Milton

Yes, to call PL "boring, middle class and protestant" seems to miss the point a bit. In many ways it defined all those qualities for English lit. The comparison with DC is useful: it shows the difficulties Protestants face writing epic literature: they don't have access to that splendid visual mythic imagination. Another good comparison is Blake who tried to invent his own splendid visual etc etc, and went a bit bonkers as a result.

To do so, Milton employed puns! Not in the "good one!" sense, but rather as devices that could signify multiple things at the same time. For instance, in Book IX, where Eve first tastes the forbidden fruit:

"Forsake me not thus, Adam, witness heaven What love sincere, and reverence in my heart I bear thee, and unweeting have offended, Unhappily decEiVEd; thy suppliant I beg, and clasp thy knees; bereave me not, Whereon I live, thy gentle looks ... "

Shoaf goes on to argue that Eve is literally dis-Eve'd by Lucifer. Made unlike herself, undone. and to ensure that he doesn't appear like a niche scholar, opportunistically finding a few choice occurrences and building a book around them, he includes all of these ratio charts with evidence of how the puns increase dramatically in freqency in the last few books, after mankind's 'Fall' .. (http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/rashoaf/duality/front/toc.htm )

so, for that reason alone, you should read it! errr, if not, just because the more you -do- read it, the more you become accustomed to the strange meter. Once you can follow it, the twists and turns of his writing can be really involving ... though, god, shoot me if I ever have to try to read Aeropagitica again.

https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/suspended-hell/

"For many of us, for those of us who find the “us” of Twitter a meaningful if partial collective identity, Twitter is what we’ve done while waiting for whatever this is—the academic jobs crisis, Covid, capitalism, the world—to end, even if there’s no end to be found."

Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.

— John Milton | | English Poet & Intellectual (@JohnMiltonnnn) January 16, 2023

John Milton 🤝 Jerry Lee Lewis

Katie is v good on Milton (she must be one of the few ppl who love him more than Shakespeare, which is my impression)

i love how milton has a character rhapsodize for 50 unhinged lines about the magical power of chastity to defeat goblins and at the end his brother is just like “how charming!” philosophy twitter could learn something from this pic.twitter.com/ox6CrbOLQ9

— katie kadue (@kukukadoo) July 24, 2023

Milton rules.

Eyeless in Gaza