/lit/ - Literature

read the iliad
actually if you like just read the iliad and drop milton

I recommend this preface.

https://portalconservador.com/livros/C-S-Lewis-A-Preface-to-Paradise-Lost.pdf

>>10909416
You can still follow the plot, which is great, even if you don't recognize all of the references, if that's all you're concerned about.

>DUDE LUCIFER DINDU NUFFIN LMAO

The book. There, saved you the read.

>>10909529
That is literally the opposite of what the poem is saying you illiterate romantic.

>>10909529
no

>>10909529
Shush

>>10909416
>Can I just pick up Paradise Lost and start reading it?

Of course not! First you have to read:

Homer – Iliad, Odyssey
The Old Testament
Aeschylus – Tragedies
Sophocles – Tragedies
Herodotus – Histories
Euripides – Tragedies
Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War
Hippocrates – Medical Writings
Aristophanes – Comedies
Plato – Dialogues
Aristotle – Works
Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus
Euclid – Elements
Archimedes – Works
Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections
Cicero – Works
Lucretius – On the Nature of Things
Virgil – Works
Horace – Works
Livy – History of Rome
Ovid – Works
Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia
Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania
Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic
Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion
Ptolemy – Almagest
Lucian – Works
Marcus Aurelius – Meditations
Galen – On the Natural Faculties
The New Testament
Plotinus – The Enneads
St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine
The Song of Roland
The Nibelungenlied
The Saga of Burnt Njál
St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica
Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy
Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales
Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks
Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy
Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly
Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
Thomas More – Utopia
Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises
François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel
John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion
Michel de Montaigne – Essays
William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies
Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote
Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene
Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis
William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays
Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences
Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World
William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals
Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan
René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy

THEN you'll be ready for Paradise Lost.

>>10909416
Yeah if you're not a brainlet you'll be fine. You may have to look some things up, like when he references obscure Armenian mountains as the place S A T A N first lands on Earth, but for the most part it's no harder to follow than Shakespeare

>>10909416
I'm wondering, did John Milton actually know about the book of Enoch or did he have a vision or what?

>>10913065
if this list is actually accurate ill do it, can anyone confirm or is this only bait?

>>10913252
It has Machiavelli and fucking John Calvin. It's a meme.

>>10913065
>William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals

ok i thought u were for real and i was mad then i go to that i was like lmao my sides are still recovering

u should read the book "is there a text in this class?" by stanley fish, he breaks down how milton fucks with expectations and keeps the reader off balance, assuming ur a careful reading and dont just blow through it to check it off a list

>>10913252
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book

They're great books in chronological order that came before milton

>>10913266
you're probably 20 years old and know nothing

>>10909416
Yes, just enjoy it as you can. It will be fun and will do you good

>>10913252
You'd probably get much more out of Paradise Lost if you read all of those first. You'd definitely understand the context better.
Really though, you'd probably be fine just reading it anyway so long as you have a halfway decent understanding of Western History, philosophy, and Christianity.

Dartmouth has a good online annotated version. It points out references to other works, and Biblical references that have changed with time or translations etc.
It also points out places where the poem references it's self.
https://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_1/text.shtml

Alternatively, just watch End of Evengelion

>>10909416
Just read it. Don't worry about getting all the references and shit.

Maybe read a study of it later if you're interested.

Only pseuds care about getting all the references and masturbating to how well read they are - things that actually matter can stand on their own two feet, without any need for some flimsy scaffolding of memes. If you can't understand a book without some outside help, throw it out the window - its contents are worthless meme shit anyway.

>>10913252
PL is good but if you read all that just in preparation for it, you'd be in for a bit of an anti-climax.

>>10915879
you make reading the classics harder for yourself by not reading them in order

>>10915879
spotted the illiterate

Yes you can. it's not that bad. If you don't understand something then google it.

you should read the bible first tho.. that's the main thing that will help.

Not OP; but, can I read "Paradise Regained" - a copy of which I found when clearing out my grandmother's attic earlier - without reading "Paradise Lost"? Wouldn't normally ask, it's just I watched her copy of "Weekend At Bernie's 2" yesterday and was bewildered AF.

>>10916382
The Weekend at Bernies series is not required material for Paradise Regained

>>10916430
On the back cover - of the DVD - it quotes Roger Ebert as saying "If John Milton were around today, I bet he'd be making movies like 'Weekend at Bernie's 2' Not 'Weekend at Bernie's', just 'Weekend at Bernie's 2' Thumbs up!"

>>10916382
>>10916430
>>10916451

>>10916362
brainlet
>>10916371
pseud

It's a good epic about the fall of man and if you pay attention you can learn even more about Christian theology since he occasionally outlines the argument for you through speech or narration. It becomes easier to pick up on when you can recognize Homeric moments or Augustinian philosophy.

>>10913252
That entire list is worth reading if only because they tend to come up again and again in not only Paradise Lost, but the entirety of the canon itself, but it isn't necessary. Besides, you can always re-read it in the future after you've had more experience

>>10913266
Political Philosophy and Puritanism heavily influence the text, I shouldn't spoonfeed you this answer but knowing of Machiavelli and Calvin can make a reader more appreciative of Milton's work

>>10909416
I think I had to read the first few books a couple of times to understand everything, but maybe I'm an idiot. Always listened to actors recite it as well, which I've found helps me take in a lot of the antiquated terms. I'm no expert, but I assume having heard words in real life makes them much more effective in your mind when you read it in poetry. This is my favourite recitation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqnvWQZlQ50

Growing up in a very New Atheist household may have stunted my Biblical knowledge - but most of the names are just old names for paganism, particularly Greek, for lots of the description of Hell.

>>10909416

I was only really a fan of Paradise Found but it wasn't really well received.

>>10914705

>>10917373
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Regained

>>10915879
If only we could cut out the middle man of language we could somehow get books to stand on their own two feet a bit more so

>>10917557
i don't know what this means but i'd say it's pretty accurate

>>10918625
also i haven't read Paradise Lost yet