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Advantages: Classic literature; challenging Disadvantages: Difficult to grasp; Lengthy
John and Bill (a.k.a JohnMilton and William Shakespeare) were both Ben Elton’s of their time. You might think that Shakespeare and Milton are old cronies who wrote in funny English which no one can understand, hundreds of years ago, about love and boring wars. Well, breaking news here, they both also had a wicked sense of humour and questionable morals?
They were Damion Hirst’s of their times. Controversial. We love controversy and we, as a human race, are curious enough to want to find out what all the fuss is about. Then more likely than not, we’ll judge the controversy for ourselves and say, “What the hell was all the fuss all about?".
So why talk about Bill when I’m supposed to be just talking about John?
People are more likely to have read or watched a William Shakespeare play, than read ...
Advantages: A great English epic Disadvantages: none
Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till on greater Man
Restore us and regain the blissful seat
Sing, Heavenly Muse...
Not a lot people know that 'Paradise Lost' has as a much lesser known companion piece 'ParadiseRegained'; of course, it was true during Milton's time as it is today that the more harrowing and juicy the story, the better it will likely be remembered and received.
This is not to cast any aspersion on this great poem, however. It has been called, with some justification, the greatest English epic poem. The line above, the first lines of the first book of the poem, is typical of the style throughout the epic, in vocabulary and syntax, in allusiveness. The word order tends toward the Latinate ...
"Milton was of the Devil's party without knowing it," William Blake.
In the movie National Lampoon's Animal House, an English Literature professor nicely underplayed by Donald Sutherland admits he finds JohnMilton's Paradise Lost heavy going.
"I think Milton is just as boring as you do," he tells blank-faced students during a lecture. "Mrs Milton thought he was boring too."
It's a scene which neatly sums up JohnMilton's popular reputation today - dull and unreadable. In part it's a cross of his own making as a strait-laced Puritan who seemingly knew everything except how to have fun.
Saying that, his life did have its moments; he went blind and composed poetry at night by calling out lines to his trusty servant, he advocated divorce at a time when it was deeply unfashionable, he approved of the execution of Charles I ...
In purely poetic value, Paradise Regained is little inferior to its predecessor. There may be nothing in the poem that can quite touch the first two books of Paradise Lost for magnificence; but there are several things that may fairly be set beside almost anything in the last ten. The splendid "stand at bay" of the discovered tempter -- "'Tis true I am that spirit unfortunate" -- in the first book; his rebuke of Belial in the second, and the picture of the magic banquet (it must be remembered that, though it is customary to extol Milton's asceticism, the story of his remark to his third wife, and the Lawrence and Skinner sonnets, go the other way); above all, the panoramas from the mountaintop in the third and fourth; the terrors of the night of storm; the crisis on the pinnacle of the temple -- are quite of the best Milton, which is equivalent to saying that they are of the best of one kind of poetry. -- The Cambridge History of English and American Literature
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