So, other than Paradife Loft, Lycidas, Il penseroso, l'allegro and a handful of his essays, are Milton's other works worth reading? I mean, I know they're worth reading; but are they worth investing the time to look up sources, explanations, critical insights, etc? I've read a few of his sonnets and they seem more like exercises in the form than meaningful contributions to his work as a whole.
>I've read a few of his sonnets and they seem more like exercises in the form
if you read when i think how my life is spent and you think it's just an "exercise" idk what to tell ya
read samson agonistes
>>8281417
Milton is probably the most encyclopedic author of all English tradition, the more you read the more what you've already read gets reinforced or expanded.
>>8281417
Milton and Shakespeare are GOAT,
Comus has a fine reputation. At a Vacation Exercise in the College is also brilliant, my personal favourite Milton poem after Lycidas. Ends like this:
Rivers arise; whether thou be the son
Of utmost Tweed, or Ouse, or gulfy Dun,
Or Trent, who like some earth-born giant spreads
His thirty arms along the indented meads,
Or sullen Mole that runneth underneath,
Or Severn swift, guilty of maiden’s death,
Or rocky Avon, or of sedgy Lee,
Or coaly Tine, or ancient hallowed Dee,
Or Humber land that keeps the Scythian’s name,
Or Medway smooth, or royal towered Thame.
I don't like nationalism at all, but reading that passage always gives me a little feeling of patriotic joy...
>read a few of his sonnets and they seem more like exercises in the form than meaningful contributions to his work as a whole.
To be fair, I'd say that's the case of every sonneteer until Wordsworth (inc. Shakespeare). That said, "How soon hath time, the subtle thief of youth" is one of my favourite poems.
Man, Lycidas is so, so good. Easily the best poem in the English language.
And wipe the tears forever from his eyes... my favourite line of verse anywhere
Here's an innocent question for you guys, from someone who's only read Paradise Lost and enjoyed it:
Why read Milton? What do you get out of him?
>>8281417
>paradise loft
>>8281634
He's technically superb, better than even Shakespeare in that category. Undoubtedly the best rhetorician to have to have spoken or written English. There's an austere classicism about him, a grandness, everything is taut and concentrated to perfection. He's also the most powerful writer in English literature, in the sense that every line has this feeling of force hit you, the way that I imagine Virgil to be in Latin.
>>8281658
Can you explain how he's technically superior to Shakespeare? Or just technically amazing in general?
>>8281760
He uses more enjambment than any other poet (something like 60% of the lines in PL are enjambed) and varies the caesura so much it goes everywhere. His mature blank verse had this counterpoint running through it where one can ambiguously read against the metre at all times, so much so that it's been argued that he wasn't writing blank verse at all. And as for rhyme:
>Where were ye Nymphs when the remorseless deep A
>Clos'd o're the head of your lov'd Lycidas? B
>For neither were ye playing on the steep, A
>Where your old Bards, the famous Druids ly, C
>Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, C
>Nor yet where Deva spreads her wisard stream: D
>Ay me, I fondly dream! D
>Had ye bin there — for what could that have don? E
>What could the Muse her self that Orpheus bore, F
>The Muse her self, for her inchanting son E
>Whom Universal nature did lament, G
>When by the rout that made the hideous roar, F
>His goary visage down the stream was sent, G
>Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore. F
Some of the best rhyme in the language outside of, say, Spenser there. Look how he mixes couplets and interlocking rhymes to achieve the effect of the rushing river.
>>8281760
the other anon is quite correct in everything he said.
to add shakespeare isn't necessarily celebrated for his technical prowess. he has a certain richness of texture that's difficult to duplicate (choosing the right words for the right lines so to speak) but in terms of prosody he's not too sophisticated.
to take some lines from pope, guys like. it on and sleepy ser can be described as
"true ease from writing comes from art not chance
as those who move easiest have learned to dance"
whereas shakespeare embodies
"true wit is nature to advantaged dressed
what oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed"
the dichotomy is mine own and for illustrative purposes (neither I nor pope believe a dichotomy between with and art or whatever abstractions exists in totality and a general sense) but I think it illustrates well the particular strengths of milton vs. shakespeare
>>8281982
*guys like milton and spenser
Had to do a report on 'On the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates'. Shit was pretty cool.
Any thoughts?
