>>8136016
Relevant links

Paradise Lost and other Milton works
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/contents/text.shtml
Searchable Paradise Lost
http://www.paradiselost.org/8-Search-All.html

>>8136016
The last one was two weeks long right?
Basically one book of PL a day.

>>8136350
Two weeks long for plays that can be read in a few hours.

This is where the club dies.

Some interesting stuff I noted while reading the first book was how Milton change the tense to present at certain points, I believe this to be an attempt to make the work a bit more contemporary, to show that the ideas presented were relevant not only at the time when the events were unfolding, but also at the time of writing.

It is shown how the fallen angels created paganism, however, from what I read they only created the Gods of certain pagan religions such as that of the Phoenicians as shown with Moloh. Is that the case with Greek and Roman Gods ? I think no. I even believe that Milton associated the Biblical god with Greek and Roman deities. Satan says to the angels that God might transfix them to the bottom of the gulf using linked thunderbolts, if I’m not mistaken, linked thunderbolts were used by Jupiter and Minerva against the giants. Mulciber is also mentioned to have constructed Pandemonium, Mulciber is an alternative name for Vulcan, which is the Roman version of Hephaestus. Even the fall of Hephaestus is talked about in Paradise Lost. Does this mean that the Greek and Roman Gods were not created by the demons, but were instead an alternative form of them or some of the other biblical figures. Or did they simply co-exist ? At one point Milton also lists Egyptian Gods, were they also the same Gods as the biblical God/angels/demons, Greek and Roman Gods, as suggested by Ovid ? Or were they another bunch of deities co-existing with the others ?

When you read more of Milton you find that he has a massive boner for classical civilization/myth, particularly Graeco-Roman but also Egyptian, as noted. By making the fallen angels assume their identity he basically creates a natural theology of paganism: he explains why gods even exist in human culture despite their only being one god, and he shows how worshiping any 'god' beside the One God is wrong. Notice also that Satan and company (and even the speaker does this) refer to themselves as gods and seemingly never thought that God was anything but perhaps a first of equals (see: 1.629, 1.91-94). Also notice that when they create Pandemonium they do so by harvesting from Hell's earth precious stones and metals to adorn themselves and their palaces with. Milton gives Satan patronage of not only blasphemy and paganism but also the invention of wealth and aristocracy.

If you read Milton's "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" [1], called his first great poem of his professional writing career, you can see the concern over the conflict between pagan and Christian culture and belief. Toward the end of his career, while writing Paradise Lost (probably began during the Commonwealth period but not published until after the Restoration [and you're definitely correct that the time of the poem is important]) Milton comes back to that theme and problem years ago.

1: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/nativity/text.shtml

>>8138496
meant for
>>8136515

bump ever

Bump. I haven't been part of book club so far this summer, but since I'll be on vacation in a few days I could start. I read PL for the first time last year at uni and did not get much out of it, so I'm hoping to do better the second time.

Thanks for making this, I fell sick over the weekend and then got busy with work

Archives have been updated and I guess I'll extend the finish date due to my tardiness for now.

Important Dates
06/06/16 - "Three Theban Plays" finished
22/06/16 - Polling Day
24/06/16 - Polls closed; rollover period begins.
27/06/16 - Paradise Lost discussion ends.

>How do I bookclub?
Find the book at the top of this post, read it, and discuss. Bookclubs are a place for expanding and sharing your knowledge. Use this opportunity to ask questions, and discuss the things you liked and did not like about the story.

>How do I recommend books for the bookclub to read?
Use the following format: [REC] Title - Author

>Archives
http://pastebin.com/HTu8Nf5d

I'm going to start reading tonight.

>>8138496
Are such allusions between biblical events and pagan beliefs a characteristic of all of Milton's works ?

>>8143386
Yeah, it's all over his poetry and prose. As you're reading Paradise Lost you have to remember at all times lines 22-26 of Book 1, when the speaker (who in my opinion not only /is/, but /has to be/ Milton himself, though it might be argued is a character):

"---- What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the heighth of this great argument
I may assert eternal providence,
And justify the ways of God to men."

This is the summary not just of PL but his entire life project. Going back to "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," there's a really good article called "Expectation and Prematurity in Milton's Nativity Ode" by David Quint (Modern Philology 97.2 (1999), if you have access to databases and are interested), that analyzes the poem and discovers it deliberately mirrors Euripedes' condensed version of the "Homeric Hymn to Apollo," designed to be an "[o]verturning [of] classical models," and achieve "a purified poetry that separates itself from a fleshly, pagan inspiration" (195). Milton's early concerns with poetry AND community (as opposed to state, I think, and you can see he was Puritan from early on) isn't just that Christianity, in the incarnation of Christ, "[dethrones the] pagan gods," but does not fully do away with them (212). Milton is very concerned with the creeping threat of error: if mankind was able to turn to paganism despite God's lone providence, then surely the birth of Christ doesn't necessarily stop false traditions arising from original (or restored) orthodoxies. It's easy to read here Milton's Anti-Catholicism, but it also has to be read as a criticism of his fellow Protestants- in my opinion, even moreso. This criticism is increased exponentially with the publishing of Samson Agonistes, though that's technically another topic.

What makes Milton as a writer, and Paradise Lost as a work, is not just how encyclopedic he is but how disciplined a thinker he is. You won't agree with everything he says, and sometimes you can see him make very person errors (also interesting), but rarely does he not have strong logic to his arguments. And that's why he continues to go to the classical tradition(s): generally Milton's strategy is to not just present new argument and evidence but to show how, at some point, we took a wrong turn and there's a precedent in the past visibly among Greeks, and Egyptians, and Hebrews, and Anglos, and Romans, and etc. etc. For Milton pagans were wrong to turn away from God but even those that are ultimately in error, including Catholics, can still lead us back to the right track by our own exercise of reason discerning what is true and what isn't. I'm rambling now but the point is Milton's very concerned about the exercise of reason and will and history as a continuum of consequences and conditions.

>>8144088
Thank you for the thorough answers

>>8136016
Is Paradise Lost just an autist/Anglo response to Divine Comedy?

>>8145576
I think part of it was because of the failed Puritan rebellion. Originally he was going to write something epic about England. But after the rebellion came about, what´s the point of that?

>>8145587
You can still argue that "something epic about England" is essentially there as a reason and a response to the Divine Comedy in the sense of building a separate identity for the English. It's a shame for them that mainlander Europeans were correct though.

pretty much a north korean move, a daughter-waifu of satan was deemed to hell when she clearly didn't voluntarily choose to oppose the god herself but simply was born by a wrong person:

To whom thus the Portress of Hell-gate replied:—
"Hast thou forgot me, then; and do I seem
Now in thine eyes so foul?-once deemed so fair
In Heaven, when at the assembly, and in sight
Of all the Seraphim with thee combined
In bold conspiracy against Heaven's King,
All on a sudden miserable pain
Surprised thee, dim thine eyes, and dizzy swum
In darkness, while thy head flames thick and fast
Threw forth, till on the left side opening wide,
Likest to thee in shape and countenance bright,
Then shining heavenly fair, a goddess armed,
Out of thy head I sprung. Amazement seized
All the host of Heaven; back they recoiled afraid
At first, and called me Sin, and for a sign
Portentous held me; but, familiar grown,
I pleased, and with attractive graces won
The most averse-thee chiefly, who, full oft
Thyself in me thy perfect image viewing,
Becam'st enamoured; and such joy thou took'st
With me in secret that my womb conceived
A growing burden. Meanwhile war arose,
And fields were fought in Heaven: wherein remained
(For what could else?) to our Almighty Foe
Clear victory; to our part loss and rout
Through all the Empyrean. Down they fell,
Driven headlong from the pitch of Heaven, down
Into this Deep; and in the general fall
I also...

she also is forced to use her vagina as a dog kennel, all for being born by the wrong person:

...About her middle round
A cry of Hell-hounds never-ceasing barked
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there; yet there still barked and howled
With in unseen...

>>8145576
It has almost nothing in common with the Divine Comedy. It's also much better.

>>8145632
In Sin's own words there she took part in Satan's opposition. Two important things to point out here: 1) Milton ascribes Sin's creation not to Man, nor God, nor nature, but to Satan. 2) Satan, Sin, and Death form a fallen imitations of the trinity, the opposite of the real Triune God.

>>8146207
>In Sin's own words there she took part in Satan's opposition
did she have a choice though? the angels of light were repulsed by the very fact of her birth

hello

>>8145309
No problem

>>8146211
"... back they recoiled afraid
At first, and called me Sin, and for a sign
Portentous held me; but, familiar grown,
I pleased, and with attractive graces won
The most averse ..." 2.759-736

Not repulsed but "afraid," no doubt because this would be the first being that is born and not created. But Sin won over the hosts of Heaven. She could have won them over with her piety to God, selflessness, any good quality, but instead she invents lust and is co-inventor of incest. But the question: did she have a choice? For Milton, all beings have unconditioned free will. This is of course a corner stone (contested by some, accepted by others) of Paradise Lost, of course.

We should be about 3 books in, give or take. Anyone particularly interesting moments, or things that you're unsure about?

>>8148631
I really need to learn to edit my posts before submitting them.

small bump

>>8148631
>and with attractive graces won
>The most averse-thee chiefly

i think it can mean that sin attracted many of the satan's forces but mainly satan himself

>>8136016
The acrostic at line 666 kills me every time, it's a Jonson-tier piece of showing off in the middle of such a fantastic poem.

>>8150523
what do you mean exactly? and then, acrostic supposes more than one line...

>>8150501
Right, but I think she's the one doing the attracting. Incidentally later in PL (Book 6-7 I think) Milton touches on Angels more, something to look forward to.

>>8145632
I don't think one should read the depiction of 'sin' as a person. She answers, as every part of the epic, to MIlton's idea of God/Religion/History, within which the reader should always try and perceive her.
So she is functional, and I think it's best to try and understand what she does rather than who she is. It's a similar situation with God, Jesus, Satan etc., under which grand concepts Milton subsumes all of human (pagan) history: PL doesn't expect the reader to judge them by or compare them to human standards, but for them to stand alone and be the meter for judging humanity.

Well this one is getting way more attention than the last book. I didn't read it because no one talked about Sophocles. Is everyone more interested in this because of relatable religion?