Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost, 2nd Edition

Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost, 2nd Edition by Fish, Stanley. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780674857476.

In 1967 the world of Milton studies was divided into two armed camps: one proclaiming (in the tradition of Blake and Shelley) that Milton was of the devils party with or without knowing it, the other proclaiming (in the tradition of Addison and C. S. Lewis) that the poets sympathies are obviously with God and the angels loyal to him. The achievement of Stanley Fishs Surprised by Sin was to reconcile the two camps by subsuming their claims in a single overarching thesis: Paradise Lost is a poem about how its readers came to be the way they are--that is, fallen--and the poems lesson is proven on a readers impulse every time he or she finds a devilish action attractive or a godly action dismaying. Fishs argument reshaped the face of Milton studies; thirty years later the issues raised in Surprised by Sin continue to set the agenda and drive debate.