John Milton's Paradise Lost In Plain English: A Simple, Line By Line Paraphrase Of The Complicated Masterpiece Paperback – March 10, 2009

Happy I got to read this great book in literal plain english. Easy to follow and a great read! It was also more engaging than i thought it would be.

This book stands alone. It is the most brilliant work of literature that could be. I recommend this book to EVERYONE EVERYWHERE.

I read bits and pieces of Milton's masterpiece almost a decade ago, with many questions. This translations answered most of them.My only (major) complaint is that the usual annotations explaining biblical/English Renaissance period references should have been next to the translations, since this entire book is a side-by-side of the original text and explanations.

I loved the simple translation! It is an easy read and perfectly clear to understand. This is perfect if you have to get a specific reading assignment done fast. I also loved the line numbers because then I could go back to my original copy and annotate that exact line. It is great to use when reading along with the original. It was soooooo helpful and I got my reading done SO much faster! (:

Milton was a college reading assignment. Yes, he is poetic and paints great visual pictures, but he rambles. His Paradise Lost could have been cut in half and been just as brilliant and maybe less confusing.Now it is in Plain English. Thank god. You will get to read side-by-side the whole damn thing and note how a paragraph of Milton can be reduced to one sentence without losing the meaning.Milton's most famous line, which still haunts Christians to this day is when Satan says, after he and his beautiful Arch Angels have been cast into Hell -- "At least here, we shall be free." Heaven is not that glorious.By the way, God is not painted in a very wonderful light. He tends to be a not so magnificent, not so all-knowing, all-loving. He tends to be somewhat of a narcissistic, ego-maniacal jerk, who demands love and obedience -- even when he doesn't deserve it. Milton's Satan viewed him as a tyrant.Something to think about.

Loved every minute of reading this incredible book! Everyone would be better for reading this. My next read will be paradise regained.

This book saved my GPA. Here's the thing: I HATE Milton. I can't get through 20 lines without wanting to chuck the book out the window, let alone all 12 books of Paradise Lost. But I'm getting an MA in English and I had to take the class, so this book saved my grade and maybe even more than that, considering Milton makes me want to walk into oncoming traffic.The "translation" is absolutely awful from an aesthetic, literary perspective, though. There were some passages that made me laugh out loud, and believe me, Paradise Lost is not meant to be a comedy. True, the translation is meant to be read side by side with the original text, but I did not have time for that--I just needed to get the gist and move on with my life. Still, I was able to write a 25 page paper on Paradise Lost having only read this translation. I simply highlighted passages that were relevant to my argument, and then consulted the original text by matching up the line numbers so I could quote. Piece of cake.If you're looking for an aesthetic experience, you can do better. But if you just need to get the job done--if Milton is being forced upon you and you'd rather claw out your own eyeballs than read him--this will work just fine.

When Paradise Lost was written, back in the 1670's, it was the beginning of early modern English and in our day and age it gets a little "heady" to try to read through it. So this version with the simplified current English side by side the original verses is a great was of displaying what was meant to be conveyed.