Why hasn't John Milton been more influential outside of the English speaking world? He's arguably the second most important English writer after Shakespeare, yet he doesn't have nearly as much global influence as many other less important English writers.

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Anonymous Wed May 4 21:21:23 2022 No.20322787 [Reply] [Original]

Why hasn't John Milton been more influential outside of the English speaking world? He's arguably the second most important English writer after Shakespeare, yet he doesn't have nearly as much global influence as many other less important English writers.

Anonymous Wed May 4 21:31:07 2022 No.20322835

>>20322787
He's not really got any unique characters or stories. Paradise Lost is kind of a mish-mash of the story of the rebellion of the Titans (except with angels instead of titans) and the fall of Man. Poetic works can't really be translated the way prose works can, which is why poetry is usually either limited to one language or must have an extremely talented translator who is also a poet in their own right in order for translations of poems to work.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 4 21:34:17 2022 No.20322842 take a guess

>>	Anonymous Wed May 4 21:34:37 2022 No.20322843 >>20322787 His Satan was definitely an influence on the Romantics. Particularly Blake and Byron. And Byron in particular had a pretty large influence on continental Europe. So I would say he did have an indirect influence.

Anonymous Wed May 4 21:37:31 2022 No.20322855

>>20322843
I know he had a large influence on English writers. In my opinion, he's likely the second most influential writer of the English language after Shakespeare. However, his influence seems almost entirely limited to the English speaking world. Blake and Byron, despite being heavily influenced by Milton and not being as influential as him in the English speaking world, seem to have ten times more influence than him in the rest of the world.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 4 21:47:24 2022 No.20322901 Probably because he was long, difficult and full of allusions And very fucking Protestant

>>	Anonymous Wed May 4 22:06:30 2022 No.20323010 >>20322787 In what world is Milton the second most important writer in English? The fuck?

>>	Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 Wed May 4 22:07:57 2022 No.20323014 >>20322835 This is an interesting topic, I wonder who and what the labor was like in translating it into Spanish, Chinese, French and the like.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 4 22:08:33 2022 No.20323018 >>20323010 He's pretty influential in the world of English language poetry, even if not in the world of English language prose fiction.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 4 22:09:13 2022 No.20323022 >>20322835 /thread Also, Dante.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 4 22:14:17 2022 No.20323065 >>20323014 >I wonder who and what the labor was like in translating it into Spanish, Chinese, French and the like. The guy who made it is a hero.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 4 22:14:36 2022 No.20323066 >>20323010 Who would you say is the second most important English writer after Shakespeare?

Anonymous Wed May 4 22:30:18 2022 No.20323147

>>20323018
He's absolutely not relevant to modern poetry, or poetry of the last 150 years. Literally right after the romantics his relevancy began to die.
>>20323066
You dumb undergrad, you don't have to rank everything. Chaucer has a better claim to second most important, some modernists do as well.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 4 22:32:14 2022 No.20323158 >>20323147 Chaucer is the most important English writer before Shakespeare, but what about after him?

>>	Anonymous Wed May 4 22:41:20 2022 No.20323208 >>20323158 Joyce? Pound? Infinitely better writers, and far more influential now. There are authors who have singular works that are more influential now then Paradise Lost is.

>>	Anonymous Wed May 4 23:01:55 2022 No.20323303 >>20323147 modern "poetry" has no business being as relevant as critics want it to be

>>	Anonymous Wed May 4 23:10:48 2022 No.20323342 >>20322787 >He's arguably the second most important English writer after Shakespeare Is he, though?

Anonymous Wed May 4 23:14:39 2022 No.20323355

>>20323208
>Pound is a more important poet than Milton
lol @ poundfags, he really did a number on you, didn't he? I like him but he's not better than Milton no matter how many times he seethed at le Milton is le bad because Latin structure or some other nonsense.

Anonymous Wed May 4 23:45:33 2022 No.20323480

>>20323355
I'm not a "Poundfag" idiot. But denying he is more relevant than Milton would be autistic.
>He's not better than Milton
The level of autism here is astounding. No where did I say "Pound is better than Milton", just more relevant. Which is an irrefutable, nigh objective statement. it's also completely accurate for me to assume you've never read Pounds criticism of Milton (which is entirely well founded), but in either case the damage Modernism did to Milton is extremely well documented, and pretending otherwise is just delusional.

Oh yes I do also think he's a far more gifted poet than Milton lol

>>	Anonymous Wed May 4 23:55:25 2022 No.20323514 >>20323480 >but in either case the damage Modernism did to Milton is extremely well documented Modernism damaged poetry in general >Oh yes I do also think he's a far more gifted poet than Milton lol Free verse ain't real verse

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 00:59:17 2022 No.20323752 >>20323514 ive never met anyone cool irl who cares about modernist poetry. I guess that goes for most poetry though

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 03:50:32 2022 No.20324208 >>20323147 >He's absolutely not relevant to modern poetry, or poetry of the last 150 years. Wow, just like Shakespeare our most important poet!

Anonymous Thu May 5 03:53:39 2022 No.20324215
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>>20323480
>>20323514
Milton literally wrote in free verse.

>Only the name is new, you will find something much like vers libre in Dryden's Threnodia Augustalis; a great deal of Milton's Samson Agonistes, and the oldest in Chaucer's House of Fame.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 04:45:50 2022 No.20324375 Long winded fanfic will only carry you so far

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 05:05:47 2022 No.20324430 >>20323010 Correct, Milton is by far the best writer in English.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 05:07:19 2022 No.20324433 >>20324215 Blank verse isn't free verse.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 05:08:02 2022 No.20324434 File: 9 KB, 229x220, 1594736169157.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>20323147 >some modernists do as well. We got a tranny on our hands

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 05:08:21 2022 No.20324435 >>20324434 baseddd

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 05:15:08 2022 No.20324449 >>20324433 I think Hulme knows the difference between blank verse and free verse anon.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 05:56:27 2022 No.20324520 >>20323147 >he's not relevant to poetry of the last 150 years What a terrible malediction :^)

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 09:30:40 2022 No.20325144 >>20324208 Did you just try saying Shakespeare isn't relevant to modern poetry? Jesus Christ. Even if you exclude poetry (of which, there are far too many examples to give) Shakespeare continues to be extremely influential in prose writing too idiot.

Anonymous Thu May 5 09:32:25 2022 No.20325149

>>20324434
>>20324520
>No, I don't think Joyce or Beckett are relevant. No I don't think poets like Eliot, Pound, Frost etc are talked about and have influenced language more than Milton or the romantics
Tell me you guys stopped at highschool English, without telling me you stopped at highschool English.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 09:34:18 2022 No.20325153 >>20325149 Yep lads, I tell you, I mean it: he's still digging.

Anonymous Thu May 5 10:14:55 2022 No.20325289

>>20323014
here's a Chinese translation I found online of one of my fave bits in Paradise Lost, no idea if it reads as poetic to Chinese people, seems very literal to me
at least the last lines "tā yī nián yīdù zài líbānèn shòushāng, měi dāng xiàjì láilín shí, xīyǐn xùlìyǎ de chǔnǚ" doesn't really compare with "Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured,The Syrian damsels to lament his fate, In amorous ditties all a summer’s day."

For those the race of Israel oft forsook
Their Living Strength, and unfrequented left
His righteous altar, bowing lowly down
To bestial gods; for which their heads as low
Bowed down in battle, sunk before the spear
Of despicable foes. With these in troop
Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called
Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns;
To whose bright image nightly by the moon
Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs;
In Sion also not unsung, where stood
Her temple on th’ offensive mountain, built
By that uxorious king whose heart, though large,
Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell
To idols foul. Thammuz came next behind,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate
In amorous ditties all a summer’s day...

以色列族人,屢因這些偽神
而丟棄那賜予生命力的真神,
對正當的祭壇冷落,卻向獸神叩頭,
因此他們在戰場上也照樣把頭顱
低垂在鄙陋的敵人刀劍面前。
在這些精靈中,有個亞斯托勒,
是腓尼基人稱為亞斯他脫的,
頭上長了新月形雙角的天上女王;
每當月明之夜,西頓的處女們
便向她們那漂亮的偶像發誓、唱歌,
在錫安也不無歌頌,還在恥辱的
山上聳立她的廟宇,就是那個
好色的君王所營造的,這君王的心
是練達的,但因被艷麗的偶像崇拜者
所蠱惑,自己也拜倒在淫邪的偶像面前。
跟在她後面來的是塔模斯,
他一年一度在黎巴嫩受傷,
每當夏季來臨時,吸引敘利亞的處女

Anonymous Thu May 5 10:23:08 2022 No.20325317

>>20325144
No one writes in iambic pentameter anymore therefore Shakespeare is irrelevant.

Besides, pretending as if influence on modern literature means the same thing as it did 60 years ago is just disingenuous. There is no great or important literature being written. But Milton's influence is still second to only Shakespeare on our history, and I'm sure plenty of modern writers are still influenced by his themes and stories.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 10:50:28 2022 No.20325375 >>20325149 Eliot, Pound and Frost are irrelevant to modern poetry, about as irrelevant as Milton is. Fucking hundred year old niggas. It's not the 70s anymore, we've moved on from modernism grandpa

Anonymous Thu May 5 10:53:03 2022 No.20325380

>>20323480
>No where did I say "Pound is better than Milton", just more relevant. Which is an irrefutable, nigh objective statement.
Milton is far more relevant than Pound lol nothing Pound did as a poet comes close to the influence of Paradise Lost. The Cantos were a failure, even by Pound's own admission.
>it's also completely accurate for me to assume you've never read Pounds criticism of Milton (which is entirely well founded)
It's nothing more than a whine. Pound also dislike Milton because of his "asinine bigotry", which makes him sound like a cringe SJW of today.
>Oh yes I do also think he's a far more gifted poet than Milton lol
He merely parodies other poets in his early career and his later career is a total failure.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 11:10:06 2022 No.20325424 >>20322843 His Satan is also a huge influence on at least half of all depictions of Satan that followed.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 11:13:02 2022 No.20325429 >>20325375 >Eliot, Pound and Frost are irrelevant to modern poetry, about as irrelevant as Milton is. Fucking hundred year old niggas. It's not the 70s anymore, we've moved on from modernism grandpa Who are the best poets of nowadays?

Anonymous Thu May 5 11:49:39 2022 No.20325532

>>20325380
>Milton is far more relevant than Pound lol nothing Pound did as a poet comes close to the influence of Paradise Lost. The Cantos were a failure, even by Pound's own admission
Holy fuck I wish people would actually read the works (or at least take a college English class) in question before commenting on them. The Cantos being considered a failure by the author has no bearing on their quality. Secondly Pounds poetry, poetics and essays were the most influential of the modernist movement and forever changed the conventions and conversation around poetry. I am nearly positive you haven't read a single line from any of his prose works, but in either case the influence Pound (and by proxy, the people he popularized and helped publish) makes him far more influential than Milton. Truly no one cares about Milton, he is quickly disappearing from the academic world, and Pound - despite being a fascist - still continues to be relevant in discussions of poetry.
>It's nothing more than a whine. Pound also dislike Milton because of his "asinine bigotry", which makes him sound like a cringe SJW of today.
Ah yes, the antisemitic fascist is a cringe sjw of contemporary times. Thanks genius. He complained about his political stance, as did Eliot. But he also--in great detail--broke down Miltons verse, and addressed it separate from his political conventions. Oh and btw, even authors as far back as Samuel Johnson said Milton was sexist, which probably goes to show how true that statement is
>He merely parodies other poets in his early career and his later career is a total failure.
You have read nothing Pound has ever written. Back that statement up.

Anonymous Thu May 5 11:58:09 2022 No.20325557

>>20325317
>>20325375
Jesus Christ are literal children using this board?
>Durr no one writes in iambic pentameter anymore!!!
Yes, the extent of Shakespeares worth and influence was iambic metre. Truly nothing else was interesting about his writing.
>Besides, pretending as if influence on modern literature means the same thing as it did 60 years ago is just disingenuous.
No it's not. The only argument you can make is that Milton has had a longer (and poorer) influence on English. But that's no longer true, no one wants to read bad blank verse and poor characters for 10k lines.
>and I'm sure plenty of modern writers are still influenced by his themes and stories.
Yeah like that one YA book series his Dark Materials. What a legendary influence.
>>20325375
>Eliot, Pound and Frost are irrelevant to modern poetry, about as irrelevant as Milton is. Fucking hundred year old niggas. It's not the 70s anymore, we've moved on from modernism grandpa
Lmao yeah modernism isn't relevant anymore. That's why when someone lists the best novels in English it's just a bunch of modernist works.
>100 year old niggas
Yeah the point of literature is that it's timeless, you autistic 10th grader. Homer is nearly 3k years old and continues to be more relevant than Milton; time is not a factor. Pound completely reinvented poetry with his literary circle.

Anonymous Thu May 5 12:03:21 2022 No.20325574

>>20325557
>Yes, the extent of Shakespeares worth and influence was iambic metre. Truly nothing else was interesting about his writing.
Just applying to Shakespeare the same mentality applied to Milton.

>no one wants to read bad blank verse and poor characters for 10k lines.
Oh okay so you're a retard.

Anonymous Thu May 5 12:10:33 2022 No.20325605

>>20325574
>Just applying to Shakespeare the same mentality applied to Milton.
You are literally the retard that said "Shakespeare isn't relevant to modern poetry". A statement so egregiously retarded I don't know where to begin.
>Oh okay so you're a retard.
There are literally over a dozen better epic poems, with better verse and better characters (among a slew of other improvements over Milton). You have no leg to stand on for this argument, I can go back centuries through the criticism of Milton and show you how the most consistent complaint are the horrible characters, and bad blank verse.

I notice you haven't given me anything on the contrary to change that notion, and because of that I genuinely believe you have either not finished Paradise Lost (dropping somewhere after book 6) or haven't read Shakespeare, or Pound, or any of the modernists. Actual Highschooler.

Anonymous Thu May 5 12:15:03 2022 No.20325624

>>20325605
>You are literally the retard that said "Shakespeare isn't relevant to modern poetry". A statement so egregiously retarded I don't know where to begin.
I don't believe it you imbecile.

>I notice you haven't given me anything on the contrary to change that notion
You haven't given any critiques. Just 'verse is bad', 'characters are bad'. You don't think Milton's themes had an enormous influence on the Romantics, in England and abroad?

Anonymous Thu May 5 12:43:56 2022 No.20325758

>>20325624
"I don't believe it you imbecile."
>Nooo I don't believe it, it was sarcasm!
>That's why I double downed and said Shakespeare only matters because of iambic verse! No I'm not autistic I swear anon.
God you're dull.
>You haven't given any critiques
"Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is."
What do you want me to say. Do you want me to link you reading on criticisms of his verse? You can start with Johnson, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69382/from-lives-of-the-poets here, and you can start with Eliot by reading his essays titled "on milton". Pounds discussions of him range everywhere, but the most famous one is "him who disobeys me, disobeys" from "ABC of Reading", which you can read free on Google books. As for themes and characters, they exist in such a shallow capacity that writing about them is usually more in depth than PL itself. As Keats said "Milton's philosophy, human and divine, may be tolerably understood by one not much advanced in years."

It is to be blunt, an extremely simple story and deals with morality in an extremely simple way. I think a lot of people go through a phase of loving PL, especially in later highschool and early college years, before you just read more. Its why the people least read today of the romantics are the ones who took the most from Milton.
>You don't think Milton's themes had an enormous influence on the Romantics, in England and abroad?
Yes, a nearly entirely deplorable one. Outside of Keats and early Wordsworth I don't find much enjoyment in there works.

Anonymous Thu May 5 13:05:07 2022 No.20325885

thats all well and good if pound and eliot weren't horribly mediocre, and a complete dead end of literature (not saying anything bad about the novelists though). I know the discussion is about relevance, but you have shit taste and give off annoying energy although I cant place it

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 13:11:59 2022 No.20325913 >>20325885 Eliot is horribly mediocre yes, Pound isnt

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 13:13:44 2022 No.20325923 >>20325885 >if Eliot and Pound weren't mediocre As if Milton isn't lmao?

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 13:22:07 2022 No.20325956 >>20325923 i find him enjoyable, maybe I'm underread, Pound is not very enjoyable, super limp

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 13:25:55 2022 No.20325966 >>20325956 What about Pound is limp. What have you read from him?

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 14:33:24 2022 No.20326266 >>20325966 He sucks lol

Anonymous Thu May 5 14:41:17 2022 No.20326296

>>20325557
>modernism isn't relevant anymore
Only correct thing you've said. Kae Tempest is more influential on contemporary poetry than the high modernism you studied first year at college. Can you name a single modern poet taking their inspiration from Frost or Pound?
>muh lists
You will grow out of this phase

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 14:42:31 2022 No.20326300 He used the word Niggardly

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 16:03:12 2022 No.20326571 >>20326296 >Can you name a single modern poet taking their inspiration from Frost or Pound? I cant even name a single modern poet without googling, in any case nobel prize winning songwriter Bob Dylan was heavily influenced by Pound and Eliot

Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 Thu May 5 17:14:28 2022 No.20326894
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There are people in this thread who are really arguing Milton’s verse is bad. Fuck I thought I was pretentious. “Noooo it’s popular and well loved, has to be shit!”

Open challenge to anyone in this thread shitting on Milton, post 10 of his lines from any book in paradise lost, critique them as to why they are bad, then post 10 superior lines from a poem of your choice (especially in blank verse.) or if you have the balls, write those 10 lines, and argue for why these lines are superior.

If you can’t do this and none of you step up to the plate, you are not only a pretentious pseud and whoreson, but a coward and an edgelord-regurgitater.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 17:16:36 2022 No.20326905 >>20325913 Other way around, actually.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 17:19:47 2022 No.20326917 >>20326894 >coward and an edgelord-regurgitater. 100% of the faggots shitting on Milton ITT are only doing so because what Pound said about him kek just parroting someone else's opinion

Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 Thu May 5 17:22:12 2022 No.20326926

>>20325532
> You have read nothing Pound has ever written. Back that statement up.

Why are you lying when pound himself would tell you about his experimentations and how much he owes to previous authors, read something like his sestina altaforte and try to pretend it’s not explicitly an homage to Betrans de Born for example.

Him taking from and imitating and mixing authors isn’t a negative, success in imitation and admixture is imo the greatest thing an author can achieve. if pound didn’t believe so he wouldn’t shill so much study of prior literature nor would he work so hard on replication of qualities in the translation work he performed. I personally think his arnaut translations his best work.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 17:22:30 2022 No.20326930 >>20326894 stay based Frater

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 17:24:14 2022 No.20326940 File: 774 KB, 1246x978, 1650380264697.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 17:26:34 2022 No.20326947 >>20326940 This is true. Victorians are cringe, milton is based

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 17:28:20 2022 No.20326953 >>20324430 Based and Puritan-pilled

Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 Thu May 5 17:30:13 2022 No.20326958

>>20326917
If they agree with him that’s one thing even if we disagree with pound, they ought put up or shut up on the question of their personal critiques of Milton with textual examples.

As for the influence of Milton and his blank verse not being influential, the titanic amount of beloved blank verse poetry in imitation of Milton begs to differ. You may disagree with his characters but I think that’s a bullshit claim, how can you claim the characters of Milton weak rhetorically when it was powerful enough to make generations of Christian’s side and sympathize with literal Satan, how can we claim the heroic vision of satan as a kind of rebuilt aeneas (who is without a doubt the model of him, thus the lack of “depth” is actually due to the rhetorical schema employed by Virgil.) wasn’t influential, powerful or Good character design? From the conception of satan and shaping of the cultural mythic conception of Christianity, converting people, forcibly bending the methodology of verse and so forth, you can’t deny Milton’s influence, and if you will claim oh pound and so forth are the influential writers of the current generation of poets, who here can claim the average person wouldn’t sooner read paradise lost than a collection of pound or Elliot or the like. And as for popular garbage media being influenced. THATS HOW INFLUENCE WORKS, it pervades high and low if it’s truly such a cultural presence.

I just can’t imagine how anyone can pretend this isn’t one of the most influential works in the world.

Anonymous Thu May 5 17:55:01 2022 No.20327069

I don't come to this board often, but threads like this make me realise why. I just read books and either enjoy them or I don't. I don't speak any language other than English, but I still know that it's the best language in the world and that the English are the greatest people. Whether I'm reading blank verse or open verse or whatever else is of no consequence to me. You people need to loosen up and enjoy life lol

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 18:12:15 2022 No.20327155 >>20322787 >He's arguably the second most important English writer wew lad

Anonymous Thu May 5 18:28:32 2022 No.20327255

>>20326894
> Fuck I thought I was pretentious.
There is nothing pretentious about it. You are allowed to dislike things that are popular and well loved, you brainless idiot. I don't think Milton is garbage, I just think he's mediocre, and has so many flaws that the poems he wrote are not worth reading.
>post 10 of his lines from any book in paradise lost, critique them as to why they are bad, then post 10 superior lines from a poem of your choice (especially in blank verse.)
I'm not going to do 10, I have to pack for a trip, but here's a few:

>"Who disobeys him, disobeys me."
Pound used this line to showcase what he thought was the worst of what Latin had done to Milton who he said "studied not as a living language". He is inverting and changing word order to make normal idioms and syntax sound better in verse, (as Pound later said, it is a slight improvement over "who disobeys him, disobeys me")

This is a bad line. There are no two ways about this. A more gifted poet can make the language bend to adhere to meter, without breaking the language to the extent that the only way it comes off as verse is to completely inverse the syntax. All of the Angels (and especially Satan) speak in a way that reminds me of Hamlet when he's feigning insanity, it is hardly natural. There are portions of PL where he doesn't do this, a lot of the dialogue between Adam and Eve, there's a bit I read in Book 5 that was good. Compare what Samuel Johnson said hundreds of years earlier:
>Through all his greater works there prevails an uniform peculiarity of Diction, a mode and cast of expression which bears little resemblance to that of any former writer, and which is so far removed from common use that an unlearned reader when he first opens his book finds himself surprised by a new language.
Exhibit A:
>up stood the corny reed
> Embattled in her field: add the humble shrub
>And bush with frizzled hair implicit: last
>Rose as in dance the stately trees, and spread
>Their branches hung with copious fruit;
>or Gemmed / Their blossoms.
"And bush with frizzled hair implicit" good lord, have mercy. These words are made to conform to Latin constructions, his lexicon is full of it. It isn't as easy on the ear as Shakespeare (of whom I am not going to bother quoting, as everyone is already familiar with his blank verse), and its not even as natural as Keats abandoned epic (which I think, despite its largely unedited and entirely unfinished state, has better blank verse):
(1/2)

Anonymous Thu May 5 18:39:54 2022 No.20327324

>>20326894
>>20326958
I wrote like, at least two other full sized posts, and I thought I copied and saved them, but I didn't. And honestly dude I do not want to rewrite that entire thing ffs.
Here's the comparison from Keats in any case:
>I have no comfort for thee, no not one:
>I cannot say, "O wherefore sleepest thou?"
>For heaven is parted from thee, and the earth
>Knows thee not, thus afflicted, for a God;
>And ocean too, with all its solemn noise,
>Has from thy sceptre pass'd; and all the air
>Is emptied of thine hoary majesty.
>Thy thunder, conscious of the new command,
>Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house;
>And thy sharp lightning in unpractis'd hands
>Scorches and burns our once serene domain.
I really do not want to rewrite that entire essay (of which I pulled several examples, namely dialogue scenes from Book II and compared them to Prometheus Unbound, Shakespeare, and Keats) broad points:

>Why are you lying when pound himself would tell you about his experimentation and how much he owes to previous authors
The person who I replied to didn't say "Pound was influenced by other classical poets in his early years, who he paid homage to" he said "Pound parodied", which is an egregious misuse of what that word means, and would be entirely inaccurate. If he had said what you said, I wouldn't have needed to reply. Idiot.
>As for the influence of Milton and his blank verse not being influential, the titanic amount of beloved blank verse poetry in imitation of Milton begs to differ
No one argued this, you know as well as I do that Eliot and Pound thought that Milton has too much influence, not the other way around.
>ou may disagree with his characters but I think that’s a bullshit claim, how can you claim the characters of Milton weak rhetorically when it was powerful enough to make generations of Christian’s side and sympathize with literal Satan, how can we claim the heroic vision of satan as a kind of rebuilt aeneas (who is without a doubt the model of him, thus the lack of “depth” is actually due to the rhetorical schema employed by Virgil.)
If by "rhetorical schema" you mean "a terrible character, that no one in the history of literature has every praised" then yes. Satan is popular (THE only popular character out of the entire cast), because he is very simple to understand, and it was progressive in its depictions. Keats again: "Milton's philosophy, human and divine, may be tolerably understood by one not much advanced in years."
Johnson had even more scathing remarks about it. He is not popular because of his depthful character creations.

Anonymous Thu May 5 18:44:08 2022 No.20327342

>>20327324
>>20327255
>>20326958
>who here can claim the average person wouldn’t sooner read paradise lost than a collection of pound or Elliot or the like.
"Excuse me young lady, would you like to read a 10k line Christian Epic full of surprisingly dull battles, excessively hard to read English, and easily understood morality, oh you're walking away--"
Or
"here are some poems Eliot wrote about cats. Here's some of Pounds short poems, Cathay is really beautiful, but my personal favorite is April"
Yeah man, I wonder which it'll be, really thought provoking how no one is reading PL in schools anymore, my uni took it out of the survery of english lit courses last year kek.

I'm not going to go through all the stuff I posted before I deleted it like a moron, but here's the last example I had pulled, from Prometheus Unbound:
>And from a star upon its forehead, shoot, [4.270]
>Like swords of azure fire, or golden spears
>With tyrant-quelling myrtle overtwined,
>Embleming heaven and earth united now,
>Vast beams like spokes of some invisible wheel
>Which whirl as the orb whirls, swifter than thought, [4.275]
>Filling the abyss with sun-like lightenings
Autism. But more naturally English than Milton, and the rest of the work has that same level of borningness and a near childish view of the world and morality, which just plays into how bad Milton's influence has been.

>Sole King, and of his Kingdom loose no part [ 325 ]
>By our revolt, but over Hell extend
>His Empire, and with Iron Scepter rule
>Us here, as with his Golden those in Heav'n.
>What sit we then projecting peace and Warr?
>Warr hath determin'd us, and foild with loss [ 330 ]
>irreparable; tearms of peace yet none
>Voutsaf't or sought; for what peace will be giv'n
>To us enslav'd, but custody severe,
>And stripes, and arbitrary punishment
This is so bad, "to us enslaved, but custody severe" good God. Milton's best passages are the ones that are the LEAST like this.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 18:45:32 2022 No.20327349 >>20326940 Post the people that debunked him. Please.

Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 Thu May 5 18:49:53 2022 No.20327375

>>20327255
> you brainless idiot. I don't think Milton is garbage, I just think he's

>mediocre,

Again give your counter examples, write your counter examples.

>and has so many flaws that the poems he wrote are not worth reading.

How can you say this after reading him is impossible to me.

>him who disobeys being a modification of syntax

And? You understood it perfectly well, modification of language in a ornate And nonstandard fashion that’s still fully understandable but is musically and conceptually superior is a POSITIVE, why would it be a negative? You haven’t given reason as to why it’s musically incorrect, nor is it meaning wise inferior, you’ve only given further reading to praise his lapidary style, which your Samuel Johnson is forced to admire for the stylistic and erudite form of it.

> A more gifted poet can make the language bend to adhere to meter, without breaking the language to the extent that the only way it comes off as verse is to completely inverse the syntax.

According to who? The meaning of the verse remains in tact but the musicality and style is boosted, there is literally no negative to this.

>All of the Angels (and especially Satan) speak in a way that reminds me of Hamlet when he's feigning insanity, it is hardly natural.

Natural and human-like are stylistic options not standards of quality, they’re literally angels and demons, them speaking like normative humans would betray the splendor and mystery of them.

>There are portions of PL where he doesn't do this, a lot of the dialogue between Adam and Eve, there's a bit I read in Book 5 that was good.

The human characters are less filled with splendor in their diction, that would be a benefit of his adaptability not his lacks.

> Through all his greater works there prevails an uniform peculiarity of Diction, a mode and cast of expression which bears little resemblance to that of any former writer, and which is so far removed from common use that an unlearned reader when he first opens his book finds himself surprised by a new language.

Again this isn’t a negative, since the ancients the attic, asiatic and middle forms of writing have existed and we can directly trace Milton’s style to the anti-natural anti-ordinary form via Virgil, from Virgil to the Neoteric and alexandrian forms of poetics, the influence of Cornelius Gallus on Ovid and so forth, to these ancient models (chief of them being Virgil here.) common language was never the ideal and naturalness never the ideal, but ornateness, stateliness, beauty of image and so forth. This style was also well known for being hollow in terms of emotional depth. It’s a stylistic choice, you’re judging Milton not by the quality of his verse but your preferences of style.

The excerpts you provide simply demonstrate the ornate and stately style of Milton, now demonstrate your superior verse and explain in detail why it is technically superior.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 18:58:45 2022 No.20327416 >>20326940 how embarrassing

Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 Thu May 5 18:59:02 2022 No.20327418

>>20327324
>hyperion portion

It does not reach the splendor or music of Milton, it does not reach the height of mind nor strangeness. I say this as a lover of Keats, he isn’t comparable.

> If by "rhetorical schema" you mean "a terrible character, that no one in the history of literature has every praised"

You mean besides actually influential authors, like Blake, Lautréamont (and by extension the various surrealist influences.) and basically every satanist since publication?

>then yes. Satan is popular (THE only popular character out of the entire cast),

Why are you pretending he isn’t a powerful character when he’s literally powerful enough to get normal Christians to sympathize with satan, it’s not arguable, the rhetorical schema I’m talking about is the various inversions of and usages of classical texts and modes in satan and others speeches which undoubtedly succeeded on a cultural level,

>because he is very simple to understand, and it was progressive in its depictions.

Will you really reduce that influence down to “oh it was progressive for its time”?

>He is not popular because of his depthful character creations

Again it’s not about depth, he wasn’t aiming for depth but rhetorical power, his model Virgil DID NOT intend depth in characters and neither did Milton, they intended powerful and stirring and mentally staining and beautiful ones, of which they succeeded.

> "Excuse me young lady, would you like to read a 10k line Christian Epic full of surprisingly dull battles, excessively hard to read English, and easily understood morality, oh you're walking away--"
Or
"here are some poems Eliot wrote about cats. Here's some of Pounds short poems, Cathay is really beautiful, but my personal favorite is April"

Your manner of shilling both poets to normies is besides the point, you know fully well the average person will sooner pick up paradise lost because it’s understood as culturally one of the “serious” and “greatest” works in English, it is not debatable that Milton will attract the average person quicker than Elliot or pound.

All in all you’ve only presented your taste, if we will consider Milton an aesthetic success or not, influential or not, beautiful or not, able to manipulate the emotions or not, Milton undoubtedly succeeds.

Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 Thu May 5 19:05:16 2022 No.20327448

>>20327349
The alastair fowler annotated version I believe, goes at length in the preface explaining how relatively speaking Milton’s verse was only Latinate at a regular level for the time and at times was less manipulated than what was common, and multiple of his models like Joshua sylvester were very much more Latinate. Which is no surprise considering he was an Euphuist. If you want strange language usage or wider vocabulary, John Webster and John Marston probably have him beat rather easily in terms of having such strange and wide language usage.

Anonymous Thu May 5 19:57:30 2022 No.20327680

>>20327375
>>20327418
>Again give your counter examples, write your counter examples.
There is no example for "mediocre verse" I can give, more than the cited passages.
>How can you say this after reading him is impossible to me.
For starters, I read the poem and realized how dull it was. Of which in English, only the Faerie Queene is duller and more boring to read.
>but is musically and conceptually superior is a POSITIVE, why would it be a negative?
You're an idiot, there are """musical""" portions to PL, but that line is absolutely not one of them. List a single reason why that line is musical; is it the syntax and word order, forcing you to slow down and re-read a latin passage and parse it into English? Surely its that.
>According to who? The meaning of the verse remains in tact but the musicality and style is boosted, there is literally no negative to this.
"No you see its perfectly acceptable to excuse bad verse, because you can still understand it"
??? Are you dense? There is no argument you can make for reducing English to something so average and claiming "its uhhh one of the bestest things ever". The "style" is Miltonic: artificial and unnatural to English idiom, it is boastful and loud and has NOTHING interesting to say. Better poets than him managed lofty style before, and after and they did not have to re-create latin idioms and syntax in English to accommodate their own biases in the language. How you derive "musicality" from such a simple line (much less the preceding portions of that section) is beyond me, and seems like complete cope on your part to divorce the nature of the criticism being objectively about poor verse to "its an aesthetic thing". Why are you giving Milton a pass for "nonstandard" verse, when its so mediocre that it IS NOT VERSE without excessive modification?
>there is literally no negative to this.
it reads like crap?
>Natural and human-like are stylistic options not standards of quality
They are when you're trying to do what Milton was attempting: interpersonal / character drama. In which case his Angels and Demons fall utterly short. Homer and other classical poets managed to craft their Gods to be human like, without losing grandioseness. It kept a human element, it made them actual characters instead of cardboard cutouts.
>them speaking like normative humans would betray the splendor and mystery of them.
This is such a giant load of shit, you're effectively saying that Shakespeare, Homer, Tasso and other preceding poets that Milton drew inspiration from did not manage to create Gods / Spirits that were equally as grandiose, and still spoke in a way that was natural to the language, and could be drawn upon as insight to the human condition. Miltonic, boastful and pomp, with nothing to say.
>The human characters are less filled with splendor in their diction, that would be a benefit of his adaptability not his lacks.
That is, in fact, exactly what I said.

Anonymous Thu May 5 20:01:36 2022 No.20327698

>>20327375
>>20327418
>Again this isn’t a negative, since the ancients the attic, asiatic and middle forms of writing have existed and we can directly trace Milton’s style to the anti-natural anti-ordinary form via Virgil, from Virgil to the Neoteric and alexandrian forms of poetics, the influence of Cornelius Gallus on Ovid and so forth, to these ancient models (chief of them being Virgil here.) common language was never the ideal and naturalness never the ideal, but ornateness, stateliness, beauty of image and so forth. This style was also well known for being hollow in terms of emotional depth. It’s a stylistic choice, you’re judging Milton not by the quality of his verse but your preferences of style.
What a load of horseshit, literally the largest criticisms levied against Virgil are how bad and artificial his verse in the Aeneid is. Which is why greater artists borrowed more from Ovid, than Virgil. You are effectively saying that A. without unnatural dialect, there cannot be "ornateness, stateliness, beauty of image and so forth" or B. that the latter examples are some how naturally derived from this utterly alien style. Beauty in poetry exists without having to invert word order and write a sentence so full of latinisms it becomes a requirement to parse it syntactically. You do not have to "work" like this for Shakespeare, for Ovid, for Homer or Keats, it is a mark against Milton.
>The excerpts you provide simply demonstrate the ornate and stately style of Milton, now demonstrate your superior verse and explain in detail why it is technically superior. It does not reach the splendor or music of Milton, it does not reach the height of mind nor strangeness. I say this as a lover of Keats, he isn’t comparable.
What the fuck do you mean "it doesn't reach the splendor or music" of Milton, that's such a subjective statement which you don't bother even attempting to back up (which you conveniently ask me to do every time, and every time I've obliged), but your ear for music is so poor you thought "Who disobeys him, disobeys me." was musical, I don't trust your judgement, much less how subjective and flimsy your thought process is.
>Saturn is fallen, am I too to fall?
>Am I to leave this haven of my rest,
>This cradle of my glory, this soft clime,
>This calm luxuriance of blissful light,
>These crystalline pavilions, and pure fanes,
>Of all my lucent empire? It is left
>Deserted, void, nor any haunt of mine.
>The blaze, the splendour, and the symmetry,
>I cannot see—but darkness, death and darkness.
>Even here, into my centre of repose,
>The shady visions come to domineer,
>Insult, and blind, and stifle up my pomp.—
>Fall!—No, by Tellus and her briny robes!
>Over the fiery frontier of my realms
>I will advance a terrible right arm
>Shall scare that infant thunderer, rebel Jove,
>And bid old Saturn take his throne again."

Anonymous Thu May 5 20:03:30 2022 No.20327706

>>20327375
>>20327418
(cont)
This is an extremely good section, better than anything I've posted from Milton. It is 1. Natural, spoken english. 2. Equally as grandiose (the entire section describing Hyperions palace on the sun is), and in the grandeur he manages to build clear images AND doesn't have have to butcher syntax to do it. Its a better piece of verse than anything posted here from PL.
>Why are you pretending he isn’t a powerful character when he’s literally powerful enough to get normal Christians to sympathize with satan, it’s not arguable, the rhetorical schema I’m talking about is the various inversions of and usages of classical texts and modes in satan and others speeches which undoubtedly succeeded on a cultural level,
A "cultural" level says nothing about his verse. And my comment, was about Aeneas.
>Again it’s not about depth, he wasn’t aiming for depth but rhetorical power, his model Virgil DID NOT intend depth in characters and neither did Milton, they intended powerful and stirring and mentally staining and beautiful ones, of which they succeeded.
Yes, because his characters are so bad you have to literally pretend he wasn't going for dramatic and depthful characters, and say "he was just going for cool speeches bro". Shakespeare did both, Homer did both... I could keep naming authors who managed to do more with less. A complete artistic failure is what his characters are.
>Your manner of shilling both poets to normies is besides the point, you know fully well the average person will sooner pick up paradise lost because it’s understood as culturally one of the “serious” and “greatest” works in English, it is not debatable that Milton will attract the average person quicker than Elliot or pound.
No, I don't. Because in HS, PL received the least amount of votes for "which epic should we read" (the odyssey won), and in college we entirely skipped reading it. I have not met anyone outside of HS who likes PL.

Face it, even taking all your mental gymnastics into account you have to say "Its super grandiose, unnatural English verse with no meaningful depth and fails entirely to create convincing drama", and that's the best take you have.

Anonymous Thu May 5 20:05:19 2022 No.20327714

>>20327448
http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/6362Pickard1.htm

This paper utterly rips Fowler a new asshole from a non poundian perspective... got anyone else? Because its kinda looking like Milton used a lot of latinism, and Pound and Eliot were 100% correct. Even if you disagree about if it makes the work good or bad.

Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 Thu May 5 20:38:24 2022 No.20327848

>>20327680
> or starters, I read the poem and realized how dull it was. Of which in English, only the Faerie Queene is duller and more boring to read.

This sounds a question of taste and not technique ultimately, for I enjoyed it.

> "No you see its perfectly acceptable to excuse bad verse, because you can still understand it"
??? Are you dense? There is no argument you can make for reducing English to something so average and claiming "its uhhh one of the bestest things ever". The "style" is Miltonic: artificial and unnatural to English idiom,

My argument for why it’s good is BECAUSE it transmits his style, sounds musical and is fully comprehensible, what could be more desirable ?

>it is boastful and loud and has NOTHING interesting to say.

These sound much more like character problems and conceptual problems and not actual verse problems.

>Better poets than him managed lofty style before, and after and they did not have to re-create latin idioms and syntax in English to accommodate their own biases in the language.

Again you keep saying this as if it’s somehow an inherently bad thing, it’s not. He intended it, it’s part of the aesthetic he aimed for. You cannot complain about it on purely conceptual grounds because these grounds are subjective and can equally be torn down by subjective taste, we must consider him by his own standard, and by his own standard he very clearly succeeds in the production of his own unique aesthetic.

>How you derive "musicality" from such a simple line (much less the preceding portions of that section) is beyond me,

By speaking it, it very clearly has a music and a character unique to Milton, when I say aesthetic I do not use it as an excuse but as the most fundamental aim of any poetic work, the fact you call it miltonic means he succeeded in making his understandable speech bend to his mind and ideals. That is success.

>Why are you giving Milton a pass for "nonstandard" verse, when its so mediocre that it IS NOT VERSE without excessive modification?

It very clearly is verse and the modification is part of the package, you can’t reduce his ideals from the question.

> t reads like crap?

It reads full of splendor and power, it not sounding like normal humans isn’t a fault but a design choice. You say it reminds you of hamlet, good! Hamlet in his insanity act shows the height of theatrics and drama, so also do these, being literal devils and great angels.

> They are when you're trying to do what Milton was attempting: interpersonal / character drama. In which case his Angels and Demons fall utterly short. Homer and other classical poets managed to craft their Gods to be human like, without losing grandioseness. It kept a human element, it made them actual characters instead of cardboard cutouts.

Cont

Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 Thu May 5 20:39:24 2022 No.20327854

>>20327848
Once more, his model is Virgil not homer, the goal is to justify God and produce aesthetic beauty and rhetorical effectiveness, the latter two he undoubtedly does.

> Shakespeare,

You prove your ignorance of Shakespeare, the deities, fey, magical creatures and extremes in Shakespeare are always given a strangeness in the texture of their speech, whether this is rhymed cataplectic trochaic tetrameter or simply strangeness of diction such as in Hecate and caliban, the various ghosts and so forth. Hell much in Julius Caesar is by no means natural and human due to height and grandeur and austerity.

> What a load of horseshit, literally the largest criticisms levied against Virgil are how bad and artificial his verse in the Aeneid is.

By those who dislike him, he was considered pretty much the greatest poet of his time and Ovid took liberally from him so your complaint can’t be used here either. Whether you like it or not he’s considered one of the best Latin poets in history.

>Which is why greater artists borrowed more from Ovid, than Virgil.

Guess Dante is a lesser poet!

>You are effectively saying that A. without unnatural dialect, there cannot be "ornateness, stateliness, beauty of image and so forth" or B. that the latter examples are some how naturally derived from this utterly alien style.

Neither neither, rather that manner of speech and content cohere and the style and strangeness are aesthetic options and for Milton and Virgil, IDEALS, they were wanted. The Artifice was desired.

The whole events around Cicero’s middle style in Erasmus and Scaliger (and others) shows us precisely that, on account of Cicero’s place (pre erasmus) as the paragon of Latin verse, being as ornate at times as Virgil and having opposition on account of it not having a natural and living form of language, that this is simply an aesthetic choice. A thing of design and one of which a lot of human history has supported as an aesthetic ideal. You have no right to shill your personal ideal upon him then claim him a failure any more than he you or I you; thus we ought Analyze if he succeeds in what he sets out to do, he undoubtedly does.

>Beauty in poetry exists without having to invert word order and write a sentence so full of latinisms it becomes a requirement to parse it syntactically.

Again, an option, him choosing a baroque style is not a fault but a taste question.

>You do not have to "work" like this for Shakespeare

You absolutely do have to wrestle with latter Shakespeare’s euphuistic stacking of wordplay and layering of Metalepsis to incredibly autistic degrees, why is that ornate artifice given a pass?

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 20:52:50 2022 No.20327900 >>20327069 >I don't speak any language other than English, but I still know that it's the best language in the world THE ABSOLUTE STATE OF ANGLOS HAHHAHAHAHA

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 20:58:57 2022 No.20327914 >>20327854 >the goal is to justify God and produce aesthetic beauty and rhetorical effectiveness, the latter two he undoubtedly does. I'm curious as to your two cents on why he fails to justify God

Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 Thu May 5 21:07:18 2022 No.20327944

>>20327914
>I'm curious as to your two cents on why he fails to justify God

I don’t believe God needs further justification in the first place and don’t believe I’ve encountered anyone who was having issues on this topic who was refined on this point via reading Milton, but my disagreements on him as theologian and evangelist aside, the dude lives rent free in the cultural mind of the west.

Anonymous Thu May 5 21:14:20 2022 No.20327978

>>20327848
>his sounds a question of taste and not technique ultimately, for I enjoyed it.
Yes, I think my taste is more developed than yours. I also think your argument is so full of holes its almost not worth replying to.
>My argument for why it’s good is BECAUSE it transmits his style, sounds musical and is fully comprehensible, what could be more desirable ?
"It is fully comprehensible" so is the vast majority of bad verse in the English language. Again, from Johnson to Pound (i.e, masters of the english language who wrote lengthy criticisms on it) people separated by hundreds of years and vastly different poetics still all came to a central conclusion. Your arguments are then, that writing in English like it was Latin is actually good. In which case the argument is less about verse, and more about syntax that is not naturally expressed in English (which can be good, but it is certainly not in Milton's case). The more desirable outcome would be writing beautiful poetry, that does not need inversions, latin syntax and pomp to hide flat verse, and dull characters. Milton is a failure, and can hardly be considered musical in any regard. If you read iambic lines like retard as DUM-dum, the metronome is terse and uninteresting. If you read it as fluidly as prose, you have a harsh dictation and elision that constantly pulls the rug out from the RULES of the english language, which Milton broke (indefensibly) to create verse. "who disobeys me disobeys" isn't a good line, for the same reason over half the rest of the poem is, and has to be re-written to pass as iambic verse.
>These sound much more like character problems and conceptual problems and not actual verse problems.
These are all failings of Milton, and are entirely inseparable from his lousy poetry.
> it’s not
Give me a singular reason its not bad. The rules of the English language were broken in a nonsensical way to create passable verse. Beckett didn't have to do it to stretch the limits of English, neither did Joyce. Pound certainly didn't and his poetry is considerably weirder, and harder to understand.
>cannot complain about it on purely conceptual grounds because these grounds are subjective and can equally be torn down by subjective taste, we must consider him by his own standard, and by his own standard he very clearly succeeds in the production of his own unique aesthetic.
Are you underage? Are you seriously saying you cannot critique aesthetics "because its what the author wanted"? Whether he succeeded by his own metric is an entirely different debate, and not what is being discussed here. We are discussing his verse, in which his aesthetic choices did nothing but harm the poetry.
>By speaking it, it very clearly has a music and a character unique to Milton
There is no music here. Barely even a metronome, it just drones. I can post passages from PL that are musical, but that wasn't one of them. Its a hill you should probably avoid dying on.

Anonymous Thu May 5 21:15:20 2022 No.20327982

>>20327854
>It very clearly is verse and the modification is part of the package, you can’t reduce his ideals from the question.
I said "it is NOT verse without the modification". Without having to go into prosody, it simply isn't iambic. It had to be adjusted to fit meter, that's all. I didn't say "this isn't poetry"
>It reads full of splendor and power, it not sounding like normal humans isn’t a fault but a design choice
yes and to retort: a stupid, utterly baffling design choice that is a complete failure in execution. You cant hide behind "uhh he did it on purpose" to excuse poor judgement.
>You say it reminds you of hamlet, good! Hamlet in his insanity act shows the height of theatrics and drama, so also do these, being literal devils and great angels.
You are such a brainlet that you don't understand why that's bad. Hamlet's feigning insanity is a JOKE, made to poke fun at the other characters, meant to confuse and misdirect the audience, and to completely make fun of bad over the top verse. That comparison was not a polite one. Yeah, it is the height of theatrics and drama, of which under the surface is a very lucid Hamlet speaking in completely different idioms lmfao.
>You prove your ignorance of Shakespeare
No I am not. I do not understand how someone with a passing knowledge of Shakespeare and general English discussions is failing to understand what I am very clearly saying.
> in Shakespeare are always given a strangeness in the texture of their speech
And they are ALWAYS an extension of natural English, within the confines of GOOD poetry. Shakespeare never does what Milton does, and is all the more successful for it.
>By those who dislike him
Even his most generous supporters complained about verse, and characters. Your point is moot. Ovid taking from him is also largely derided; his works range massively in their style, and he absolutely mocks the grandeur of passages of Virgil.
>Guess Dante is a lesser poet!
Dante took more from Ovid (the superior latin poet) than he did Virgil. If you disagree you're an actual brainlet.
>thus we ought Analyze if he succeeds in what he sets out to do, he undoubtedly does.
Which has NOTHING to do with the quality of the work you dipshit, good lord. To say nothing on the merits of his supposed success.

Anonymous Thu May 5 21:16:21 2022 No.20327988

>>20327982
>>20327854
>You absolutely do have to wrestle with latter Shakespeare’s euphuistic stacking of wordplay and layering of Metalepsis to incredibly autistic degrees
Jesus Christ stop embarrassing yourself you dumb ESL. The antecedent of my statement was the inverted word order and stateliness getting in the way of either the story, or simple reading pleasure. That never happens in Shakespeare. Every layer is one of genius, but someone who knew what they were doing. You are literally shooting yourself in the foot, as Shakespeare not only managed to write in grandiose verse but actually have depth.
>why is that ornate artifice given a pass?
Because it isn't ornate? Because everything serves to create a compelling story? Because it isn't artifice? Because he wrote good poetry??

You also completely failed to reply to any of the sections I quoted, and instead have just said "well he and Virgil wanted the same thing bro", and don't have a single response to the passages. Milton and Virgil are equally far from Shakespeare and Homer, and any serious study on them will reveal that, he borrowed from lesser poets and made lesser poetry.

Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 Thu May 5 21:40:09 2022 No.20328093

>>20327978
> Yes, I think my taste is more developed than yours. I also think your argument is so full of holes its almost not worth replying to.

You give no reason to believe either.

> so is the vast majority of bad verse in the English language.

Not with the beauty and height of language and flow.

>Again, from Johnson to Pound (i.e, masters of the english language who wrote lengthy criticisms on it)

They’re both midgets compared to Blake, I’ll take the master poet in Blake over pound or Johnson anyday.

>Your arguments are then, that writing in English like it was Latin is actually good.

My argument is a pluralistic conception of potential virtues and valuations in verse based on a synthesis of the aesthetic theories of Hopkins, pater, Schiller remy de gourmont, abhinavagupta, Goethe and others, I will gladly post a lengthy essay on my conception of aesthetics if you desire which will show I am not simply arguing a basic relativism but rather arguing for a more advanced and nuanced critique which goes beyond your individual preferences.
>In which case the argument is less about verse, and more about syntax that is not naturally expressed in English (which can be good, but it is certainly not in Milton's case).

You understand it, it flows smoothly and sounds good.
>
The more desirable outcome would be writing beautiful poetry, that does not need inversions, latin syntax and pomp to hide flat verse,

Bullshit, why should inversions and syntax manipulation and pomp not be used ? Because you don’t like it? It’s a historical style and one he does excellently and spent years developing. There’s nothing flat about it, the style pervades every line.

>and dull characters. Milton is a failure, and can hardly be considered musical in any regard. If you read iambic lines like retard as DUM-dum, the metronome is terse and uninteresting.

Nigger have you never scanned his poetry it’s filled to the brim with suppositions and extrametrical syllables which cohere with the context.

>If you read it as fluidly as prose, you have a harsh dictation

It’s supposed to be harsh and manly.

>and elision that constantly pulls the rug out from the RULES of the english language,

Cont

Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 Thu May 5 21:42:09 2022 No.20328099

>>20328093
There is method and regularity to his elision system and good effect to it, see Robert bridge’s work on his meter.

>Ovid

Fasti certainly doesn’t, and Dante taking from both poets isn’t unknown, are you really gonna sit here and pretend Dante didn’t coom over Virgil? Why lie?

> These are all failings of Milton, and are entirely inseparable from his lousy poetry.

They’re the accidents of your specific taste not being appealed to, his lineage doesn’t care for this.

> Give me a singular reason its not bad.

I need not prove a negative, but it’s not bad because it can have useful effects for metrical, musical and contextual and aesthetic purposes, that’s like saying repetition of lines in poetry is bad because it doesn’t progress the plot, it’s the same kind of ignoring of deliberate aesthetic choice.

>The rules of the English language were broken in a nonsensical way to create passable verse.

It’s very clearly not nonsense we can all understand it, who are you trying to kid?

>Beckett didn't have to do it to stretch the limits of English, neither did Joyce. Pound certainly didn't and his poetry is considerably weirder, and harder to understand.

This to me sings the praises of Milton more than anything, doing things these others didn’t for his own style.

> Are you underage? Are you seriously saying you cannot critique aesthetics "because its what the author wanted"?

Nigger was de Quincey underage for saying that success in art is achieved via adherence to one’s own ideals and formal rules being satisfied? Was Wagner for saying the same in his aesthetic essays? You can judge him on topics where you agree in value, such as “is this line effective to stir emotion.” But in the case where your ideals are literally opposite, such as him not wanting to sound like natural English, and you desiring natural English, it is not possible to judge him a failure for he wasn’t even attempting to play your game, you are reducing the question of aesthetics down to your own taste and nothing more.

>We are discussing his verse, in which his aesthetic choices did nothing but harm the poetry.

Clearly not, you know very well for any critic you can find against Milton I can post ten singing his praise, and we cannot deny the cultural influence and effects of his work which were desired by him, chiefly the rhetoric centered around satan. He SUCCEEDED to the point he engraved his imagination into the cultural imagination, to complain about the lack of emotional depth is like trying to complain that Hecate doesn’t have emotional depth in Shakespeare or that the allegorical figures in the fairy queen do not, it’s literally not the point of the writing, it’s literally not a concern.

> Jesus Christ stop embarrassing yourself you dumb ESL. The antecedent of my statement was the inverted word order and stateliness getting in the way of either the story, or simple reading pleasure.

Cont

Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 Thu May 5 21:43:09 2022 No.20328103

>>20328099
Nigger it’s not ESL, it’s you not understanding that the layered metaphors very much DO get in the way of the straight reading and they are again design choices, in the same way the language is key to Milton, so also is something like this key to Shakespeare

Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets;
As stars with trains of fire, and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star

And this

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
— To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

Will you pretend that’s somehow easier than the syntax modifications or somehow less artificial? Shakespeare is filled to the brim with artificial wordplay and layered metaphorical constructs which have no part in natural speech.

> Because it isn't ornate? Because everything serves to create a compelling story? Because it isn't artifice? Because he wrote good poetry??

Lmao all of his works pre and you to midsummer’s night dream are filled with purple artifice not designed for the context of the story but simply for the beauty of the artifice, who are you trying to fool?

>You also completely failed to reply to any of the sections I quoted, and instead have just said "well he and Virgil wanted the same thing bro", and don't have a single response to the passages. Milton and Virgil are equally far from Shakespeare and Homer, and any serious study on them will reveal that, he borrowed from lesser poets and made lesser poetry.

Nothing but shit taste here, since your argument derives from “I don’t like it” and nothing more, you can be shut down by similar subjective negation.

>>	Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 Thu May 5 21:44:20 2022 No.20328106 I’m out for now G, reply and if the thread’s still up tomorrow I’ll continue the discussion.

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 22:04:19 2022 No.20328169 >>20328093 "They’re both midgets compared to Blake" >complains about shit taste >Calls Pound a midget compared to Blake Im done

>>	Anonymous Thu May 5 22:09:31 2022 No.20328184 >>20328169 >>Calls Pound a midget compared to Blake That's when I dropped too.

Anonymous Fri May 6 00:45:23 2022 No.20328725

>>20327978
I think the Latin syntax is at worst only a little annoying. I'm not going to defend "Him who disobeys, me disobeys" but you're making too much of it. There are still many moments like this which sound great despite the weird word order:

Thus roving on
In confus'd march forlorn, th' adventrous Bands
With shuddring horror pale, and eyes agast
View'd first thir lamentable lot, and found
No rest: through many a dark and drearie Vaile
They pass'd, and many a Region dolorous,
O'er many a Frozen, many a fierie Alpe,
Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens, and shades of death,
A Universe of death, which God by curse
Created evil, for evil only good,
Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds,
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, inutterable, and worse
Then Fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceiv'd,
Gorgons and Hydra's, and Chimera's dire.

Anonymous Fri May 6 01:26:41 2022 No.20328793

Wordsworth, one of the masters of 'natural' English verse, was hugely influenced by Milton and so were the other English romantics.

>Wordsworth was early recognized by his admirers as the greatest imaginative genius since Milton, who, on this account, would naturally come to mind as a term of comparison. In the second place, Wordsworth himself not only acknowledged him as his master but invited comparison by frequently referring to the example of Milton in his essays, letters, and conversations; his habit of quoting and talking about him must have been very evident to his friends, if we may judge by the testimony of Crabb, Robinson, and others. It was this, no doubt, as well as the fact of actual imitations, which prompted Charles Lamb to call Wordsworth "the best knower of Milton", and the numerous comments on Milton in the essays and letters of the poet doubtless serve as thebasis of Lane Cooper's assertion that Wordsworth is Milton's best critic.

>My admiration of some of the Sonnets of Milton,
first tempted me to write in that form. The fact
is not mentioned from a notion that it will be deemed
of any importance to the reader, but merely as a
public acknowledgement of one of the innumerable
obligations, which, as a Poet and a Man, I am under
to our great fellow-countryman.

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc130234/m2/1/high_res_d/n_01686.pdf

>Milton is a failure, and can hardly be considered musical in any regard. If you read iambic lines like retard as DUM-dum, the metronome is terse and uninteresting. If you read it as fluidly as prose, you have a harsh dictation and elision that constantly pulls the rug out from the RULES of the english language, which Milton broke (indefensibly) to create verse
>Without having to go into prosody, it simply isn't iambic. It had to be adjusted to fit meter, that's all. I didn't say "this isn't poetry"

Milton is known for freeing up blank verse and this made his genius impossible to escape once people stopped writing mostly heroic couplets. You only reveal you simply have no ear for poetry not by-numbers. To call Shakespeare's virtuosity an extension of natural English is simply arbitrary. There's nothing rule-breaking about mild inversions and mildly free word order. Pound is a kook and not a master of the English language either in the making of poetry or the criticism of it.

>>	Anonymous Fri May 6 07:24:36 2022 No.20329538 Bump

>>	Anonymous Fri May 6 07:58:37 2022 No.20329622 >>20328169 >>20328184 What’s the best pound poem if he’s better than Blake and why?

Anonymous Fri May 6 08:30:44 2022 No.20329735

>>20328725
>>20328793
>same fag turns off his trip and doesn't bother changing his writing style
>Noooo Pound isn't *literally* the most celebrated poet of the 20th century, and he definitely isn't the most influential literary critic since Johnson noooo
Jesus Christ, I do not give a shit if you like Pound or not but imagine saying Blake is better lol.

Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 Fri May 6 08:39:48 2022 No.20329753
File: 265 KB, 828x498, 5EF0CF2E-5DB8-4AA2-AD26-EB318BBFC108.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>20329735
Swing and a miss. You’re schizoing out. And Blake IS better. He’s far more musical, has far higher mind, and is simply far more beautiful. Blake being one of the best poets isn’t exactly a controversial opinion, nor is dislike of pound. No reason to be shocked that multiple here do not agree with you.

Anonymous Fri May 6 09:27:29 2022 No.20329875

>>20329753
You literally speak in the exact same why, why are you even trying to hide it. Its been like 12 hours, you could easily have just closed off the webpage and came back.
> He’s far more musical, has far higher mind, and is simply far more beautiful
>far far far
>has higher mind
Dumb ESL cant write. Blake being considered good is not only a completely alien opinion in modern times, but I know for a fact that you have not stepped foot in a uni with these thoughts, because you would just be laughed out of the classroom by your professor.

Anonymous Fri May 6 09:31:37 2022 No.20329888

>He's FAR more musical
>No these are aesthetic choices, and he *absolutely* succeeds
>You see, Milton didn't want to write good characters! Its not that he didn't try anon
>Yes I am arguing using points so subjective that they don't contribute to the debate, yes I am completely sidestepping and strawmanning arguments to reply to things you haven't said
>Here's a quote from Shakespeare to prove my point
>posts an extremely easy to understand passage
There are some people not worth arguing with, this is one of those people.

If any anon wants to read more about why Milton is nearly universally derided in modern times, just go through the links that got posted earlier here >>20325758

Anonymous Fri May 6 09:39:09 2022 No.20329908

>>20323303
Most poetry sucks in general. I have a personal hatred of William Carlos Williams and his fucking post it note poem that every god damn professor in undergrad thought was a perfect example of some bullshit I tuned out.

If it's not Yeats or Hughes, it can burn for all I care.

>>	Mathias !lo/.O/PetI Fri May 6 09:40:25 2022 No.20329913 >>20326894 Based friend :)

Anonymous Fri May 6 09:43:03 2022 No.20329920

"The sound is better when the idiom is bad, when the writing is masterfully done one does NOT have to excuse it or hunt up the reason for perpetuating the flaw"
The more I read this thread, the more I realize how much I dislike reading Milton.

You faggots convinced me, where do I start with Pound?

>>	Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 Fri May 6 10:17:14 2022 No.20330051 >>20329875 were literally different people you Mongoloid, and your fantasy of a professor browbeating me means nothing because you are incapable of doing it yourself.

Anonymous Fri May 6 10:37:13 2022 No.20330130

>>20329888
Milton isn't universally derided in modern times. Where are you getting this impression? Whether it is in the academic or the popular press, Paradise Lost is mainly discussed in a respectful and admiring way.

As for what critics have complained about it, Johnson may have criticized the "foreign idiom" in the poem, but he also said that such faults were unimportant. "Such are the faults of that wonderful performance Paradise Lost; which he who can put in balance with its beauties must be considered not as nice but as dull, as less to be censured for want of candour than pitied for want of sensibility."

Eliot recanted many of his criticisms of Paradise Lost and wrote this after some reconsideration. "To say that the work of a poet is at the farthest possible remove from prose would once have struck me as condemnatory: it now seems to me simply, when we have to do with a Milton, the occasion of its peculiar greatness. As a poet, Milton seems to me probably the greatest of all eccentrics." Then he went on echo the traditional praise of Paradise Lost, that Milton had a wonderful ability to summon up the sense of enormous scale, "vast size, limitless space, abysmal depth, and light and darkness."

Two more critics worth mentioning are Christopher Ricks and William Empson. Ricks's book "Milton's Grand Style" is a good answer to the charge that Milton's style is just sheer noisiness, and corrects some of Eliot's mistakes, like his misreading of Moloch's speech in book 2. Empson's book "Milton's God" shows how much thought went into the characterization in the poem.

>>	Anonymous Fri May 6 11:48:52 2022 No.20330391 >>20328093 >They’re both midgets compared to Blake So true.

>>	Anonymous Fri May 6 13:05:23 2022 No.20330645 >>20329908 >doesn't like Williams Carlos Williams I actually feel sorry for you.

>>	Anonymous Fri May 6 14:59:46 2022 No.20331067 >>20329735 >midwit filered by blake

>>	Anonymous Fri May 6 15:00:47 2022 No.20331072 >>20329875 you're a fag. fag fag fag fag fag

>>	Anonymous Fri May 6 15:02:15 2022 No.20331076 >>20329888 i truly don't care about all the times you sucked your modernist professors dick I'm not suprised to know that great poets are hated by the cringe academia

Anonymous Fri May 6 18:55:36 2022 No.20331987

>>20327680
Do you really think Tasso's Satan, complete with rough beard and goat's horns and a "trident great / of rusty iron huge that forged was" is in any way comparable to Milton's? Or that his demons - "Silenus' foul and loathsome rout" - are superior to Milton's? (The expressions are even lower in the Italian.) I can grant criticism of his syntax, but there is no comparison between his spirits and those of Tasso or Ariosto or Spenser or Camouens or (god forbid!) Voltaire.

>>	Anonymous Fri May 6 21:10:45 2022 No.20332548 >>20329875 >you have not stepped foot in a uni Why are you saying good things about the man you’re so vehemently against?

>>	Anonymous Fri May 6 21:58:11 2022 No.20332735 >>20322787 I was watching that lesbian South Korean film called the handmaiden and his book paradise lost was mentioned as an example of a precious book. It seems like South Koreans know him then.

>>	Anonymous Fri May 6 22:03:50 2022 No.20332756 >>20322787 I have a strange sexual attraction to John Milton because of how sexist he was. It’s strange because I don’t find modern men who are sexist attractive.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 7 00:59:37 2022 No.20333284 >>20331987 I think you have to lie to yourself to believe his satan isn’t overwhelmingly influential.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 7 01:16:02 2022 No.20333322 Brainlet here, what makes Milton and Shakespeare important? I'm convinced that it's because they're the oldest writers the ordinary person can understand without a translation.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 7 11:02:03 2022 No.20334951 >>20333322 Bump.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 7 15:13:10 2022 No.20336156 >>20322787 Who is John Milton?

>>	Anonymous Sat May 7 15:14:29 2022 No.20336165 >>20333322 >I'm convinced that it's because they're the oldest writers the ordinary person can understand without a translation. There are plenty of other writers from that time period who are much less acclaimed, or even forgotten altogether.

Anonymous Sat May 7 18:01:36 2022 No.20336958

>>20322787
I presume this is for a number reasons, which can especially be highlighted in relation to Shakespeare whom you’ve mentioned. Shakespeare created a vast, enormous range of memorable, deeply psychologically drawn and compelling characters who have themselves become archetypes and timeless figures, from the villain to the tortured tragic hero to the buffoon (Hamlet, Falstaff, Iago, King Lear, Macbeth to name a few). Milton doesn’t have this range of characters, the Satan he depicts in Paradise Lost is perhaps his greatest achievement in this regard but practically his sole one. Shakespeare also has an extremely rich and varied poetic texture, as Nabokov pointed out (to the extent that he believed it wasn’t the play that was the main thing in Shakespeare’s works but the poetic texture itself — a characteristically Nabokovian, aesthete’s view and maybe a bit hyperbolic but still a fine point). The massive amount of metaphors, similes, and imagery jammed into as many lines as possible makes Shakespeare’s plays something like hyper-poetic, even more poetic than many poems. In translation, I would assume the beauty of his poetry certainly isn’t contained to a 100% faithful degree, but the surplus of metaphoric language probably still carries over to a greater extent than Milton in translation would — Milton’s poetry, such as in his masterpiece “Paradise Lost”, is some of the most sonorously composed in the English language but it doesn’t have this same metaphoric density. Finally, Shakespeare, in addition to the massive and deeply drawn range of characters he created, also has a massive range of stories themselves, in practical all the major tones possible of literature — tragic, comic, dramatic, tragicomic, historical, and mythological/magical/fantastic. Admittedly, this was far from being entirely original story-telling and was mainly cribbed from fairy tales, folklore, history and other plays already extant, but it still took a great gift and combinatorial talent to synthesize this material into so many unique and memorable stories. Milton doesn’t have this same range of memorable stories told and characters created, the two major tones being lyrical/rhapsodic and epic, and his one major memorable story of “Paradise Lost” simply being a baroque recounting of the Book of Genesis, mainly.

Milton is still one of the greatest writers in the English language but he doesn’t have that massive influence because how CAN you be influenced/inspired by Milton except mainly by the very beauty of his language and rhetorical gifts? His range was narrow but in this narrow range he excelled and created some of the greatest English poetry, how can you be a “Miltonic” writer except by trying to rewrite something like a baroque Christian epic in blank verse?

Anonymous Sat May 7 18:06:23 2022 No.20336978

>>20336958
On the other hand, you can use “Shakespearean” as a valid epithet because it equally could apply to beauty and density of language as it could to deep, fully-rounded creations of and investigations into the psyches of timeless characters ... Dostoyevsky, Joyce, and Nabokov all in this fashion equally able to be called Shakespearean but in varying ways. He’s a meme but Harold Bloom wrote that “Shakespeare created the human being as we have it in modern literature” for a reason, there’s a qualitative difference between the myths or just stand-in characters meant to be there to take on the role of performing certain actions in a story and be a mouthpiece for the author’s poetical gifts, and Shakespeare including these roles but adding above-and-beyond it the actual humanization of his characters, giving them rich and fantastically independent psyches (which certainly is something which DID exist in world literature before Shakespeare, don’t get me wrong, but which Shakespeare, I believe, revolutionized and carried out to the greatest extent as in Bloom’s analysis).

>>	Anonymous Sat May 7 19:35:34 2022 No.20337347 >>20336958 >>20336978 Good answer.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 7 19:59:40 2022 No.20337447 >>20322787 Because English writers in general are inconsequential outside of the Anglo world.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 7 20:23:48 2022 No.20337585 >>20322787 Probably because his poetry was too English in character and didn't lend itself well to translations. It's like asking why no one gives a shit about The Lusiads outside of poortugal even though everyone loves Pessoa.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 7 20:29:48 2022 No.20337613 What's so great about Milton?

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/lit/ - Literature