John Milton (1608-1674)

This is the first of three readings from ‘Paradise Lost’.

This is from Book One, lines 242-270

The story begins with the fallen angels in Hell. In this brief excerpt Satan has emerged from the lake of fire into which he was cast down. He steps on to dry land, and surveying hell, his prison and the proof of his defeat, rebrands it as his kingdom: ‘What matter where, if I be still the same?’.

There are so many ways in which you could write a history of English poetry. You could study left handed poets throughout history, which would make your selection of poems easy as it wouldn’t matter if they were good poems as long as their authors were left handed*.

Or you could study it as the history of a practice, with significant practitioners and products. You’d have to consider why some were highly praised, and some forgotten, you’d have to look at who decided what was good, but in such a history Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ is an essential work of English Poetry.

You may find his God repellent and very tedious and you may object to Milton’s theology or his views on marriage. You will struggle at times with his diction and his syntax. You might agree with Samuel Johnson that “Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is’. But I think Johnson was wrong when he continued: ‘Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure’.

It is a magnificent work. Milton’s Satan is one of the great characters in English Literature and the poem Is veined with great and memorable passages. if you read it aloud, you can not only hear Shakespeare in the background, but you can also hear Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’. A history of poetry as practice would consider poets reading poets, poems responding to poems. The way a sound is taken up and passed on.

*replace ‘left handed poets’ with any group of your choice.