For a simple reading copy with endnotes, the Penguin edition edited by John Leonard is an affordable paperback. I recommend the free, online edition of Paradise Lost by The John Milton Reading Room, edited by Thomas H. Luxon. This comes with introductions, videos, research guides, and hyperlinked annotations. I'll be recommending this edition for my course. Link here: milton.host.dartmouth.edu/reading_room/pl/intro/text.shtml For university students, I recommend the Norton edition, edited by Gordon Teskey. This copy has excerpts from important criticism on PL from the 17th century to the present. Thanks for the great question!
Good morning! Thank you very much for Milton's edition recommendations. I am seriously taking part on the discussions. The only problem is that I was never very good with poetic metre (scansion of verses, it is called?) but am really tempted... Well, thank you again and I will look into the editions you recommended.
@@closereadingpoetry Hi Adam! Thank you very much for recommendations. A friend told me before that the Longman Annotated version would be "the best" and I got that one actually but I'm kinda worried about modernized spelling...would it make a huge difference?
Where else can I learn this analysis?? I have never even imagined that I learn this in this way. I read books by myself and this is totally new that I learn your analysis and then I have my renewed perspective
studied this with douglas bush but at 80 years am ready for another go,, prof brower and hum 6 were critical to my development as a reader. remember de mann well before he decamped for yale
As always, great lecture! Adam, you make even Milton’s poetry look and sound manageable. I can’t join you guys online due to time difference but enjoy the recordings here. I’ll do my best next semester for Milton’s sake!
I wish understand more english. But I feel that you got talent for literature and congratulations for your works. Awesome videos. Big Hug from Argentina, wishing you the best in this art of writing beauty. Sincerely and friebdly, Pablo 🙏
I always wanted to dive more deeply into this! Never had the chance in college, and my students and I don't have time for more than the first book in our Brit Lit survey year. Thank you!
Hi Mr Walker! I am an aspiring poet and I had written a poem for my great friends who had a 50th anniversary. I wanted to know could you, if you want me to share it with you, do a close reading and see what needs to be fixed such as wording?
I enjoyed this video more than i thought i would . I did enjoy you picking apart this poem . It is quite beautiful. Keep making these videos . Im sure there are more people who enjoy them or will find out that they in fact do enjoy poetry i am part of the latter group . You learn something new every single day.
It just occured to me that "taste" is probably a subdued pun with the Latin "sapere", meaning both to taste and to know (mortal taste = knowledge of death)
Hi! I am taking a class on Milton next semester and will be reading Paradise Lost. I'll certainly be referring back to your lectures as I read through it. I wanted to ask if you've ever read CS Lewis's Preface to Paradise Lost and if you'd recommend reading it prior to reading PL? Also, what additionally should I familiarize myself with before I read PL? (I know not much about the bible or epic poetry)
I would love to join you, as I am presently reading PL on my own, but I am based in Italy. Would you put the videos up here too? I appreciate your great work very much Adam. Love to have poetry explained so clearly. Your students are lucky. ❤
I was curious as to whether a recording of the session could be provided? I am very keen on joining this course but unfortunately 6pm EST is 3am for me, so I was really hoping some arrangement could be made.
Hey, Joe! We'll meet every Wednesday at 6PM EST from February 7 to May 1st. We'll have 30 minutes of lecture immediately followed by an hour of discussion. 90 minutes total.
Mindful reading … sounds wonderful. Will these sessions remain available on RU-vid for those who cannot join them live? Are you also planning to do this with William Blake?
Hi, Linda! The lecture part of the meeting will be uploaded to RU-vid. I won't be doing this with William Blake, but I'm hoping the Antrim Literature Project will offer something on the Romantics in the spring!
At 9:00 you mention that the 'to' in 'into' is stressed, but it is, at least nowadays a trochee. I've checked multiple dictionaries. Moreover, meticulous poets will not regard 'Forbidden' as an alliteration, since the 'For' is not stressed in this word. Nowadays it is acceptable that alliteration is either on the first letter or the stressed syllable. I prefer only the latter. As far as I know it - First and Fruit is an alliteration(a private case of consonance in this case), whereas the three F's are a consonance. Please please correct me if I'm wrong. I see that it is not the full course. Where is the discussion? How can I access it? Thank you very much for your channel, time and effort. Keep up the Good Work.
@NameNam12 Correct: "into" is not normally stressed, but I'm making a special case because of it's placement within the line. I find that some words (prepositions and conjunctions, especially) often receive uncommon stress when swept along the current of strong rhythm. Readers will sometimes differ on scansion. For comparison, check our how Douglas Bush scans the first 6 lines of Paradise Lost. His scansion of the same lines is completely different from mine. See his pages 174-180 of his book "John Milton: A Sketch of His Life and Writings". It's probably never wise to disagree with a great scholar like Bush, but I felt the rhythm much differently. His didn't feel natural to me. It's an interesting point you raise about alliteration. Only in Anglo-Saxon poetry and in the alliterative traditions of the fourteenth century have I seen syllabic weight as a requirement for alliteration. In all other rhetorical and poetic uses of alliteration, it only matters that the consonant is syllable-initial, not that it is syllable-stressed. The rest of the lectures are located in this playlist. We just completed the live course with discussion! Kind of you to comment and to ask.
@@closereadingpoetry Thank you for your kind reply. About the 'into'; I found the 'into' in 'The song of Hiawatha', sometimes it is trochaic, some- iambic. Trochaic: "Out of childhood into manhood" Iambic: "Leaped into the light of morning," "Moulded it into a pipe-head," So, I guess you're right about the 'into' being used sometimes as an iamb, even though various dictionaries state that it a trochaic word. About alliteration - I'm not making a statement, but simply trying to look for the true meaning of this term. I've found so far only two sources that make this statement, whereas all the other sources briefly claim that alliteration is a private case of consonance where the initial syllable is the same in a few close-by words. These are two resources: LitCharts & Wikipedia - I summed it up; LitCharts makes these claims: 1. Alliteration is the repetition of sounds, not just letters, meaning that also vowels can alliterate(assonance). 2. Alliteration occurs either whenever the repeating sounds are in the first syllable of a word, or the stressed syllable. However, not long ago only the stressed-syllable version of alliteration was considered legitimate. 3. Alliteration sticklers may contest that the best use of alliteration takes into consideration how certain combinations of consonants affect the resulting sounds; "Sam is speeding in the storm" is not alliterative, they may claim since the 's' sound is different from 'st' and 'sp'. Wikipedia makes these claims: 1. Alliteration is the repetition of syllable-initial consonant sounds between nearby words, or of syllable-initial vowels, if the syllables in question do not start with a consonant. 2. There are several concepts to which the term 'alliteration' is sometimes applied: a. Repetition of unstressed consonants does not count as alliteration. Therefore the following is an alliteration: "Come . . . dragging the lazy languid line a*l*ong" b. The repetition of syllable-initial vowels functions as alliteration, regardless of which vowels are used. c. In English the consonant clusters sp-, st-, and sk- do not alliterate with one another or with s-. For example, spill alliterates with spit, sting with stick, skin with scandal, but those pairs do not alliterate with one another. In other consonant clusters the second consonant does not matter; for example, bring alliterates with blast and burn, or rather all three words alliterate with one another. d. Alliteration may also refer to the use of different but similar consonants, often because the two sounds were identical in an earlier stage of the language(e.g. z with s) e. Symmetrical alliteration is a specialized form of alliteration which demonstrates parallelism or chiasmus. Chiasmus: "*rust **brown **blazers *rule". Parallelism: "what in earlier days had been *drafts of **volunteers were now *droves of **victims". So I guess alliteration is more broad than the narrow definition most source give. I've been studying poetry on my own, and I really feel the need for a group - do you know about an online group for studying poetry? If you'll host a group I will join, I'm even willing to pay for it. BTW - it's been taking me a hour to write this comment. :)
by any chance is there way, to have access to videos where you go through the whole book in Paradise Lost in slow motion? a small section won't suffice.
@sajadsb9 kind of you to take an interest. Although I don't analyze every single line of the poem (maybe one day), I am completing lectures on important passages throughout all 12 books of Paradise Lost. You can find the lectures on the books within the playlist that this video is a part of.
