Milton

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i cannot get thru paradise lost which is required reading , i hate it . It seems boring and middle class and protestant . Tell me i am wrong , tell me why i should read it . Am i making a mistake in comparing it to the best book every written (ie The Divine Commedy)

anthony, Tuesday, 18 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Nothing aside from Shakespeare can compare to Dante, but PARADISE LOST = fantastic. Try reading Satan's speeches. Or Eve's gorgeous love poetry to Adam. Fabulous stuff, maaan...

Kodanshi, Tuesday, 18 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The best kitchen disinfectant evah!

Pete, Tuesday, 18 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

calling it Protestant is a bit like calling grass green or the sky blue, anthony!

katie, Tuesday, 18 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

though seriously, Satan is brilliant and the whole thing about God, Reason and Freedom of Choice is excellent - try reading it in relation to the Areopagitica, Milton's speech to Parliament about the freedom of the press. there are some really interesting parallels.

katie, Tuesday, 18 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

but there seems to be v. little subversive eroticism in adam and eves love and Satan seems to be a corrupt memeber of the politborrugh.

anthony, Tuesday, 18 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i like it: like lord of the ringZoR w/o the twee bits

mark s, Tuesday, 18 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

LOTR is nothing but twee bits , its an orgy of twee , a twee explosion, this middle earth cuteness that makes me want to vomit , okay back to milton.

anthony, Tuesday, 18 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I like the fights in it. Michael kicking butt cherubically. Angels are hard fuckers

Will, Tuesday, 18 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Michael vs. Lucifer - FITE!!

katie, Tuesday, 18 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

obv narnia bettah than milton *or* LoTR because of powerful anti-Xtian propaganda element

mark s, Tuesday, 18 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Stanley Fish's Milton vs Christopher Hill's Milton: FITE!

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.

Edna Welthorpe, Mrs, Tuesday, 18 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I read a chapter every day before breakfast. That's 'read' past tense. I don't suppose much of it sunk in, but I did read it.

Peter Miller, Tuesday, 18 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I have a feeling Anthony would much more appreciate reading some top shelf Mills & Boon Seduction stories than Paradise Lost. Me too, probably!!! Then again I also have a copy of Paradise Lost languishing on a book shelf which I haven't got around to reading. So nur. Perhaps I will try reading a chapter every day before breakfast. But I don't eat breakfast. But hold on, why is a "middle class" book a bad thing?

Sarah, Tuesday, 18 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yes, and why is "protestant" a bad thing?

Sam, Tuesday, 18 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I had the privilege of studying Milton in college under a great scholar, R.A. Shoaf. He wrote a slightly controversial book called "Milton: Poet of Duality," in which he argued that Milton takes great pains to illustrate Satan's corruption of humanity specifically in the language Adam and Eve use.

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.

Chris, Tuesday, 18 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i have not read Milton, but i have been to milton.

di, Tuesday, 18 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

twenty-one years pass...

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."

xyzzzz__, Monday, 16 January 2023 20:10 (two years ago)

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

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

mark s, Monday, 16 January 2023 20:18 (two years ago)

John Milton 🤝 Jerry Lee Lewis

xyzzzz__, Monday, 16 January 2023 21:45 (two years ago)

six months pass...

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

xyzzzz__, Friday, 28 July 2023 12:46 (two years ago)

Milton rules.

the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 28 July 2023 12:58 (two years ago)

Eyeless in Gaza

Moritz von Oswald von Wolkenstein (Boring, Maryland), Friday, 28 July 2023 13:02 (two years ago)


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