John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1

[@johannesq6500]

I often wondered that Milton never mentions Dante (though I think he may have alluded to him once, somewhere). Similar with Chaucer, whose Canterbury Tales I think was inspired by the Commedia's quarrelling lives & lies. I suspect that Milton recognised the greatness of Dante but it was alien to his sensibilities - too vulgar, too much of the late 13th Century Italian streets, and too Catholic & systematic. MIlton instinctively reaches for the timeless, the ancient. What I think Milton took from Dante was the sense of ambition, of being an absolute pioneer (like Dante's Ulysses, actually, who is a clear forebear of Milton's Satan) as Dante indicates at the close of La Vita Nuova. My feeling is that Milton wanted to place himself in a line of succession directly following from Homer and Vergil, as the first great Christian epic writer, and so he as it were shunted Dante aside like an inconvenient alcoholic fascist great-uncle locked in the basement when the Parson visits. In any case, Dante's and Milton's epics are totally different, the former cast out of imaginal space & theological hairsplittings & the real lives of real people, and the latter cast out of the original story of Genesis. In a sense, Milton is also leaping over the Greek & Latin epics who form his style, in that his subject precedes them both in time & in significance. He's really claiming the crown.

[@LitProf]

The omission of Dante by a man fluent in Italian is both conspicuous and telling.

[@Tanya_LitLife]

I’m finding the reading challenging. These lectures help, especially against the popular background of most modern interpretations of Milton’s Satan as hero. Thank you again, Dr. Masson. Your lectures are invaluable.

[@yac2617]

Im simply loving this. Thank you for posting this 🙂🫶🏼

[@LitProf]

Make sure to subscribe and click the bell for new stuff.

[@yac2617]

Oh believe me! Ever since I found your videos im subscribed, and in my spare time your videos is allI play, they are so enriching! Thank you

[@mikedaniels3009]

Re satan's speech: A college professor untame, Dotting the i's and crossing the T's Calling BS by its name. Dear Sir, I'm loving this!!!

[@shabirmagami146]

brilliant lecture as always ... great insights 💌

[@jamienope3928]

So interesting thank you Professor

[@virendraup]

Thanks Prof Scott! Amazing summarisation and explanatory lecture with adequate unfolding of epical reference.

[@englishliterature2890]

Oh sir you liked my comment I am interested in Milton And it's 1:30 am I am still listening to your lecture Lots of love from Pakistan sir

[@LitProf]

Milton is the greatest author in English. Enjoy!

[@antidepressant11]

Awesome sir. Inspirational, thought provoking and informative.

[@Mariemadelyn74]

I didn't even know the importance of the invocation that is so interesting

[@Mariemadelyn74]

I am so grateful that you broke this down in this way thank you so much

[@divyadharshinimdivyadharsh2248]

Thanks a lot sir💖🤗

[@johannesq6500]

Very good lecture, by the way, it stirred me to many thoughts on Paradise Lost, which I already knew a little. One thought occurred to me at the end of your talk: that everything Milton's God created is an aspect of Him, however fallen; Milton's Satan, I think, is pure "will to power", as if he is an expression of "the maker's rage/to order" (Wallace Stevens). He loses everything except his eloquence & his command, both functions of that urge, as Stevens put it in another context "to order words of the sea" (chaotic matter). So, fallen, he cannot just sigh and play the harp, he must act, because to act is ever his nature. In a sense, one could see him as a figure of what i myself called elsewhere, "a bad maker", a poet gone awry, Milton's own sense of what he could have become.

[@LitProf]

I would be a bit more careful. I wouldn't say that Milton's created order is an aspect of his Creator God. It isn't divine. Milton is no pantheist. But it is good as he ordained it because it was He who ordained it so. And God is good. Milton's Satan is marked (except in his creatureliness) by his absence of good. And yet the universe of Milton's God is not only to be understood as good on the basis of its origin. This goodness is also, to speak anachronistically, empirically verifiable. And it is unambiguously good until the fall.

[@johannesq6500]

@@LitProf My sense is that, if Milton's God created ex nihilo, everything must have come from Him, so while the created world isn't divine in substance, the form & structure isn't random or evil but rather a working of God's mind; so, e.g. Man is made in the image of God, not just by randomly flipping dice. And so, presumably all the angels, fallen or not, express something of their maker's intent & nature. If so, even post-Fall, it should be possible to "walk the cat back" to the origin. But I'm not even a semi-expert in Christian theology, I'm more influenced by Tolkien's concept of corruption. It's an odd idea but theoretically one could perhaps take an orc, in a world of nothing but orcs, and extrapolate back to elves, and from there to the Valar. My faith, if you can call it that, is that existence itself was originally good and would utterly cease if all goodness were evacuated/destroyed. I see evil as parasitic, however impressively so.

[@LitProf]

I see your point, and it is good. But see also Raphael's rejoinder to Adam at the outset of Book 8.

[@LitProf]

What you are describing when calling evil a parasite, as having no essence itself (existence being a good) is the orthodox Augustinian conception of evil. Cf. The Enchiridion.

[@johannesq6500]

@@LitProf I'm planning to re-read PL soon, will keep it in mind.

[@englishliterature2890]

Thanks a lot sir

[@LitProf]

You are very welcome

[@happygucci5094]

I think Milton’s Satan is much more an accurate portrayal of Narcissism or adoption of the False Self more complete than even the Ancient Greek story… the psychoanalytic implications are dizzying.

[@ashwinijaiswal3391]

Hi i want to study online classess on Milton , Shakespeare Wordsworth etc... How you may help me.............

[@LitProf]

I have posted quite a few lectures on these authors online.

[@kazuitokirigaya923]

Sir thank you for your insights on this Subject Your Lecture had me Inspired in new thoughts and New Prospects of the Litrature I Agree that John Milton's Way of Writing is tough yet Beautiful amazing. I Have question Regarding rhapsody What is rhapsody And What is it's Significance in Greek History I Want to Know More about rhapsody it's puzzling me I Want to Utilise those info in my Works so Please Kindly Share any knowledge You have in Regard to this Matter please send me in Reply. Thank You.

[@LitProf]

A rhapsode (Greek: ῥαψῳδός, "rhapsōidos") or, in modern usage, rhapsodist, refers to a classical Greek professional performer of epic poetry[1] in the fifth and fourth centuries BC (and perhaps earlier).

[@youtubeuser4028]

38:56 invocation

[@zeventric8560]

professor, I have a question from lines 1 to 26 does he invocate it to god Urania or the heavenly spirit? Bcs most suggest that he invocates Urania it is written in oxford world classic edition !

[@LitProf]

He invokes Urania only in the 3rd invocation, in Book 7, when he is about to discuss astronomy, and has to deal with the complicated theories that have arisen post-Galileo.

[@LitProf]

The Oxford Classic edition is simply wrong if it suggests Urania is the muse for Book 1.

[@zeventric8560]

@@LitProf Thank you professor for your fastest Reply helped me a lot!

[@thallesvinicius2729]

05:12

[@nurlatifahmohdnor8939]

i-ri + ha-ti = deng-ki

[@nurlatifahmohdnor8939]

Louis Antoine de Bougainvillea