John Milton's "Lycidas" | Close Reading, Analysis & Critical Appreciation 

I love this! A close reading helps to bring a poem to life. I appreciate your references to other scholars and the graphics you use to make your analysis clear. Please consider doing a close reading of Adonais, which is such an achievement. Shelley learned much from Lycidas.

Excellent! Thank you for the fine explanation and insights. God bless.

Oh, this is brilliant! Many thanks for this; looking forward to more Miltonic analyses!

Simply excellent. I almost feel bad listening to such an amazing lecture for free. Ever thought of opening a Patreon account? Also, you have an amazing memory, being able to remember all those biblical and classical allusions

Excellent. Thank you.

Thank you so much. It was so informative ❤

Love this!

Thank-you it's a brilliant class ❤❤

Perfect 🥹

Fantastic fantastic video - I'm studying and writing on this poem as an undergraduate student of English and I haven't heard many readings of such a dense poem as eloquent and insightful as yours. A particular lecturer of mine should take some notes from you 😁Please keep it up!!

Milton Would Have Been Very Moved By Your Wonderful Work 👑👑👑👑👑

👍

I agree with what the other commenters said. This is quite good. Personally, I meditate endlessly upon the eight stanza, which I have memorized. Milton’s anger is palpable, and it has become mine. Our modern-day priests and bishops I identify with the scientists, academics, and other members of the ‘expert’ class. I mean no offense by this. You make yourself an exception to their rank by producing these videos for public consumption. The “lean and flashy songs” of this academic class I identify with the papers which they write, not for the public, but, as you said of Milton’s “blind mouths,” merely as a means to impress one another. This, of course, is an over reading by a moralist, but I cannot convince of anything else. I believe what Bacon wrote that scholarship is and ought to be for the advancement of mankind and not, as it is today, for the generation of citations. Forgive my pessimism. Milton’s is a double metaphor, since he is also attacking the rather performative poets of his time. I would not mind if you wished to identify the “lean and flashy songs” with the meaningless productions of our modern day media-Hollywood’s incessant sequels, for example, which are nothing more than bald attempts to make money. (Though, in this case, it might be better to call them “fat and flashy” songs, since they are expensive and filled with artificiality, unbelievable CGI and totally unbelievable ‘writing.’) Milton would reject our money-grubbing media with the fury of someone who had read, and who had comprehended, the Cave of Mammon in Spencer’s Fairie Queene (Book II). Most modern readers would have trouble with Spencer, not because of the difficulty of his language but because his morality would seem such a personal accusation against their own way of life. If you have not, perhaps you should make a video on that passage.