Teach me about Milton

Cafe Society
1

Despite this thread having the appearance of being a homework question, I assure you it is not. I’m in my 40s with no kids.

My thing is history, not literature, which is why I’m asking about Milton. A 19th century historical figure I’ve been researching for some time now was a lifelong Milton fan. Reading Milton’s work was his greatest source of leisuretime pleasure, apparently. To understand my subject better, I thought perhaps I should become a little familiar with Milton and his writings. Anyone care to enlighten me, or direct me to a online Milton primer?

2

He was always put upon, and often ignored even while he was speaking. Perhaps it was the timid voice of his. Somehow he just couldn’t manage to assert himself. He ended up being moved to the basement, I recall.

But if you really listened to him, he did often mention that he was liable to “blow up” or “set fire” to the building. And in the end, that’s what he did. The seething rage at missing cake, staplers, and desks that he’d kept so well-hidden exploded — literally — and Initech was history.

Fortunately for Milton, however, he discovered the embezzled money — a huge chunk of cash — before it was returned to the company. He absconded with the money to a tropical paradise. Once he got there, he still managed to be malcontent, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter so much.
On his, okay, um, Job

When I consider how my job is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark office space
And that one Talent which is death to face
Lodg’d with me useless, stuck in the basement
To serve therewith my boss, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
Doth Lundbergh exact overtime, pay deny’d,
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, you doth not need
Either Milton’s work or his own staplers, who best
Bear his milde tongue, they serve him best, his cake
Is tasty. Millions in his pocket, speed
And fly o’er Land and Ocean to a rest:
They also serve who buildings conflagrate.

3

[QUOTE=panamajack]
He was always put upon, and often ignored even while he was speaking. Perhaps it was the timid voice of his. Somehow he just couldn’t manage to assert himself. He ended up being moved to the basement, I recall.

But if you really listened to him, he did often mention that he was liable to “blow up” or “set fire” to the building. And in the end, that’s what he did. The seething rage at missing cake, staplers, and desks that he’d kept so well-hidden exploded — literally — and Initech was history.

Fortunately for Milton, however, he discovered the embezzled money — a huge chunk of cash — before it was returned to the company. He absconded with the money to a tropical paradise. Once he got there, he still managed to be malcontent, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter so much.[/qoute]

Okay raise your hand if you came in here to make the exact same joke!

[Mahaloth raises hand]

4

Actually, I was thinking of the one with Count Kook and Professor Weirdo in the secret laboratory up on Horror Hill.

5

Okay, while everybody is masturbating on my thread, I’m still sitting here clueless. Please make your inside jokes elsewhere. Only serious posters with ignorance-fighting contributions from now on, please. Thanks all.

[A stern, but good-natured, smilie would go here, if one existed.]

6

Some useful background on Milton, from a moment’s Googling.

(I was, however, highly amused to find that the Google-ad accompanying this thread was for “gay and lesbian literature” – does Google know something we don’t? :eek:

7

Milton was a blind poet who wrote one of the seminal poems of the English language–“Paradise Lost.” Unfortunately, the poem is a little dry for most modern readers. If you like poetry, give it a try, but if you don’t, well, I won’t think less of you. The poem owes a huge amount to Vergil and the “Aeneid,” which is another rather dry read for most modern readers. Vergil owed a huge debt to Homer and the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” which are, you guessed it, often rather dry for most modern readers. I’d argue that “Iliad” and especially “Odyssey” are more accessible than Vergil and Milton.

He isn’t a fun read, though he’s is often quoted and was hugely influential. William Blake and Percy Shelley especially amongst Romantic poets were hugely influenced by him. Most people would find Blake pretty readable–you would recognize his “The Tyger”–and Shelley’s “Ozymandias” is one of the most famous sonnets ever written.

Some claim Miltonic influence on JRR Tolkein, as well.
Was that the sort of info you wanted?

8

“… For Spirit, when they please
Can either Sex assume, or both; so soft
And uncompounded is their Essence pure,
Not ti’d or manacl’d with joint or limb,
Not founded on the brittle strength of bones,
Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose
Dilated or condens’t, bright or obscure,
Can execute their airy purposes…”

Whatever else he was, Milton was not prudish. :slight_smile:

9

I took a course awhile back with a professor who absolutely adored his work for the beauty of his language. We fought our way through Paradise Lost, and she convinced us that it was the beautiful work.

The reasons? First of all, he has a mastery of the sound and sense of the English language that very few people have. He knew his Greek and Latin too, and he would use words based on their original root meaning (for instance a bush having “branches implicit” – literally, “tangled branches”). This often gave a double meaning to some of the things he said.

Most modern readers need very good footnoting to catch these (I’ve found the Penguin edition to be good).

He also invents a number of new words, phases, and uses of old words. “Pandemonium” makes its first appearance here, for instance.

Another reason was his remarkable theology. I’m Wiccan and my teacher was atheist, and the two of us marvelled at how he actually managed to make sense of some of the thorniest issues of Christian belief: how there can be free will if God knows the future, how a perfect God could make Satan, etc. and he does it logically and believably, though this requires him to depart a little from Puritan orthodoxy.

Another interesting aspect of Paradise Lost is the way in which it deals with science. Paradise Lost is all about knowledge, and its place in a human society. More specifically, it’s about science, the newly-budding natural philosophy which had just tossed the Earth out of the centre of the galaxy, and was changing the face of the European world.

Science is everywhere in this book, and Paradise Lost is an interesting snapshot of the changing times. Galileo is mentioned three times, and is the only one of Milton’s contemporaries to be mentioned by name. The literal veracity of the Bible is question (as Raphael tells Adam and Eve, the Bible is explained in simple terms because human beings weren’t ready for the full story).

But gunpowder is here – Satan invents a version of it. And the Tree of Knowledge is called “Mother of Science.” The theme is that science isn’t a bad thing as long as the purpose is to better understand the beauty and wonder of God’s creation. Used without God or morality, it becomes a force of destruction.

(Of course, this is all made ironic because two centuries later, science would declare Adam and Eve to be, at best, an allegory.)

Sometimes you’ll hear the claim that Paradise Lost is the first work of science fiction. Not sure if that’s true, but there is a case to be made for it. Milton did coin the term “outer space” (Satan flies through space to get to Earth) according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

It’s also one of the first books to postulate other star systems in space, replete with alien lifeforms (brought up, again, during Satan’s spaceflight).

I mostly know about Paradise Lost, though he has some other interesting work. In spite of having been official propagandist of the Cromwell regime, he was also known for his passionate defence of free speech.

For more than that, I really can’t help you, though.

10

Incidentally, I’m getting ads for the “Milton Motel”. Far less romantic. :slight_smile:

11

One specific point. The Penguin edition is OK, but the footnotes are, IMO, extremely patronizing - obviously targetted at A-Level students who are being forced to “do” Milton for their exams, rather than the reader who wants to enjoy the poem for what it is.

Agree with everything else you’ve said. :slight_smile: Oh, the first ever work of Science Fiction is probably Plato’s Critias, the first formal statement of the Atlantis legend.

12

If you want an accessible annotated version that doesn’t talk down, look for Asimov’s Annotated Paradise Lost, which also has Milton’s lesser-known follow-up, “Paradise Regained”.

13

For that matter, I’d recommend ANY of Asimov’s Annotated series. The man was a polymath of the highest order and had the unique ability to communicate that knowledge clearly.

14

My advice for getting through Milton: read it out loud. It looks much drier on the page than it is spoken. I personally find Milton’s language intoxicating, even when I get into the parts that I don’t understand (lists of Greek and Roman cities and stuff like that).

For a slightly less daunting introduction, instead of plunging into the vastness that is **Paradise Lost ** you can try Sampson Agonistes, which is shorter and sort of like a play. It’s about Sampson, the Old Testament hero, after he was shorn of his locks and imprisoned, but before he brought down a building on himself and his enemies. He gets visited by his father, Delilah, and some others. I particularly like the Delilah section; he describes her approach this way:

But who is this, what thing of sea or land?
Female of sex it seems,
That so bedecked, ornate, and gay,
Comes this way sailing
Like a stately ship …
Sails filled, and streamers waving,
Courted by all the winds that hold them play,
An amber scent of odorous perfume
Her harbinger, a damsel train behind.

stuyguy, are you researching William Blake?

15

Not Blake, no.

As some members of the board are aware, for several years now I’ve been riding a horse to raise awareness for an unsung 19th century New York City planner, reformer, and preservationist named Andrew H. Green. He had a remarkable fifty-year career filled with stunning accomplishments that should have made him a household name, at least in these parts. But he remains something of a mystery man because so few of his private papers survive today. One of his personal traits that is well documented, however, was his devotion to Milton. I figured if I could learn something about the poet’s work it might give me a little more insight about Mr. Green.

Thanks for all the serious answers thusfar. Really helpful stuff there. Keep it coming! Thanks.

16

I second the opinion on “Agonistes”, it gives a complete sense of Milton’s poetic power in full maturity, especially his fugue like cadence, which is unmatched in all English letters, as well as containing the most beautful phrase in the English language:
“eyeless in Gaza”.

17

Please explain.

18

Let me first give more context to the phrase:

                              "Promise was that I

Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;
Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves,
Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke;"

O.K. That "Eyeless in Gaza"is the most beautiful phrase in English would be pointlessy argumentative as a statement of fact-it’s my opinion, as I assumed would be implicit. That the expression is beautiful can be fruitfully argued, so let me do that.
First, it sounds very gentle, compared to how he might describe or does otherwise descibe his blindness elsewhere. The very sound of it is nearly soothing in its softness, which by the driving rhythym of the line “Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves,” plunges said gentleness into the most brutal of circumstances. So by his poetic skill Milton lets the very sound and cadence enliven us to the pathos of Samsons circumstance. Now is pathos a necessary constituent of beauty? Clearly I think so, but another argument.
Certainly more could be said here, and will be if you’re interested, but this gives you an idea of why I think the phrase is beautiful, if perhaps not unequaled in this way.