Colleen Hawkins takes another look at Milton in the light of the BBC Poetry Season. You even get one of her trademark witty titles which you don't get from me.
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I’m not certain what prompted me to watch the Armando Iannucci programme on Milton, given that he’s never been a poet whose work – with one or two notable exceptions – has ever meant a great deal to me. At university the passionate advocacy of Milton by one, somewhat odd tutor fell on stony ground and failed completely to persuade me that reading Paradise Lost could possibly be anything other than a tedious, but necessary chore. Consequentially I dutifully plodded my way through it, produced four thousand uninspired words on some dull aspect of the wretched thing and rarely, if ever, took my copy of The Complete English Poems of John Milton down from the shelf again. A few years ago when I was attempting to thin down my book collection in preparation for a move down to Devon, culling it was one of the easiest decisions I have ever had to make. I agonised slightly longer over The Selected Poems of W.H. Davies and I’m hardly “full of care” for his stuff either.
Obviously Paradise Lost is a great work of English Literature, but that’s also true of a considerable number of canonical works which routinely bore English Literature students rigid. I can’t help but remember Philip Larkin expressing similar sentiments to mine in a copy of The Faerie Queen that he’d borrowed from the Bodleian Library as an undergraduate:
First I thought Troilus and Criseyde was the most boring poem in English. Then I thought Beowulf was. Then I thought Paradise Lost was. Now I know that The Faerie Queen is the dullest thing out. Blast it.
(Larkin, by the way, is dead on with these tedium rankings: The Faerie Queen truly is the the dullest thing out). Even Dr Johnson, a bona fide fan of Paradise Lost, stated “None ever wished it longer than it is”, which makes you wonder what those who dislike it must be saying about it. In actual fact though Johnson was wrong about this because Armando Iannucci clearly does wish that Paradise Lost were longer than it is and (to paraphrase some words of Satan’s from the poem) would make a heaven of what would be a hell for most of us. Iannucci seemingly boundless passion for all things Milton remains slightly baffling to a non-believer like myself, yet also potently infectious.
Maybe it simply doesn’t matter what motivated me to watch this programme since it clearly succeeded in its stated aims and left me resolved me to give the old guy’s magnum opus another go. I also find myself hoping that others who viewed the programme will be moved to do likewise. Since I already know that I like Lycidas and even genuinely love some of the sonnets – especially sonnet 23 (“Methought I saw my late espoused saint”) which you can (and should) read if you follow the link below – this means that there’s already some solid foundations to build on. Being realistic it seems unlikely that I will ever grow to love Paradise Lost, but I am hopeful that more pleasure will be garnered on my second, willing trip through Milton’s wacky “re-imagining” of The Book of Genesis. Grateful thanks are therefore due to Mr Iannucci for his spirited attempt to justify the ways of John to me.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/sonnets/sonnet_23/index.shtml
Obviously Paradise Lost is a great work of English Literature, but that’s also true of a considerable number of canonical works which routinely bore English Literature students rigid. I can’t help but remember Philip Larkin expressing similar sentiments to mine in a copy of The Faerie Queen that he’d borrowed from the Bodleian Library as an undergraduate:
First I thought Troilus and Criseyde was the most boring poem in English. Then I thought Beowulf was. Then I thought Paradise Lost was. Now I know that The Faerie Queen is the dullest thing out. Blast it.
(Larkin, by the way, is dead on with these tedium rankings: The Faerie Queen truly is the the dullest thing out). Even Dr Johnson, a bona fide fan of Paradise Lost, stated “None ever wished it longer than it is”, which makes you wonder what those who dislike it must be saying about it. In actual fact though Johnson was wrong about this because Armando Iannucci clearly does wish that Paradise Lost were longer than it is and (to paraphrase some words of Satan’s from the poem) would make a heaven of what would be a hell for most of us. Iannucci seemingly boundless passion for all things Milton remains slightly baffling to a non-believer like myself, yet also potently infectious.
Maybe it simply doesn’t matter what motivated me to watch this programme since it clearly succeeded in its stated aims and left me resolved me to give the old guy’s magnum opus another go. I also find myself hoping that others who viewed the programme will be moved to do likewise. Since I already know that I like Lycidas and even genuinely love some of the sonnets – especially sonnet 23 (“Methought I saw my late espoused saint”) which you can (and should) read if you follow the link below – this means that there’s already some solid foundations to build on. Being realistic it seems unlikely that I will ever grow to love Paradise Lost, but I am hopeful that more pleasure will be garnered on my second, willing trip through Milton’s wacky “re-imagining” of The Book of Genesis. Grateful thanks are therefore due to Mr Iannucci for his spirited attempt to justify the ways of John to me.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/sonnets/sonnet_23/index.shtml
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