The Acrostic Paradise Lost by John Milton and Terrance Lindall

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woven tapestries of illustrations which capture poignant moments in Milton’s powerful
epic.
Lindall’s art speaks to us freely, openly, and sometimes loudly; it does so in
magnificence of design and depth of vision; it sometimes uses brilliant, other times subtle,
colors to heighten key elements in important scenes.
Such is the case in “The Infernal Serpent,” chosen as the central illustration in the recent
publication of the important Modern Library Edition of The Complete Poetry And
Essential Prose of John Milton (2007). “Lindall's image appears on the covers of
Random House’s 2008 Essential Milton (2007)” as well.
For William Kerrigan, renowned Milton scholar and one of the editors of the these
editions, “the new cover is WONDERFUL. . . .The black/white division captures the
dividing of light from dark at the beginning of Creation, which underlies the entire
universe (just as it underlies the entire cover) as Milton understood it and, through his
blindness, experienced it. Lindall’s image is, of course, the star. It seems to me at once
unmistakably modern and yet just as unmistakably archaic: exactly the doubleness I was
hoping for on our cover.”
Holt Rinehart & Winston used another of Lindall’s illustrations of Paradise Lost in a
2009 high school textbook, which was purported to have a first run of 370,000.
Professor Karen Karbiener of New York University, one of the first to use Lindall's art as
an educational tool to interest students in Paradise Lost, says, “Radical artist and
nonconformist Terrance Lindall has channeled Milton's spirit into a modern context, in a
provocative series of illustrations to Paradise Lost. His visual celebration of Milton
reveals his remarkable affinity for the radical English poet, and his ability to create a
fitting tribute to Milton's enduring influence in the arts” (June 2007).
Terrance Lindall’s artistic accomplishments as illustrator of Paradise Lost, along with his
burning desire as foremost Milton afficianado of our or perhaps any day, is second to
none in his great enthusiasm for the poet and his lifelong goal of bringing Milton alive in
vibrant and new ways to generations for many of whom the classics and the liberal arts
and Milton himself have been passed over as no longer “relevant,” useful, or important.
Lindall has had the dual task of bringing to life key scenes and moments in the greatest
English epic and one of the greatest epics ever written to whole generations who not only
have never read Paradise Lost, but haven’t cared about it or about epics, unless that
means “epic” as in “epic dimension” and “epic colossal” on the big screen: Thor & Iron
Man, for example. Unlike illustrators before him, Lindall has had to work against
tremendously difficult odds, but that has only meant that he has worked harder to win
over his audience, to bring his illustrations of Paradise Lost to generations used to the
visual and the dramatic and the “epic” in the broadest sense of each of these terms.