Milton's the better poet.Shakespeare's the better writer.
>>23824202At no period is the visual imagination conspicuous in Milton's poetry. It would be as well to have a few illustrations of what I mean by visual imagination. From Macbeth:This guest of summer,The temple-haunting martlet, does approveBy his loved mansionary that the heaven's breathSmells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this birdHath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle:Where they most breed and haunt, I have observedThe air is delicate.It may be observed that such an image, as well as another familiar quotation from a little later in the same play,Light thickens, and the crowMakes wing to the rooky wood.not only offer something to the eye, but, so to speak, to the common sense. I mean that they convey the feeling of being in a particular place at a particular time. The comparison with Shakespeare offers another indication of the peculiarity of Milton. With Shakespeare, far more than with any other poet in English, the combinations of words offer perpetual novelty; they enlarge the meaning of the individual words joined: thus 'procreant cradle', 'rooky wood'. In comparison, Milton's images do not give this sense of particularity, nor are the separate words developed in significance. His Language is, if one may use the term without disparagement, artificial and conventional.The imagery in L'Allegro is all general:While the ploughman near at hand,Whistles o'er the furrowed land,And the milkmaid singeth blithe,And the mower whets his scythe,And every shepherd tells his taleUnder the hawthorn in the dale.It is not a particular ploughman, milkmaid, and shepherd that Milton sees (as Wordsworth might see them); the sensuous effect of these verses is entirely on the ear, and is joined to the concepts of Ploughman milkmaid, and shepherd. Even in his most mature work, Milton does not infuse new life into the word, as Shakespeare does.We have in fact to read such a passage not analytically, to get the poetic impression. I am not suggesting that Milton has no idea to convey which he regards as important: only that the syntax is determined by the musical significance, by the auditory imagination, rather than by the attempt to follow actual speech or thought. It is at least more nearly possible to distinguish the pleasure which arises from the noise, from the pleasure due to other elements, than with the verse of Shakespeare, in which the auditory imagination and the imagination of the other senses are more nearly fused, and fused together with the thought. The result with Milton is, in one sense of the word, rhetoric. That term is not intended to be derogatory. This kind of 'rhetoric' is not necessarily bad in its influence; but it may be considered bad in relation to the historical life of a language as a whole. I have said elsewhere that the living English which was Shakespeare's became split up to two components one of which was exploited by Milton and the other by Dryden.
>>23824202This isn't an interesting thread topic, what actual insights do you have on the meaning of their works? This comparison ranking shit is watchmojo tier discussion
>>23824202Prove it by comparing their writings in this thread. Let's see the best selections.
>>23824202The Sonnets are better than anything Milton e’er wrote.
>>23824298this post is verbatim copied from a TS Eliot essay, just so you anons know>>23824310watchmojo, lol, very true
>>23824940>this post is verbatim copied from a TS Eliot essayWell durr, it's Eliot's famous commentary on Milton.
>>23824947It's still important to say those things. I once had an anon compliment me on my post, saying that "the occasional gems like these are the reason I still go on /lit/". Said post was just taken verbatim from an essay by Gass.
