Milton is a weak Dante

[Anonymous No.20556402]

>Dante in a way is a stronger Milton, and his overcoming of all rivals, ancient and contemporary, is even more convincing than Milton's triumph, if only because Shakespeare always lingers on in Milton. Dante affects the way we read Virgil, and Shakespeare can severely alter our approach to Milton. But Virgil has little effect upon our understanding of Dante, because the actual Epicurean Virgil has been abrogated by Dante.
>The reader who comes freshly to Dante will see very quickly that no other secular author is so absolutely convinced that his own work is the truth, all of the truth that matters most. Milton and perhaps the later Tolstoy approximate Dante's fierce conviction of rightness, but they both reflect contending realities as well and show more of the strain of isolated vision. Dante is so strong-rhetorically, psychologically, spiritually-that he dwarfs their self-confidence. Theology is not his ruler but his resource, one resource among many. No one can deny that Dante is a supernaturalist, a Christian, and a theologian, or at least a the ological allegorist. But all received concepts and images undergo extraordinary transformations in Dante

[Anonymous No.20556431]

>>20556402
>Milton is a weak Dante
He wasn't.

[Anonymous No.20556444]

>>20556402
The ESL cope threads are my favorite.

[Anonymous No.20556445]

>>20556431
Give a single reason why

[Anonymous No.20556450]

>>20556444
>Nooo it's because you're an ESL
>It's not like English people also think Dante is way better than Milton

[Anonymous No.20556470]

>>20556450
Shakespeare as well. Dante got a mid-tier video game. Shakespeare got three Kurosawa adaptations. No competition kek. America wins again.

[Anonymous No.20556487]

>>20556402
>Divine comedy
>Torture porn made by a coping asshole
>Paradise Lost
>Actual plot and characters

[Anonymous No.20556495]

>>20556487
this. Satan gets an intricate character arc that subverts Christian tradition.

[Anonymous No.20556529]

>>20556431
It's simple.
speak native germanic language? Milton.
speak native romance language? Dante.

[Anonymous No.20556535]

>>20556487
>>20556495
>Plot
Jesus Christ
>Charactes
Hahahahahahahaha
>>20556470
Nothing says "he's a better poet than Dante because he has better adaptations"

Milton fags eternally seething because Papa Pound eternally BTFO'd Milton. Shit characters, no sense of suspense or intrigue (hardly even a plot). There is literally no figure worth talking about other than Satan, as Adam and Eve are worthless as actual characters. It's a shame there are so many other better epi poems to read and discuss

[Anonymous No.20556544]

>>20556402
>Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth: and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. —Areopagitica, 1644
Based Milton

[Anonymous No.20556545]

>>20556535
>Hahahahahahahaha

[Anonymous No.20556603]

>>20556444
OP quote is literally from Bloom, the best English literally critic...

[Anonymous No.20556625]

https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2021/01/arguing-dante-milton-joseph-pearce.html

[Anonymous No.20556630]

>>20556603
kek so the esl fags hate jews unless said jew is talking nice about one of your own. THat makes it worse.

[Anonymous No.20556642]

>>20556470
>Shakespeare and Milton better than Dante
Illiterate retard.

>Dante got a mid-tier video game
Dante's extraordinarily rich visual imagination has inspired artists from manuscript illuminators in the Middle Ages to the present. The Divine Comedy has illustrations by artists as great and diverse as Botticelli, Gustave Doré, William Blake, and Salvador Dalì. The impact that Dante had on the Western world is infinite.

[Anonymous No.20556656]

>>20556487
>Torture porn made by a coping asshole
That is completely ignoring Purgatorio and Paradiso which are even better than Inferno (except for some Cantos).

>Paradise Lost
>Actual plot and characters
KITSCH

[Anonymous No.20556722]

>>20556603
I have never seen a single thing Bloom spoke or wrote that is at all noteworthy

[Anonymous No.20556735]

>>20556722
Seconded. Bloom is a hack who by dint of his desire to be something so much more than a literary critic, failed to even do that.

[Anonymous No.20556736]

>>20556722

[Anonymous No.20556788]

(((Dante))) is way overrated.

Once you - like me - read L'ésotérisme de Dante, 1925 by René Guénon

Once you know the original by Ibn ʿArabi (full name: Muhyī al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn al-ʿArabī al-Ḥātimī al-Ṭāʾī al-Andalusī al-Mursī al-Dimashqī)

You realize how falsely inflated is (((Dante)))'s notoriety.

...

[Anonymous No.20556833]

>>20556603
>>20556736
Bloom was an atrocious liar, and an average essayist at best. He wrote very little worthwhile English criticisms, and if it wasn't for his constant battle to uphold the canon he would have lived and died a nobody professor at uni. The best thing you could say about him is that he memorized all of Paradise Lost (allegedly), and other long narrative poems.

He wasn't even the best literary critic of the 21st century lmao.

[Anonymous No.20556853]

>>20556833
>He wasn't even the best literary critic of the 21st century lmao.
(you). Ok, anon, then who tf was the best literally critic of the 21st century?

[Anonymous No.20556857]

>>20556833
Some random faggot on 4chan

[Anonymous No.20556862]

>>20556853
Eliot Weinberger has written the best essays of this century, handedly. Inb4 sad white man cope because he's a Jew. Not taking into account non English criticism ofc, since I'm assuming you're a monolingual

[Anonymous No.20556867]

>>20556402
dante didn't write in english so who gives a fuck none of you have even read him

[Anonymous No.20556934]

>>20556402
Milton tells epics that outshine the Greeks, Dante is mere disaster tourism.

[Anonymous No.20556949]

>>20556603
Bloom is not English. he is jewish. the wreckers of the west do not understand the west and its mostly that ESLs are puppets of the jews in Europe much like blacks are the puppets of jews in the states. both serve the same function, to agitate glorious Anglo-Saxondom.

[Dante's Lonely Planet Guide to Hell No.20556961]

>And if you look out the left window of the bus you'll see Holofrenes and Cassius Dio having their ballsack ripped apart by snapping turtles, now if you glance to the right of the bus you'll see...

[Anonymous No.20556970]

>>20556934
>Milton outshines the Greeks
Give me a single valid reason why

[Anonymous No.20556989]

>>20556934
It is interesting that you say that Dante is tourism, when Milton travels the opposite path to Dante's, and stops right before the interpreted and sensible world, that is, before the earthly world of Man, the one that the Divine Comedy takes precisely as its premise and fundamental starting point and return. Dante is a visual imagination as Eliot said, and it has often been suggested that Paradise Lost is a sort of Divina Commedia of Sixteenth-Century Protestantism in its insular English version. Which is a brilliant statement, but very insufficient, because Dante's work surpasses Milton's everywhere. At this point, literary comparison is odious to Protestantism...

[Anonymous No.20557014]

>>20556949
Uhhh...based much?

[Anonymous No.20557030]

>>20556862
Would you be kind enough to recommend a particular essay you enjoyed?

[Anonymous No.20557038]

>>20556970
Declaration of the preface that opens book one.

>>20556989
It means Milton is an epic, it has an epic narrative structure, events are narrated, actions occur. Dante is tourist guide that doesn't go beyond a passive aesthetic survey of sights. Milton does work, it has acts, it lives a life, whereas Dante has mere receptive aestheticism of an observer.

[Anonymous No.20557044]

>>20556402
Whoever wrote that is correct.

[Anonymous No.20557068]

>>20556949
seethe lmao

[Anonymous No.20557215]

>>20557038
>>20557038
>It means Milton is an epic
Milton or PL?

>it has an epic narrative structure, events are narrated, actions occur. Dante is tourist guide that doesn't go beyond a passive aesthetic survey of sights. Milton does work, it has acts, it lives a life, whereas Dante has mere receptive aestheticism of an observer.
The Divine Comedy is an epic along the lines of the Aeneids and the Iliad and the Odyssey. It is an allegorical journey through the underworld, the entrance into the infernal circles, where the lustful suffer eternal hardships while Dante's enjoy their suffering, and Dante's return to his creator in the line of Odysseus. If you cannot see the narrative and the imaginative capacity of Dante, you are delusional. Dante's Divina Comedy is above all the literary demonstration of how a Theology can become a Poetics.

[Anonymous No.20557330]

>>20556402
>Virgil has little effect on how we read Dante
You are an idiot

[Anonymous No.20557340]

>>20556402
dante fucking sucks and the best italian writer is an american

[Anonymous No.20557395]

>>20557340
lol

[Anonymous No.20557396]

Milton is a weak Dante
Dante is a weak Vergil
Vergil is a weak Homer
And Homer never existed.

[Anonymous No.20557464]

Erich Auerbach held Dante in the highest esteem.

Pic related is from the Introduction to the NYRB edition of Auerbach's "Dante, Poet of the Secular World."

[Anonymous No.20557502]

>>20556402
Harold Bloom isn’t an authority. Stop reading this hack. Read for yourself. Also read Samson Agonistes, as well as the sonnets, and not just Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.

[Anonymous No.20557717]

>>20557030
An Elemental Thing is a collection you should read in order. However my personal favorite is "under the floorboard" or something, on literary modernism. "Inventing China" is excellent as well. You could also read "19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei", it compares different translations of the same small poem and talks about translation work in general.

If this thread is still around, I'll post a link to a mega where you can read everything free, I just have to upload the files.

[Anonymous No.20557725]

>>20557502
He's completely right in this case, though. Dante is superior to Milton.

[Anonymous No.20558411]

Joyce > Milton

[Anonymous No.20558669]

>Dante pulls the Italian language out of infancy
>"The comedy" is incredibly complex but also about demons farting
>Likely a source for Cervantes in how Don Quixote never even saw his love interest
>John Milton writes arguably the best Bible fanfic of all time
>Makes Satan a character to cheer for
>Language that makes midwits seethe

Who cares about OP. Both are brilliant.

[Anonymous No.20558758]

>>20556529
That's stupid mindset to have.

[Anonymous No.20559072]

>>20556402
They're doing different things with regards to Christianity in their works but midwits on /lit/ can't seem to stop comparing them.

[Anonymous No.20559133]

I’m reading Paradise Lost whilst listening to The Lily & The Lamb: chant & polyphony from Medieval England. Nothing gets comfier. I didn’t like the Romantic Blank Verse English rendition of the Divine Comedy though.

[Anonymous No.20559272]

i can see Dante mogging Milton but shitting on either reads like mega cope to me--both are great writers, if not faultless in every regard, that left their mark on the canon

[Anonymous No.20559284]

>>20558411
that'sbait.gif

[Anonymous No.20559773]

>>20558669
>Bible fanfic
I wish that some competent writers would at least attempt to write more of this.

[Anonymous No.20559817]

>>20559773
I read one of Mann's short stories which was literally just bible fanfic but 'All the miracles were allegories for mundane material causes, man', type stuff. Was that just the prototype for this? Is it any good?

[Anonymous No.20559942]

Is it true Milton used to ask some kid to milk him when he was blind? Are those cucks on tiktok just fucking with me

[Anonymous No.20560073]

>>20559284
it was yeah milton is better

[Anonymous No.20560410]

>>20560073
Does he ask to be milked nigga

[Anonymous No.20561041]

>>20556722
>>20556833
His Shakspeare and the invention of the human book is good, he actually gives interesting insight into the main plays, but other than that his opinions are generally terrible.

[Anonymous No.20561049]

>>20556934
>Milton tells epics that outshine the Greeks
lmaooo

[Anonymous No.20561076]

>>20556529
That's really stupid.

[Anonymous No.20561147]

>>20556949
>glorious Anglo-Saxondom
>can't even into its language

[Anonymous No.20561219]

>>20556402
Look, it may be true that Dante subsumed theological ideas to his political reality more completely than Milton did, it's an interesting point, but honestly it just makes me genuinely depressed when I see a thread with a clickbait title like this and hardly anyone even questioning the premise. You are not a toddler, your prefrontal cortex is sufficiently developed to go beyond "X is a weak Y", please think about what these great artists would have wanted you to do, and try a little bit harder. There is such a wide, beautiful, fruitful field for study and comparison here, when you ignore it for the sake of petty squabbling you are like Blake's Newton doing calculations in the mud and never thinking to look up at the heavens.

[Anonymous No.20561241]

>>20556862
It's "handily", epic language master. Jsyk

[Anonymous No.20562148]

>>20556402
Milton wasn't trying to do anything similar to Dante. The comparison ends with them being religious and political poets. Yes, Dante is the "deeper" poet, but on an aesthetic level you can't really compare them if you don't know Italian and/or English
>>20556487
>Torture porn made by a coping asshole
Why does every retard stop reading at Inferno? It was never meant to be read as a stand-alone poem and you're missing the point entirely when you focus too much on Dante's personal vendettas against (some) of the people in Hell.

[Anonymous No.20562209]

>>20562148
In what sense do you think Dante was deeper? He was certainly more symbolic and formal and I guess somewhat more obscure for that reason, but I don't know that he's necessarily exploring more in the way of ideas.

And the Comedy is entirely personal in its impetus, I mean he's literally a character in his own poem. This doesn't have to be considered a bad thing, in fact it's very beautiful in its own tragic way. But it's absolutely certain that he was driven to write it by intense personal emotion.

[Anonymous No.20563051]

>>20557215
>where the lustful suffer eternal hardships while Dante's enjoy their suffering
Ironically Dante would go to the Second Circle for being a fucking simp

[Anonymous No.20564390]

>>20556788
Guénon (pbuh) holds up Dante as a shining example of of Tradition in that book, you clown. You clearly did not read it, as he says this on the first page iirc, and multiple times thereafter.