/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22622448]

Here's a challenge /lit/. Discuss John Milton without discussing Paradise Lost. Pretend he never wrote it.

[Anonymous No.22622515]

>>22622448
easy. he didn't write paradise lost
he wrote paradife loft

[Anonymous No.22622534]

I reckon Milton is the best english poet between the elizabethans and the romantics. Shame he never wrote a blank verse epic in 12 books but Allegro & Pensero, Lycidas, his sonnets are among the best poetry of the 17th century

[Anonymous No.22622538]

>>22622534
What makes them among the best?

[Anonymous No.22622542]

He has so many wonderful, beautiful poems. Lycidas is of course great, and one of his most well-known, as is his On His Blindness, as well as his ode to Shakespeare, but even less discussed and obscurer ones like Il Penseroso and L’Allegro (two poems that cleverly contrast with and mirror each other, on happiness and melancholy respectively) are wonderful. Samson Agonistes I read a long time ago, and my memory of it is poor (worth rereading)

They are sheer joy to read. He is a master of versification, so beautifully euphonic, constantly consonant and assonant, filled with dense and beautiful imagery, as well as religious, philosophical, mystical and mythological allusions (as to the Old and New Testaments, Greek mythology, and even schools like Hermeticism and (Neo-)Platonism that had a revival with the Renaissance and its esotericism).

He is rightly called one of the absolute masters of English verse, perhaps even the best poet I’ve ever read in English next to (cliched as the choice is) luminaries like Shakespeare, if not surpassing him at times with his Miltonian grandeur. Some say his blindness was actually a boon for his poetry, as his composing the poetry in his head had to heighten his cognitive and rhetorical skills, gave an even greater focus on the sheer sounds of the words as he was dictating them, as well as perhaps even heightened his capacity for imaginative imagery.

Here’s a passage from his Il Penseroso I loved and which also starts off with his allusions to Hermeticism and Platonism, under-discussed esoteric/mystical influences on his work, along with astrology and Paracelsus’s teachings of the nature elementals (repeated in Renaissance alchemical and magical lore besides) turning up:

Or let my lamp, at midnight hour,
Be seen in some high lonely tower,
Where I may oft outwatch the Bear,
With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato, to unfold
What worlds or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook;
And of those Dæmons that are found
In fire, air, flood, or underground,
Whose power hath a true consent
With planet or with element.
Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy
In sceptred pall come sweeping by,
Presenting Thebs, or Pelops’ line,
Or the tale of Troy divine,
Or what (though rare) or later age
Ennobled hath the buskined stage.
But, O sad Virgin! that thy power
Might raise Musæus from his bower;
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing
Such notes as, warbled to the string,
Drew iron tears down Pluto’s cheek,
And made Hell grant what Love did seek;
Or call up him that left half-told
The story of Cambuscan bold,
Of Camball, and of Algarsife,
And who had Canace to wife,
That owned the virtuous ring and glass,
And of the wondrous horse of brass
On which the Tartar King did ride;
And if aught else great Bards beside
In sage and solemn tunes have sung,
Of turneys, and of trophies hung,
Of forests, and inchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear.

[Anonymous No.22622560]

>>22622448
One thing that has always puzzled me: how come Milton has that weird mini-epic called Paradise Regained? Strange title considering that it's mainly just about the temptations of Christ in the wilderness and has little ostensibly to do with paradise at all, anyone have a conjecture about this?

[Anonymous No.22622596]

>>22622538
My opinion.
Though I'd guess that more of the famous lines from Milton actually come from the shorter poetry rather than Paradise Lost. For instance:
>they also serve...
>look homeward angel
>on the light fantastic
>pastures new
>peace hath her victories

[Anonymous No.22622605]

>>22622448
Does he know the law?

[Anonymous No.22622664]

>>22622542
(2/2)
There’s just so much of the magical and wondrous in his works. To read Milton’s greatest poems is to enter into a magical, enchanted, joyous, mysterious, esoteric and erudite world, not necessarily in the (sometimes) quaint folksy way of a Tolkien or fantasy-writer that some might criticize, but one also imbued with epic grandeur. The fusion of Biblical, Greek (Platonic/Neoplatonic/mythological), Hermetic, and Renaissance astrological and magical lore creates such a beautifully interwoven tapestry. I’m a really bad critic and not that academically educated, so I find it hard to praise him in much depth beyond just constantly repeating adjectives like “beautiful” and “enchanting”. He is at times almost a proto-Romantic, but what he does in poems like L’Allegro, Il Penseroso, and Lycidas is so densely and beautifully crafted — constant imagery, meanings, and allusions densely packed into every line — that later of the greatest Romantic poets like Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth almost seem amateurish compared to him, as if writing in his shadow (and these are all astounding poets, so this isn’t meant to denigrate them, but rather to show how great my praise for Milton is). It reaffirms my faith in literature and poetry, in what it can do and the states of mind it can bring you to, corny and sentimental as this effusive praise sounds.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44732/il-penseroso
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44731/lallegro
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44733/lycidas

[Anonymous No.22622838]

>>22622448
Well he was pretty active politically. He was one of the more prominent republicans during the Commonwealth.

[Anonymous No.22622909]

the more I age the more his poetics strike me better than shaky's

[Anonymous No.22622915]

He'd be famous if he'd only written prose. Large parts of Areopagitica form the basis of US and UK common law

[Anonymous No.22623168]

>>22622542

Dude I came here to post this exact post. I love Il Penseroso as well! I find the images so much more penetrating than in his epic stuff.

Here's a youtube video of me reading it just a few days ago, rather poorly (I'm trying to practice my poetry reading):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpXITehtRy4

[Anonymous No.22623838]

>>22623168
You’re a brave fella for putting yourself out there like that (I mean, you’re not riding into war, but you are posting your face and your video on /lit/, which I found charming yet which I wouldn’t want to do, because of all the dumbasses who post here and seem to view it as their psychological toilet for the shit of their deranged ramblings, cynical shitposting, and vicious critiques of everything, anything, and anyone, with no soul and no depth). The reading was in no way bad in terms of “semi-literate high-schooler called on by the English teacher to read this passage from the book and stumbling over every other word, looking up confusedly at the teacher when they come on a word they can’t pronounce then butchering its pronunciation with a questioning tone of voice” bad (sorry, don’t mean to make fun of anyone), and your breath-control/pauses are pretty good (I’m pretty autistic when it comes to poetry reading, and always speak too long without the proper pauses, requiring me to pause and catch my breath in an awkwardly long way at random moments). The only unfortunate part was a frequency/tone at about 4m45s which seemed to catch a “vocal fry” hitch in the microphone, but that can probably be attributed to the mediocre quality of the phone’s microphone/voice recorder. Glad to see there’s a sincere fella on /lit/ who’s also been captivated by poems like Milton’s Penseroso. Godspeed.

(I saged this thread not because I disliked it, but because the barbarians don’t deserve such purity as this being bumped up to the front page so they can shit on it. No homo-ness intended).