Paradise Lost: Bk IV
Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2009 9:17 am
Book IV Discussion
Please use this thread to discuss Book IV of Paradise Lost
Please use this thread to discuss Book IV of Paradise Lost
Hold on there, Ibid! You're trashing a classic! But I admire all the hard work you're doing. When I complained that Paradise Lost was going to be heavy lifting, our now Discussion Leading said I could hang loose and come along for the ride (that's how I took it anyway), and haven't done much sequential reading. I have scanned it forword and, today, backward, and read secondary sources, and looked up allusions and parallels and history -- and I am thoroughly enjoying myself. Book IV with all its nudity scenes is going to give the movie an X ratingIbid wrote:Wow, how excruciating was this book? I still haven't finished it. I'm embarassed to say that I'm being very tempted (pun intended) to skip on to book V.
What a pointless bore! Seems that this book must have been included just to get to the total of 12 total books.
The good thing about discussions here is that no one has to (or should feel they have to) affect a reverent attitude toward a classic if they don't feel it. Samuel Johnson quipped that PL was a hard book to pick up again once you'd finished with it. I can understand these reactions. It's certainly very different from any other work called an epic. That difference might sit well with some, but not with others. Almost no one reads the whole thing anymore, not even English lit grad students. There is that statement I referenced from Walter Raleigh, that PL is a monument to dead ideas. I wanted to gather views on whether that is so, and whether, if it is so, there is something to salvage nevertheless.Ibid wrote:Wow, how excruciating was this book? I still haven't finished it. I'm embarassed to say that I'm being very tempted (pun intended) to skip on to book V.
What a pointless bore! Seems that this book must have been included just to get to the total of 12 total books.
When are we going to see the results of this forward and backward scanning, Tom? Is there something to be revealed by PL in reverse, like the Beatles' White album? I was thinking the same thing about the PL movie treatment of Bk IV, kinda sexy. You said that Milton broke with the Puritans (or maybe more with the Catholics) on the connubial bliss front. It's not so obvious to us today that saying sex is not sinful is bold speaking.Thomas Hood wrote: Hold on there, Ibid? You're trashing a classic! But I admire all the hard work you're doing. When I complained that Paradise Lost was going to be heavy lifting, our now Discussion Leading said I could hang loose and come along for the ride (that's how I took it anyway), and haven't done much sequential reading. I have scanned it forword and, today, backward, and read secondary sources, and looked up allusions and parallels and history -- and I am thoroughly enjoying myself. Book IV with all its nudity scenes is going to give the movie an X rating :)Tom
I just went to Gutenberg and downloaded Sir Walter Raleigh's book on Milton:DWill wrote:There is that statement I referenced from Walter Raleigh, that PL is a monument to dead ideas. I wanted to gather views on whether that is so, and whether, if it is so, there is something to salvage nevertheless.
Context is everything. Thanks for bringing it out.Thomas Hood wrote: That's Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh (1861-1922), AKA "Dead Ideas" Raleigh: "The _Paradise Lost_ is not the less an eternal monument because it is a monument to dead ideas."
For a moment I thought this was Raleigh speaking and not you. I reserve judgment right now. I do tend to see some of the theological foundation as dead.I think the ideas are dead only to the unimaginative.
Raleigh say this of Milton:DWill wrote:Thomas Hood wrote:For a moment I thought this was Raleigh speaking and not you. I reserve judgment right now. I do tend to see some of the theological foundation as dead.I think the ideas are dead only to the unimaginative.
No way! This book may be a grind to read, but it is intense and powerful. I finished it yesterday, and found it tough but compelling. We get Satan asking himself why destroy something of such beauty as the earth, and rationalising his purpose of revenge on God by placing man in thrall to himself. We get the dumb angels, easily tricked by the wily demon. We get the question why God needed to place military guard on earth, when they all thought the battle of heaven was over and Satan was safely locked behind the gates of hell. My nagging question on the predestination front is that God chose to lock Satan in hell, knowing that he would get out and wreak mischief. It all gets back to evil being part of the divine plan of the greater good, sent to test and prove the mettle of the creation. Satan plonking on the tree of life as a cormorant, changing into all the animals to spy out the chink in the armour, and then squat like a toad at Eve's ear. Rather like our poisonous cane toads in Australia, which look like frogs but kill anything that bites them.Ibid wrote:Wow, how excruciating was this book? I still haven't finished it. I'm embarassed to say that I'm being very tempted (pun intended) to skip on to book V. What a pointless bore! Seems that this book must have been included just to get to the total of 12 total books.