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A review by oz617
Paradise Lost by John Milton
challenging
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.75
Surprised to say I genuinely hated that. Paradise Lost gets compared with the Divine Comedy a lot, which I think is a disservice to the Divine Comedy, because what I've been loving about Dante is how precise everything is. The Divine Comedy is easy to follow, clearly structured, and the changes it makes to theology all seem reasoned. Most importantly for me it's critical, and it's about *people*. It tells us who went to hell, and why, and often Dante even disagrees with it. The main character has feelings and emotions and wants explanations.
Paradise Lost on the other hand is functionally a Bible retelling, but positioning itself, for some reason, as scripture. Satan is the only character who has wants and desires, but they're Evil wants and Evil desires and he spends most of his time just brooding. The one exception to this is Eve, who eats the fruit so she might become godlike, but this is undercut by being told constantly that she was made to be pretty but brainless. Man's fall isn't blamed on her, or on Satan, but on Adam, for giving his wife the freedom to make that choice. The author jumps in to tell us women always do that.
That bit could easily be criticised by telling me it's from a different time, and I almost accept that, except that I just read the pilgrim's progress - a book from the same era, by another puritan man, and I was so amazed by how much less sexist than I'd accounted for that was. It even Specifically tore apart this point of view!
The thing I've not decided whether I like or not is the reference to classical mythology. Paradise Lost invokes Greek and Roman epic constantly - I've read the first manuscript, but the revised version was even structured into 12 books so it would copy the Aeneid. But this is all really weird feeling, because it's 1) English, and 2) Christian. It feels insulting to be constantly comparing your heroes to the Greco-Roman ones, while also saying their Gods either didn't exist or were spirits that belong in hell. But a lot of that is my own conjecture, because the poem really doesn't explain itself on that count, so it winds up feeling more like an appeal to intellectuals who've read the epics than anything else.
This extends to the language too. TS Eliot said that Milton wrote English like it was a dead language, and I agree. It's structured like Latin, which does feel very Biblical, but makes it harder to read. And it creates a style that I frankly just dislike. It's clearly meant to be read on the page, and that means it doesn't flow in the way Dante's does. Maybe I'm just biased by how much I Do like the divine comedy.
Essentially, it feels like a poem you're supposed to study rather than read, and I just don't like it enough to care to. Maybe I'll do this again in 10 years and love it then, I don't know, but for now, not for me.
Paradise Lost on the other hand is functionally a Bible retelling, but positioning itself, for some reason, as scripture. Satan is the only character who has wants and desires, but they're Evil wants and Evil desires and he spends most of his time just brooding. The one exception to this is Eve, who eats the fruit so she might become godlike, but this is undercut by being told constantly that she was made to be pretty but brainless. Man's fall isn't blamed on her, or on Satan, but on Adam, for giving his wife the freedom to make that choice. The author jumps in to tell us women always do that.
That bit could easily be criticised by telling me it's from a different time, and I almost accept that, except that I just read the pilgrim's progress - a book from the same era, by another puritan man, and I was so amazed by how much less sexist than I'd accounted for that was. It even Specifically tore apart this point of view!
The thing I've not decided whether I like or not is the reference to classical mythology. Paradise Lost invokes Greek and Roman epic constantly - I've read the first manuscript, but the revised version was even structured into 12 books so it would copy the Aeneid. But this is all really weird feeling, because it's 1) English, and 2) Christian. It feels insulting to be constantly comparing your heroes to the Greco-Roman ones, while also saying their Gods either didn't exist or were spirits that belong in hell. But a lot of that is my own conjecture, because the poem really doesn't explain itself on that count, so it winds up feeling more like an appeal to intellectuals who've read the epics than anything else.
This extends to the language too. TS Eliot said that Milton wrote English like it was a dead language, and I agree. It's structured like Latin, which does feel very Biblical, but makes it harder to read. And it creates a style that I frankly just dislike. It's clearly meant to be read on the page, and that means it doesn't flow in the way Dante's does. Maybe I'm just biased by how much I Do like the divine comedy.
Essentially, it feels like a poem you're supposed to study rather than read, and I just don't like it enough to care to. Maybe I'll do this again in 10 years and love it then, I don't know, but for now, not for me.