Reading PL

[Nancy]

I have read Paradise Lost probably 12 times in full and many more excerpted or partial readings. May I make some suggestions for making it easier to understand?<br><br>--Use a good annotated edition. The best online one is the Milton Reading Room at Dartmouth College. This has the text in one frame, with interactive links to notes in another. Some of the notes in turn have links to other sites: art, music, astronomy, reference works. Unless you are steeped in Latin and Greek literature and the Bible, may of Milton's allusions will go right by you. It's fun to learn about them, however, and if you persevere you'll have a much greater scope of general knowledge. In print editions, the most recent comprehensive one is the Riverside Milton, edited by Roy Flannagan. Several generations of students relied on the edition of Merritt Hughes. If you don't need notes, the Oxford Milton is wonderful: very readable layout and type, and it preserves Milton's spelling and punctuation. The editor, Helen Darbishire, has a fine essay on this which shows how Milton devised many helps for the reader. Nice big margins to write in too. Don't skimp by getting a cheap paperback Milton: it's not read-once, throwaway literature, but a work you'll return to many times.<br><br>--Read it aloud. Many college English departments hold marathon readings of PL. I was privileged to hear and participate in one this spring, and it was a profound experience. I prepared by studying about 250 lines a day for about six weeks beforehand. I marked the beginning and end of the characters' speeches, and worked out the proper scansion of tricky lines. Always before, it had seemed very cerebral and silent, but reading and hearing it read brought out many aspects of sound and sight imagery that I'd never caught before. <br><br>--Enjoy it! Don't go into it thinking this is cultural codliver oil: good for you but repulsive. It is very enjoyable, even funny in places, and always thought-provoking. For example, in my preparation for the marathon, it happened that I was in Book II around March 10 and the arguments for and against "open war" or "soft ease" really resonated with the issues of the day. <br><br>--Remember that Milton read and wrote in Latin, Greek, French, and Italian as well as English. He was accustomed to Latin sentence structure, where in certain construction one word (usually a participle) has to be expressed by a whole clause or phrase in English. This meant that he wrote periodic sentences with a lot of dependent clauses--sentences that would make our computer style checkers simply go bonkers! So it's useful to look at whole sentences. Find the subject, verb, object and indirect object. These are the skeleton of any sentence, and once you have a clear grasp of what these are it is easier to see how the adjectives and adverbs, prepositional phrases, and secondary dependent clauses all relate. Fortunately Milton was very consistent and accurate in his punctuation and observed the rules of grammar, logic and rhetoric where many contemporaries did not.<br><br>--If PL is too much, warm up by reading "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," or maybe "Lycidas" and the Nativity Ode. These are shorter but will give you a good insight into Milton's style and some of his themes. "Samson Agonistes" is longer, but it is a real play after the manner of the Greek tragedians and it also deals with many PL issues.<br><br>--Webmaster: if possible, change your "chapter" designators to "Book." The twelve "Books" of PL are definitely Books and should be so designated, though you can probably get by with Arabic rather than Roman numerals!<br><br>I hope this helps. Please email me if I can help you will fuller explanations of the points above. I love this poetry and love to help others appreciate it too.

[Athena2902]

Hi,
I have to write an essay on Paradise lost and the charcter of Satan. MY actual question is...

"The character of Satan is pride and sensual indulgence, finding in self the sole of motive action... But around this character [Milton] has thrown a singularity of daring, a grandeur of sufferance, and a ruined splendour, which constitutes the very height of poetic sublimity" (S.T. Coleridge)

Assess the justice of this view of Satan in 'Paradise Lost'.

Any help would be greatly appreciated... hope to hear from you soon

Thanks

[Chinaski]

Homophone alert: Flipping heck Athena - 'right' an essay on 'Paradise Lost' - how ironic! I am sure it was a fast typing typo!

[Athena2902]

defo a typo... thanks! don't suppose you could help with the WRITING of my essay though hey?!?!

[jimbobsmoothie]

Hello,

I am urrently in the process of writing a paper on Milton's Paradise Lost for my undergraduate degree.
The question i have been given has left me, well; stumped! Whilst trying to find some relevant information on the web, i came across your posting and was wondering if you could share anything that would be relevant, as you appear to be an expert on Paradise lost. Anything that you think would be helpful would be greatly appreciated.
The question is 'For Milton the great religious questions are also the great political ones.. Discuss in reference to paradise lost'

[The Unnamable]

The question is 'For Milton the great religious questions are also the great political ones.. Discuss in reference to paradise lost'

What are the great religious questions? What are the great political ones? Power, Tyranny, Good and Evil – etc. Remember, when Milton wrote PL (it first appeared in 1667) – what had recently happened in England? Less than a quarter of a century earlier, one king had been beheaded and only seven years earlier, a new one took his place. Rather brave of Milton to write PL in such a climate, don’t you think? Mind you, he did write The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth in the year of the Restoration. Parliament at one point in 1660 sanctioned an order for his arrest.

Satan, of course, is a fantastic study in what Hannah Arendt, writing about the Eichmann Trial, called ‘the banality of evil’. Books I and II cover most of the best stuff about Satan but you can get a sense of how closely Milton is also thinking in terms of the political as well as the religious sphere with simple lines like these from Book IV:

“So spake the Fiend, and with necessity,
The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds.”

How many times have you heard people say that certain situations are unavoidable – a part of the way things are – a ‘necessity’? Milton was right – it’s the tyrant’s plea.

Of course PL works as a story of the fall of Man but Milton didn’t live in an abstract world of literary skill and artistic beauty. He lived in the real world of snot and blood. There is no doubt, for instance, that he was aware of the horrors of civil war:

“men only disagree
Of creatures rational, though under hope
Of heavenly grace, and, God proclaiming peace,
Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife
Among themselves, and levy cruel wars
Wasting the earth, each other to destroy:”
Book II

How things have changed!

[ennison]

Pound said that Milton was no use because he had too much Latin in him. Blake believed himself possessed by the spirit of Milton. Pullman (who writes in a garden shed) believes Milton was just another dangerous Christian. There's no doubt that this great English poet inspired and inspires both admiration and contempt in almost equal measure.
There is some truth in saying that Satan is the real hero of 'Paradise Lost' but that's maybe because Milton like most of us finds evil fascinating - just as people look with fascinated horror at road accidents. Pullman trying today to write a dark secular epic I'm afraid doesn't match Milton. Pound of course was bonkers even when he was brilliant. Blake had his own dotty creed expounded at length in the worst of his poetry. Milton was not only a poet but a practical and progressive political thinker. Various reactionaries try to knock him down because of that.