Blackwell Reference Online

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What have Milton's modern-day readers to gain from awareness of the classical literary tradition in which he repeatedly and explicitly placed himself? Should we press that question, indeed, and ask what is lost by unawareness or neglect of the tradition? Or should we put it aside, taking the view that nothing is lost, since there is always some other way of reading him which will yield the same understanding, and hence pleasure? Although these questions are too large and personal to receive balanced answers here, some suggestive ones will emerge from the following case studies. Being case studies, they cannot help privileging texture above structure (close reading above detached meditation); but truly it is moment-to-moment, textural reading which makes Milton's voice distinctive, and gains him his readership. I shall be glancing at a few larger structures too, since these certainly draw benefit from his classical attainments; the emphasis, none the less, should remain on the texturing. Similarly, Milton's power to speak to us is not at all limited to Paradise Lost . But since readers who do not enjoy Paradise Lost seldom enjoy his other poetry, still less his prose, where better to begin on case studies than with that poem's own beginning? Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With ... log in or subscribe to read full text