Milton in today's literature

[Dan_The_Man]

Well I as it turns out I purchased The Riverside Milton. A great investment I'd say, nowt hat I've babbled in it over and over-hardly recognizable.

As I'm studying his greater works, I have to ask, why is he so unknown? He presents very valid arguments in his Areopagitica and L'Allegro vs. Il Penseroso are very common contrasts that apply to many literary aspects. Not to mention Paradise Lost and the obvious reference to reclaiming Eden.

Anyone have any valid ideas as to why John Milton isn't so well known?

[Kent Edwins]

I don't think Milton is really any more less known than Dante and a lot of the other great poets. He seems pretty established as a legend to me, both in terms of academic recognition and survival in popular culture.

But, to answer your question, maybe it doesn't seem that way because they haven't made a movie?

[aeroport]

Anyone have any valid ideas as to why John Milton isn't so well known?
At the beginning of my Milton class, the prof was saying that Milton was doing just fine until the modernists came along. Pound and Eliot seemed to think Milton wasn't necessary (they seemed to favor the transcendental poets (contemporaneous with Milton) who achieved "unification of sensibility", or something like that) and so, rather frighteningly, the opinions of these two guys seem to have basically wiped Milton out.
As I search for something a little more specific, however, this is all I can find - from Wiki:


The Victorian age witnessed a continuation of Milton's influence; George Eliot[17] and Thomas Hardy being particularly inspired by Milton's poetry and biography. By contrast, the early 20th century, owing to the critical efforts of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, witnessed a reduction in Milton's stature.

[ballb]

Milton unknown???????? You`re living on the wrong side of the pond my friend. He is one of the greatest writers in English literature. He wrote sublimely in English, Latin & Italian. I would recommend that you read his political essay "Areopagitica", a magnificent protest against censorship and one of the finest political tracts in the English language. If you can get hold of it, also try Christopher Hill`s "Milton & The English Revolution" which places Milton in his historical context. He is not an "easy" writer to get ones head round. But he is well worth the effort. Enjoy.

[Kent Edwins]

This is all I have left to say.

http://symphonyx.com/

[Kafka's Crow]

Milton is still considered among the greatest English poets. Although the modernists, specially Pound attacked Paradise Lost for Milton's philosophy, his "asinine bigotry, his beastly Hebraism, and the coarseness of his mentality" and called Paradise Lost 'a monstrous masterpiece' (or something like that. I hated Pound for many many years for these words, refused to attend classes when Pound was taught till I came across The Cantos in 2000 and boy, was I blown away by them. They stand second only behind (ironically) Paradise Lost in terms of the sheer magnitude of canvas and scope among all the poems written in English language.

[Oomoo]

As Hemingway put it, Pound was right half the time, but when he was wrong, he was so wrong you were never in any doubt about it

[JCamilo]

Pound also liked to say that Virgil was not a good poet, his translators were better than him. Funny guy.
Anyways,
For once, Milton is less know than Dante and his Comedy, but that is pretty much being less popular than Jesus Christ. Dante is pretty much the paragorn of poetic genius, the Comedy of masterwork, even today when people find all set of reasons to downgrade the classics the best they can say is that The Comedy is obscure (which is a merit since Dante wrote it that way) and with long gone historical references (which is blamming Dante for using his time as reference. Ok, seems like more kudos to him). But Milton unknown?
Better reing in Hell than Serve in Heaven idea is , mostly likely, the literary line most well know in the popular world, perhaps only To be or not to be is more well know. The idea of Satan is totally miltonian, with a few adds of Goethe, but the fallen angel is popular because of him.
Now, I have a little teory, that the first person to publish a not favorable critic to Paradise Lost was Milton itself when he wrote Paradise Reigned, so obviously inferior and almost seeming as he was asking sorry to god for making Devil with such talent.
plus, it is irrelevant, Milton's eternity is now a fact, there is no way we could have the romantic movement in england without his influence, so as long you read the romantic poets, Milton will survive.

[AwayAloneAlast]

Milton isn't unknown--any English student will know who he is--but he doesn't enjoy the prominence of times past, at least not in America.

Being perhaps my favourite poet, I am deeply saddened by this, but I suspect it really isn't that new. What's more disturbing is that contemporary poetry has all but lost Milton as a source of influence, instead trending increasingly toward the "confessional" variety that appeals to me not :(

[Abdiel]

I would say that Milton is known to those who love literature (not so much to those who read "popular literature") and that he is not so well known as Shakespeare because he is not taught as often as Shakespeare is, especially in high-school. Milton's works are not easy to read, and his vocabulary and style are dense and complex (in a very wonderful way), whereas, believe it or not, Shakespeare is relatively simple. Shakespeare wrote in a simpler style and his plays were aimed towards the middle-classes.

If you think about it, Shakespeare's plays are required reading in every high-school in the English speaking world (Canada, America, and the UK) and Milton's works are not, which makes Milton less famous. Also, Shakespeare's plays have constantly been made into movies over the decades and this boosts his popularity, whereas Milton's most famous work, Paradise Lost, was almost impossible to film until recently because of limits in computer graphics.

HOWEVER, even though Milton is not as well known as Shakespeare, his influence still pervades, although most people don't recognize it. He has profoundly affected people's reading of the Bible: it's Milton who came up with the idea that the Tree of Knowledge was an apple tree (it's never mentioned in the Bible what kind of tree it is), and how famous is that idea today? Ask anyone what fruit they think the Tree of Knowledge had and they'll answer that it was an apple tree. Also, he played a huge role in the history of the English Civil War, and he's coined words most people are familiar with: Pandemonium, dreary, demean. And I'm sure there's much more we don't know.

As for T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, even though they wrote some great poetry, screw them. T.S. Eliot was an elitist who thought he knew everything: he called Hamlet Shakespeare's worst play, which just shows how astute a critic he is. And no, T.S. Eliot's attack on Milton didn't totally obliterate Milton's fame: this is exaggeration, since it fame has endured.

The point is that we've read Paradise Lost and we can see why it's one of the greatest works of literature ever written, and better than anything T.S. Eliot or Pound could ever hope to write.

[JBI]

Milton is still probably the second most well known poet in English (after Shakespeare, of course). His career didn't even fall that dramatically. I think it is not that people do not know Milton, but that people do not know poetry. Anyone who actually is into, and reads a lot of major English verse (this is to distinguish from the poetry readers who only read cheesy love lyrics) has surely heard of Milton

[bob_hope]

He has profoundly affected people's reading of the Bible: it's Milton who came up with the idea that the Tree of Knowledge was an apple tree (it's never mentioned in the Bible what kind of tree it is), and how famous is that idea today? Ask anyone what fruit they think the Tree of Knowledge had and they'll answer that it was an apple tree.

That's not actually accurate. Apple comes from an Old English word and, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, was a "generic term for all fruit, other than berries but including nuts, as late as 17c., hence its use for the unnamed "fruit of the forbidden tree" in Genesis." http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=apple

[Abdiel]

That's not actually accurate. Apple comes from an Old English word and, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, was a "generic term for all fruit, other than berries but including nuts, as late as 17c., hence its use for the unnamed "fruit of the forbidden tree" in Genesis." http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=apple

Oh I understand that apple was a generic term for a variety of fruit, but that doesn't mean that everyone believed that the Tree of Knowledge bore apples. Sorry, I should have said that Milton popularized (not invented) the idea that the forbidden fruit was indeed an apple. Though the term "apple" was used in Milton's time to imply a variety of fruit, Milton is very specific about what fruit it is. For the specific examples he uses both in PL and PR, see: http://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/2008/06/john-milton-how-do-you-like-them-apples.html

My Milton prof. told the class last year that the Tree of Knowledge was most likely (this is not an absolute certainty) a fig tree. Apples originated from Kazakhstan in Central Asia, and so it's unlikely that Adam and Eve are supposed to have eaten from an apple tree.

[bob_hope]

Oh I understand that apple was a generic term for a variety of fruit, but that doesn't mean that everyone believed that the Tree of Knowledge bore apples. Sorry, I should have said that Milton popularized (not invented) the idea that the forbidden fruit was indeed an apple. Though the term "apple" was used in Milton's time to imply a variety of fruit, Milton is very specific about what fruit it is. For the specific examples he uses both in PL and PR, see: http://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/2008/06/john-milton-how-do-you-like-them-apples.html

My Milton prof. told the class last year that the Tree of Knowledge was most likely (this is not an absolute certainty) a fig tree. Apples originated from Kazakhstan in Central Asia, and so it's unlikely that Adam and Eve are supposed to have eaten from an apple tree.

I guess I'm not clear how Milton using the world apple consistently to refer to "the fruit of that forbidden tree" equates to his being "very specific about what fruit it is." I also didn't see anything at that blog post that made it clear. Sorry, I don't mean to be annoying.

Are you sure the fruit being thought of as an apple isn't just a product of the change of the meaning of the word "apple" combined with the persistence of the word in religious documents?

Also, if Milton meant by "apple" what we mean by it today, doesn't it seem odd to think of Eve breaking off an entire bough to bring some to Adam?

"Scarse from the Tree returning; in her hand
A bough of fairest fruit" (IX.850–851)

Curiouser and curiouser.