There's nothing funny about Milton

Nonetheless, Milton's Paradise Lost is fantastic. I can't imagine why I would need to state something so obvious, but then I recalled what it was like to be a Freshman again.

I'm about a third of the way through and will be finished later tonight. Here are my favorite tidbits thus far:

• This neglect then of Rhyme so little is to e taken for a defect, though it may seem so perhaps to vulgar Readers, tat it rather is to be esteem’d an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recover’d to Heroic Poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of Rhyming.

Rhyme seems to be this argument that keeps surfacing among writers like Robert Howard, Dryden, and Milton. Howard says that rhyme ruins the spontaneity and vulgarity that we love so much in Restoration theatre. Dryden says a big screw you to Howard and writes Conquest of Granada in verse. Milton says a big screw y'all to everyone and writes Paradise Lost in blank verse, sans rhyme of course.

• Of Man’s First disobedience, and the Fruit/Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste/Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,/

Yeah. This needs no introduction. If you have no idea where this comes from, open the text up to page 1.

• Long is the way/And hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light

A famous line made even more famous to the popular masses by what contemporary film? I will give you a virtual cookie if you get it right.

• Towards him they bend/With awful reverence prone; and as a God/Extol him equal to the highest in Heav’n.

If you were to take anything from Paradise Lost, and there is much to take from it, the biggest lesson is that you don't piss off number 1. You don't worship idols, and you certainly don't try to act like top dog. As my dad used to say, "Insubordination is the one thing that guarantees you get fired." Tsk, tsk, Satan. Tsk, tsk.

More to come. . . later.