I knew this was a good thread - I learnt something!
Sadly I’m still not going to read it. :o
Approximate Dates for comparison:
Dante/Divine Comedy: 1300
Chaucer: 1400 (Middle English)
Shakespeare: 1600 (Modern English)
Paradise Lost: 1667
You could call Dante and Chaucer Medieval, but not Shakespeare and Milton.
Purely subjectively, I think Milton generally “sounds” more modern than Shakespeare–the caveats are that the epic simile thing is an artificial structure that is not ordinary language at all and that Shakespeare uses slang/puns/spoken language (while Milton sticks to written*), making parts of PL dense and much of Shakespeare harder to read than hear.
I don’t think you need to read Divine Comedy/PL in any order–they are really not related except in jointly giving popular culture what it thinks it knows about hell. I’d say read PL first–Divine Comedy is more tied to its time with its references to real people Dante was interested in punishing.
*I have not heard Paradise Lost read, but an old academic told me that in olden times people would memorize and recite chunks of it in most dramatic fashion and that he loved to hear it.
I don’t remember most of the details, but I did read it once – at the age of 17, in my last year of high school. What’s more, I read it at school – an all boys high school – at recess and lunch time in the playground. I think I was trying to prove something, but I don’t remember exactly what.
(And my fellow students already knew I was eccentric, so they just left me alone with my reading. Most of them probably had no idea who John Milton was, or what Paradise Lost was).
IMO, Paradise Lost must be approached intellectually to be appreciated, and intellectual appreciation of poetry has suffered over the past 100 years.
Modern ideas about poetry rely heavily on the notion that it should be sincere, express genuine emotion, and move the listener in a visceral way. Consequentially, the fact that a poet would specifically organize his language around a theme is nowadays seen as artificial. Such poetry is commonly derided as pretentious or cute, a belief that was a central theme in (for example) the film “Dead Poet’s Society”.
You need look no further than the first 16 lines of Paradise Lost–a complete sentence in itself, and what writer today wants to confuse the reader with overly-long sentences?–to see that the joys of this poem require a broad knowledge of both the Bible and classical literature–the lingua franca of intellectual society in the 17th century. I doubt there is a general reader today who would immediately recognize “Oreb”, “Sinai” (OK, maybe this one), “Sion Hill”, “Siloa’s Brook”, or “th’ Aeolian Mount”, much less how they are related to one another in the complicated clauses Milton has arranged. Footnotes might help, but who wants to constantly flip down the page while reading a poem, constantly being reminded how stupid you are?
Regarding the organization, line-by-line Milton is making choices as to the phrasing (e.g. splitting complete clauses across adjacent lines) and the placement of pauses at specific positions in the line, both a hallmark of classical Greek and Latin poetry. He emphasizes words by putting them first in a line (e.g. “Restore us” or “Rose out of Chaos”), and relies on double meanings for deeper allusion (e.g. “Fruit” and “mortal taste”). You don’t pick up things like this with a quick recitation; they often require a bit of study. Again, this is anathema to modern notions of poetry as candid expression; if you have to “work at it”, then it isn’t really sincere, but more like a puzzle. I’m not saying people are “dumber” today about poetry, only that the approach has changed, and modern readers don’t like the idea of poetry being like a puzzle.
I could go on, but perhaps that is the problem; people today don’t take poetry to be a serious intellectual activity, and so it is difficult to inspire folks to see the real beauty of Milton’s achievement.
I can’t say that I’ve read all of it; in my college class that focused on Milton and the 17th century, we read just enough of Book 3 to justify my professor saying “Yes, all of the ‘rising action’ parts are important for the balance of the piece, and for Milton to be able to structure the poem as ending on a positive note, but they’re really freaking boring to modern readers; let’s read more about Satan!” So I’ve read Books 1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, and the concluding bits of 12.
I’ve had a soft spot for Milton ever since that course, though Areopagitica has a bit more to do with that than Paradise Lost. Paradise Lost does have some lovely parts, though, such as the invocation to light, not to mention the two sex scenes. And if you need a bit of random literary trivia, there’s always the fact that the subject of its first sentence is the understood “you.”
I am a big classics reader, but it’s poetry. I have read Dante and The Good Earth and what was that Steinbeck? Chaucer and Shakespeare. But I can’t! read! poetry!
But you can add me to the list of people who are grateful for this thread.
If you read Shakespeare, you read poetry. Compare two speeches by the female leads:
PORTIA The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice.
EVE 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, thy aid,
Thy counsel, in this uttermost distress,
My only strength and stay: Forlorn of thee,
Whither shall I betake me, where subsist?
While yet we live, scarce one short hour perhaps,
Between us two let there be peace; both joining,
As joined in injuries, one enmity
Against a foe by doom express assigned us,
That cruel Serpent: On me exercise not
Thy hatred for this misery befallen;
On me already lost, me than thyself
More miserable! Both have sinned;but thou
Against God only; I against God and thee;
And to the place of judgement will return,
There with my cries importune Heaven; that all
The sentence, from thy head removed, may light
On me, sole cause to thee of all this woe;
Me, me only, just object of his ire!
It still isn’t remotely the same thing. Shakespeare is drama, stories and tales, angst and emotion. Paradise Lost is…religion. And while I have read a great deal about religion, and still do, poetry about religion is just appallingly boring. I don’t even believe in a god, and as I said, I am not fond of poetry, so I have to jump two hurdles to read it.
ETA: Not to mention, it’s the Christian religion, which already gets plenty of time in my life, willing or not. At this age I’d rather read the Mahabharat or the Gita.
I read Paradise Lost–more years ago than I care to admit. I have to say, though, that I didn’t find it terribly entertaining or compelling.
Mind you, I appreciate the concept–to “punch up” Genesis and add a little backstory. As written in the Bible, the story lacks drama (God created Adam and Eve. They sinned. Then there was a guy with an ark . . .) and leaves all sorts of unanswered questions. (Where did this talking serpent come from? What was his motivation?) So I appreciate the attempt to fill in the holes.
But somehow, it didn’t work. It seemed like an over-wrought piece of Biblical fan fiction. The only compelling character was Satan, and the story was rigged against him, so I couldn’t really get into it.
If not for spoken word recordings, much of the beauty and power would escape me. My inner voice reads the following with a casual, soliloquizing, indecisive tone:
What though the field be lost?
All is not lost …
Hearing it spoken by an actor (which many audiobook readers are) who is also an artist, shows me Satan’s barely restrained, plotting anger and resentment. It’s quite a memorable line, and pivotal in the poem’s movement, but I wouldn’t necessarily know if not for hearing it read.