vided your bac'cground. There we elders heard (among other things) what he had long despaired of hearing-a lecture on Comu which placed its importance where the poet placed it­ and watched 'the yonge fr esshc fo lkes, he or she', who filled the benches listening frst with incredulity, then with tolera­ tion, and fnally with delight, to something so strange and new in their experience a the praise of chastity. Reviewers, who have not had time to re-read Milton, have fa iled fo r the most part to digest your criticism of him ; but it is a reasonable hope that of those who heard you in Oxford many will understand henceforward that when the old poets made some virtue their theme they were not teaching but adoring, and that what we take fo r the didactic is often the enchanted. It gives me a sense of security to remember that, fa r from loving your work because you are my fr iend, I frst sought your fri endship because I loved your books. But fo r that, I should fnd it difcult to believe that your short Preae 1 to Milton is what it seems to me to be-the recovery of a true critical tradition

1 T Po etial Wo rk o Milton. The World's Clasic, 1940. after more than a hundred years of laborious misunderstand­ ing. The ease with which the thing was done would have seemed inconsistent with the weight that had to be lifted. As things are, I fe el entitled to trust my own eyes. Apparently, �he door of the prison was really unlocked all the time ; but it was only you who thought of trying the handle. Now we can all come out.

Yours,

c. s. LEWIS

CONTENTS

Dedication.

Epic Poetry.

II Is Criticism Possible ? 9

III Primary Epic. I3

IV The Technique of Primary Epic. 20

v The Subject of Primary Epic. 27

VI Virgil and the Subject of Secondary Epic. 33 VII The Style of Secondary Epic.

VIII Defence of this Style. 5 2

I The Doctrine of the Unchanging Human Heart. 62 X Milton and St. Augustine. 66

XI Hierarchy. 73

XII The Theology of Paradise Lost. 82

XIII Satan. 94

XIV Satan's Followers. I04

XV The Mistake about Milton's Angels. 108 XVI Adam and Eve. II6