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1. Back to the Future: Paradise Lost 1667
- Duquesne University Press
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1 Back to the Future Paradise Lost 1667 MICHAEL LIEB I When Milton declared in the 1667 edition of his ten-book epic Paradise Lost that his muse Urania would “fit audience find, though few” (7.31), little did he surmise how true that statement would prove to be for future generations of Miltonists who neither know nor care about the version in which Milton’s “diffuse epic” first appeared.1 Even those who do profess to care, however, are not necessarily the most knowledgeable in their treatment of first editions. Witness the legendary filmmaker Frank Capra, who considered himself a most savvy book collector. In his autobiography The Name above the Title (1971), Capra observes rather smugly that such collectors are a “tight-knit, snooty lot.” They consider themselves superior to the simple book lover because they make a point of delving into the history of books. The best way to become “privy to the author himself,” Capra maintains, “is to collect his first editions.” Doing so, “one often opens the dossier on the writer: his botched beginnings, shattered hopes, dark dreams, frustrations, endurances; what drove him to write the book; what made the book a collector’s item.” To illustrate his point, Capra singles out the first edition of Paradise Lost: You probably have read Milton’s Paradise Lost, and loved it. But wouldn’t you love it more if you knew that the first edition of this 1 2 Michael Lieb classic—with the title page reading Paradise Lost by JOHN MILTON —was a complete failure? And that when the disgruntled publisher grudgingly printed a second edition, he lower-cased the author’s name to John Milton? And that when the second edition moved as slowly as the first, the name on the third edition was further diminished to J. Milton—and to just J. M. on the fourth edition? But then the book began to sell. On the fifth edition the initials expanded back to John Milton, and by the sixth printing the author’s name was restored to the upper-case glory of the first edition: JOHN MILTON. If you yawn, and ask why that bit of trivia should make you love Paradise Lost more than you do now—that’s what makes us book collectors so snooty— nobody understands us.2 Capra might be a great filmmaker, but one has doubts about his knowledge of the first edition of Paradise Lost. Yet one admires Capra nonetheless for at least aspiring to come to terms with Milton’s epic in its original incarnation. However fit Milton’s audience might claim to be, those who have taken the trouble to read his diffuse epic as it was first published are few indeed. Judging by the lack of attention bestowed upon the 1667 edition of Paradise Lost in the centuries since its publication, one would hardly know that it had existed at all, despite (or perhaps as the result of) the industry that has grown up around the second edition of 1674. To come upon Paradise Lost in its “original” form, then, is rather like encountering a “new” epic, one we were aware existed all these years but never thought necessary to read, let alone discuss. In the traditions of canon formation so essential to the emergence of Milton’s reputation as a poet among poets, it is the later edition (along with its heirs) that is commonly (and quite understandably) conceived as the fulfillment of all his longstanding aspirations, as expressed in The Reason of Church-Government, to “leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die” (YP 1:810). The result is that the epic of 1674 is canonized as the consummate expression of Milton’s poetic oeuvre, whereas the version published some seven years earlier gets left out in the cold, if not entirely marginalized . One might almost be inclined to designate the epic of 1667 as nothing more than a “supplement” to the Miltonic canon or, better yet, an “apocryphon” in the sense not so much of that which is [52.55.55.239] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:23 GMT) Back to the Future: Paradise Lost 1667 3 deemed to be “spurious” as of that which is “secret” or “hidden away.” Name it what we will, this work haunts us by its presence, one that calls out for renewed recognition and interpretation. In response to that call, I propose not to dismiss the second edition outright...