I was taught by Will Poole. He is a serious scholar, but also a fantastic teacher. He had a real gift for drawing out the points of exquisite emotional pressure from a poem that can often seem pretty arid and academic to undergraduates, but his teaching (as with his work) also did a phenomenal job of demonstrating how so much anger, hope, desperation and sadness inhered within Milton's own scholarship, which was at once awe-inspiring and quixotically excessive. To this day I find the poem not merely tragic, but also, in a much more mundane sense, devastatingly sad in its reflection of a brilliant man left behind by history, celebrated but essentially foregone by the world around him. Even by the poem's publication, the increasingly empiricist, materialist, libertine and cynical England of the long 18th century had already begun to lose interest in the genres that Milton the scholar had inherited, and to which he ascribed almost totemic authority as means of interpreting the world -- systematic theology and, perhaps saddest of all, the epic poem itself. Crucially, as readers today, we are subject to that distance -- of course, it's now even greater. The very difficulty of the poem -- its baroque Latinate syntax, its ludicrous theological complexity, its teeming esoterica -- is part of the melancholy of reading it, a continual reminder of the way in which cultural forms degrade into incomprehensibility, like hearing a grainy recording of a dead language's last speaker.
How incredible to hear from a student of this luminary! His book is extremely thorough but human. He and Pearce were the highlights for me. Both really drove home the points you’re making: Milton, in a sense, knew he was attempting to resurrect a lost cause. (I often lament the fact that Greek and Latin aren’t required in the educational system anymore.) I would like also to commend you on this comment, which was like reading good literature in itself!
Thank you for doing this western core series and the one about reading philosophy. It's a road map for wonderlands that will last me at least few years of plenty. "Now it is time to be drunk on either wine, poetry or virtue..."
i read the Iliad, the Odessy and Don Quixote because of this series. So glad to see it back. I have Paradise lost sitting on the shelf waiting to be read so this came at a great time. Thank you.
Read "Paradise Lost" last summer. And what a ride it was! Also, being a weird fiction fan, some of the passages, especially those portraying Satan's flight through endless space, filled with 'strange planets' etc., struck me as kind of proto-Lovecraftian. And as for the character of the leader of the fallen angels that seems to take center stage - boy, what a complex and interesting figure.
Awesome video. I have only recently started reading the old epic poets-Homer, Virgil, Dante etc…and Milton is next on my list. I am wondering if you can tell me if I should buy “The Complete Poetry And Essential Prose Of John Milton.” The description says that the language is modernized which I assume means getting rid of the “thy’s” and “thou’s”, which I would love because I don’t like reading that language. But the thing is is I’m really only interested in reading Paradise Lost. Do you know if there is another edition of PL with the modernized language? Or would you say that his other poetry and prose is well worth reading too, so buy the complete poetry and prose? Thanks if you can help me with this! Keep up the awesome work!
Ohhhh boy, I‘ve been waiting for you to cover this masterpiece. And perfect timing too, as I’ve been wanting to read Paradise Lost by the end of the year. This is gonna be a fun 2h. Thanks Chris, and greetings from Austria.
Just found this channel and this series. Thank you for the work and critical analysis, this was much more informative and helpful than many videos from other 'booktubers' I've seen. I've been working my way through 'classics,' particularly American fiction. Have you considered doing a series on American works from authors like Cather, Wolfe, Steinbeck, Hemingway, etc? Would love to hear your take on some of these works, and about how they may have been shaped by and in turn shaped American identity.
Thanks for kind and generous of you. Thank you so much! Honestly, if I did a video talking about the ideas I have for this channel, it would be longer than my War and Peace video. Your idea of an American literature series is very appealing. I could start early, like with Letter from an American Farmer (1782) and work my way up to the present. And, boy, I would love to read Look Homeward, Angel and East of Eden and My Antonia and Hem’s stories again. Thanks for the nudge!
@@LeafbyLeaf I understand haha the possibilities are endless! If you did an American fiction series I would definitely watch. I've yet to read Look Homeward, Angel but it's one of my father's favorite books and is on my immediate tbr shelf. I recently finished My Antonia and am currently reading O Pioneers (I can't believe this was, according to Cather, her first novel; her talent for simply and lovingly bringing normal people to life is profound), probably getting into Death Comes for the Archbishop next. Mark Twain would be an interesting inclusion for cultural impact, though I'm not partial to the stories themselves. Was thinking Faulkner, Hawthorne, Ralph Ellison, Harriot Beacher Stowe, might be interesting as well, mostly because I personally struggle with Faulkner's style and I tried reading the Invisible Man at one point and failed miserably- I'd be interested in hearing your critical take, because I understand that these works are valuable but man are they hard to get into.
Thanks for you discussion on Milton - Paradise Lost in particular. I have yet to see the video in the entirety. I haven't read Paradise Lost in a good few years, but only dipped back into it occassionally. Might revisit it, but the epic I am currently revisiting is The Divine Comedy. I have a few good books about Milton you haven't mentioned, "Milton's Wisdom" by Chritopher Reickhart, and "The Return to Eden" by Northrop Frye. There is also "Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England: John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Marchamont Nedham." I haven't read it, but I also heard WIlliam Empson is good.
I thoroughly enjoyed your distillation of John Milton's Paradise Lost through layered readings of the existing critical literature and your demonstration of just how and why it is arguably the greatest poem in English literature. Kudos🥸🥂
Hey Chris, invaluable insights as always. Do you know of a resource that explores Milton's situation within the Renaissance rhetoric tradition? Especially with regards to the unrhymed scheme he uses? Thanks a lot
Hi, chris! What an amazing reading! I' ve had the time of my life. An italian booktuber Leonardo di Giorgio has called this book beach literature. what an aberration! however, almost all Italian booktubers are terrible. But Leonardo is a real beast. Unlistenable! Thanks for your magnificent review. See you soon.
It's the greatest epic poem in English but Johnson's criticism still obtains. 'It is a book one admires and forgets to pick up again.' It's still heavy and difficult, especially beyond book five or so.
I always though the rhyming thing was cute. He could have just written his epic in blank verse, but no, he makes a more nuanced point, part of his genius and eccentricity. In writing in blank verse he is restoring civilization and delivering English from spiritual bondage. If you say so bro.
Where do you get these great shirts, and I see Against the Day in the background. Have you read it? If so any thoughts and possibly a video? I keep hoping for more Pynchon content. Great video, apricated the biographical content and additional views on this work, keep being awesome.
Got my morning coffee, got a view of my yard, got a Leaf by Leaf video about Milton.
Beautiful.
😁🙏☕️📚☀️
I was taught by Will Poole. He is a serious scholar, but also a fantastic teacher. He had a real gift for drawing out the points of exquisite emotional pressure from a poem that can often seem pretty arid and academic to undergraduates, but his teaching (as with his work) also did a phenomenal job of demonstrating how so much anger, hope, desperation and sadness inhered within Milton's own scholarship, which was at once awe-inspiring and quixotically excessive. To this day I find the poem not merely tragic, but also, in a much more mundane sense, devastatingly sad in its reflection of a brilliant man left behind by history, celebrated but essentially foregone by the world around him. Even by the poem's publication, the increasingly empiricist, materialist, libertine and cynical England of the long 18th century had already begun to lose interest in the genres that Milton the scholar had inherited, and to which he ascribed almost totemic authority as means of interpreting the world -- systematic theology and, perhaps saddest of all, the epic poem itself. Crucially, as readers today, we are subject to that distance -- of course, it's now even greater. The very difficulty of the poem -- its baroque Latinate syntax, its ludicrous theological complexity, its teeming esoterica -- is part of the melancholy of reading it, a continual reminder of the way in which cultural forms degrade into incomprehensibility, like hearing a grainy recording of a dead language's last speaker.
How incredible to hear from a student of this luminary! His book is extremely thorough but human. He and Pearce were the highlights for me. Both really drove home the points you’re making: Milton, in a sense, knew he was attempting to resurrect a lost cause. (I often lament the fact that Greek and Latin aren’t required in the educational system anymore.) I would like also to commend you on this comment, which was like reading good literature in itself!
Haha thanks. My adhd meds had just kicked in and I got a bit carried away. Loved the video, keep doing what you're doing.
Thank you for doing this western core series and the one about reading philosophy. It's a road map for wonderlands that will last me at least few years of plenty. "Now it is time to be drunk on either wine, poetry or virtue..."
My pleasure! I love that Baudelaire poem!
The series finally continues, what a contribution to culture. 😊🙏
Very honoring. 🙏
I AM IMPRESSED. Great lecture! Well done. And Thank you so much for helping me with amazing Paradise Lost.
Wow, thanks so much for your kind feedback! It really is a pleasure to do these videos. All best!
I love this video.
And I haven’t even watched it yet.
But I know I love this video! And it’s creator.
Thanks Chris. You are a gift to humanity. ❤
Honoring. Humbling. Inspiring. Thank you so very much!
A gift to humanity? That's high praise indeed.
Bravo, thank you and amen! Will be returning to this many times.🌞
My pleasure!
I love this dude. Back with a bang from your summer sabbatical, hope it was a romping good time!
It was, indeed, thank you! :)
I thoroughly enjoyed this most recent installment in the Wester Core series. Can't wait for Swann's Way and Ulysses.
Thanks so much! I can't either! :)
Just wonderful and exactly what I needed as I plan to read Milton !
Awesome!
i read the Iliad, the Odessy and Don Quixote because of this series. So glad to see it back. I have Paradise lost sitting on the shelf waiting to be read so this came at a great time. Thank you.
Thanks so much for sharing that with me! This is very inspiring!
That’s some very strategic placement of Against the Day in the background 👀
You’re the first to catch the Easter egg. 😁
Read "Paradise Lost" last summer. And what a ride it was! Also, being a weird fiction fan, some of the passages, especially those portraying Satan's flight through endless space, filled with 'strange planets' etc., struck me as kind of proto-Lovecraftian. And as for the character of the leader of the fallen angels that seems to take center stage - boy, what a complex and interesting figure.
Yes, I resonate with both of those statements!
Fantastic, you’re back to the Western Core series
I didn’t realize so many people liked the series so much!
Awesome video. I have only recently started reading the old epic poets-Homer, Virgil, Dante etc…and Milton is next on my list. I am wondering if you can tell me if I should buy “The Complete Poetry And Essential Prose Of John Milton.” The description says that the language is modernized which I assume means getting rid of the “thy’s” and “thou’s”, which I would love because I don’t like reading that language. But the thing is is I’m really only interested in reading Paradise Lost. Do you know if there is another edition of PL with the modernized language? Or would you say that his other poetry and prose is well worth reading too, so buy the complete poetry and prose? Thanks if you can help me with this! Keep up the awesome work!
Ohhhh boy, I‘ve been waiting for you to cover this masterpiece. And perfect timing too, as I’ve been wanting to read Paradise Lost by the end of the year. This is gonna be a fun 2h. Thanks Chris, and greetings from Austria.
What wonderful serendipity! And thanks for citing your home country. Austria has contributed a very great deal to western culture!
Milton is the GOAT
🙌🙌🙌
i got this book for christmas, cant wait to read it
wicked sweet!
Can’t wait to watch this! The first thing I see is the against the day on the table… I hope that is hinting towards something of great importance.
Hmmmmmm... who knows? :)
My favorite poem. Thank you for this amazing video!
De rien monsieur !
So good, this talk, every bit of it, thank you so much -- from a very recent first time reader of Paradise Lost
Thank you so very much! I'm thrilled you found it of value!
That shirt is amazing! Still waiting for you to cover the works of Saul Bellow.
www.teepublic.com/user/obliterature
Bellow is on the list!
Just found this channel and this series. Thank you for the work and critical analysis, this was much more informative and helpful than many videos from other 'booktubers' I've seen. I've been working my way through 'classics,' particularly American fiction. Have you considered doing a series on American works from authors like Cather, Wolfe, Steinbeck, Hemingway, etc? Would love to hear your take on some of these works, and about how they may have been shaped by and in turn shaped American identity.
Thanks for kind and generous of you. Thank you so much! Honestly, if I did a video talking about the ideas I have for this channel, it would be longer than my War and Peace video. Your idea of an American literature series is very appealing. I could start early, like with Letter from an American Farmer (1782) and work my way up to the present. And, boy, I would love to read Look Homeward, Angel and East of Eden and My Antonia and Hem’s stories again. Thanks for the nudge!
@@LeafbyLeaf I understand haha the possibilities are endless! If you did an American fiction series I would definitely watch. I've yet to read Look Homeward, Angel but it's one of my father's favorite books and is on my immediate tbr shelf. I recently finished My Antonia and am currently reading O Pioneers (I can't believe this was, according to Cather, her first novel; her talent for simply and lovingly bringing normal people to life is profound), probably getting into Death Comes for the Archbishop next. Mark Twain would be an interesting inclusion for cultural impact, though I'm not partial to the stories themselves. Was thinking Faulkner, Hawthorne, Ralph Ellison, Harriot Beacher Stowe, might be interesting as well, mostly because I personally struggle with Faulkner's style and I tried reading the Invisible Man at one point and failed miserably- I'd be interested in hearing your critical take, because I understand that these works are valuable but man are they hard to get into.
Thanks for you discussion on Milton - Paradise Lost in particular. I have yet to see the video in the entirety. I haven't read Paradise Lost in a good few years, but only dipped back into it occassionally. Might revisit it, but the epic I am currently revisiting is The Divine Comedy. I have a few good books about Milton you haven't mentioned, "Milton's Wisdom" by Chritopher Reickhart, and "The Return to Eden" by Northrop Frye. There is also "Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England: John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Marchamont Nedham." I haven't read it, but I also heard WIlliam Empson is good.
Empson is very important. Amazing. Thanks so much for these recommendations! I, too, love the Commedia.
I thoroughly enjoyed your distillation of John Milton's Paradise Lost through layered readings of the existing critical literature and your demonstration of just how and why it is arguably the greatest poem in English literature. Kudos🥸🥂
Very kind of you to say! Thanks so much!
@@LeafbyLeaf any time
'Fallen cherub, to be weak is miserable...'
Hey Chris, invaluable insights as always.
Do you know of a resource that explores Milton's situation within the Renaissance rhetoric tradition? Especially with regards to the unrhymed scheme he uses?
Thanks a lot
Hi, chris! What an amazing reading! I' ve had the time of my life. An italian booktuber Leonardo di Giorgio has called this book beach literature. what an aberration! however, almost all Italian booktubers are terrible. But Leonardo is a real beast. Unlistenable! Thanks for your magnificent review. See you soon.
😂😂😂🙏🙏🙏
It's the greatest epic poem in English but Johnson's criticism still obtains. 'It is a book one admires and forgets to pick up again.' It's still heavy and difficult, especially beyond book five or so.
It's interesting that Milton quietly planned his life to wrote Paradise Lost. Everything else he did was preparation. That's why the poem is so good.
*write
I always though the rhyming thing was cute. He could have just written his epic in blank verse, but no, he makes a more nuanced point, part of his genius and eccentricity. In writing in blank verse he is restoring civilization and delivering English from spiritual bondage. If you say so bro.
love paradise lost ty
🙏
Oh my god I would kill a man for that T-shirt. And also a great job as usual ❤
Hopefully I’m saving someone’s life with this link: www.teepublic.com/user/obliterature
Lol the Gaddis shirt.. where’d you get that?
www.teepublic.com/user/obliterature
Against the Day in the background.
😁😁😁
WHERE DID YOU GET THAT RECOGNITIONS SHIRT?!?!?! I NEED IT!!!!
www.teepublic.com/user/obliterature
@@LeafbyLeaf thank you so much
Where do you get these great shirts, and I see Against the Day in the background. Have you read it? If so any thoughts and possibly a video? I keep hoping for more Pynchon content. Great video, apricated the biographical content and additional views on this work, keep being awesome.
www.teepublic.com/user/obliterature
Good eye! Who knows… 😁
Whoa hey where did ya get that shirt eh?
www.teepublic.com/user/obliterature
First view and comment 😅
🙏
Thou!
Holy this is a long one isn't
😆
gm
☕️