Milton's Grand Style

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. Book jacket.