ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book talks about the relationship between Paradise Lost and Romantic literature. It focuses on the different responses characteristic to different forms and genres. The book presents the moral and aesthetic issues in reading Paradise Lost. It considers the small and large-scale theological errors of a character like Samson – and more importantly Satan and Adam in Paradise Lost – as akin to Romantic piecemeal readings of the poem. The book also focuses on to the issue of Milton's movements between the aesthetic and the moral at various stages during the discussion of the six major Romantic writers. The Romantic Fragment Poem places expectations on the reader that problematise reception acts. The book discusses many varieties of allusive practice and intertextuality. Classical scholars have actually read Paradise Lost as a fragmented text because it underwent a process of piecemeal creation.
