/lit/ - Literature

*describes how Satan was a pretty cool guy*

What does /lit/ think of Milton, particularly Paradise Lost? What should I know before reading it?

>sorry those authors sound great but all I read is fanfiction
>WELL WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY SO EARLIER SENPAI!

Are there any Italian speaking anons present who can tell me if John Milton's Italian verse is considered notable, and whether it reads nicely in your opinion? For example:

Donna leggiadra il cui bel nome honora
L'herbosa val di Rheno, e il nobil varco,
Ben è colui d'ogni valore scarco
Qual tuo spirto gentil non innamora,

Che dolcemente mostra si di fuora
De suoi atti soavi giamai parco,
E i don', che son d'amor saette ed arco,
La onde l'alta tua virtù s'infiora.

Quando tu vaga parli, o lieta canti
Che mover possa duro alpestre legno,
Guardi ciascun a gli occhi, ed a gli orecchi

L'entrata, chi di te si truova indegno;
Gratia sola di su gli vaglia, inanti
Che'l disio amoroso al cuor s'invecchi.

>"The Measure is English Heroic Verse without Rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and Virgil in Latin; Rhime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter; grac't indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, carried away by Custom, but much to thir own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse then else they would have exprest them. Not without cause therefore some both Italian, and Spanish Poets of prime note have rejected Rhime both in longer and shorter Works, as have also long since our best English Tragedies, as a thing of itself, to all judicious ears, triveal, and of no true musical delight; which consists onely in apt Numbers, fit quantity of Syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one Verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoyded by the learned Ancients both in Poetry and all good Oratory. This neglect then of Rhime so little is to be taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar Readers, that it rather is to be esteem'd an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recover'd to heroic Poem from the troublesom and modern bondage of Rimeing."

contemporary rhymers: you have exactly ten seconds to explain yourselves