Dante or Milton, /lit/?
>>25580438No comparison.
>>25580438Dante for substance, Milton for style
I've said it before and I'll say it again but I have no idea wtf Milton is on about
Obviously Dante.
>>25580462filtered
>>25580438>Dante or Milton, /lit/?BLAKE
How does he stack up? I'm thinking of taking the plunge soon.
>>25580544Well he's a novelist and not a poet, so it's a bit apples and oranges.ALTHOUGH, actually, Melville DID write a fuckton of poetry later in life, when he was semi-retired from writing short stories and novels. He wrote a lot of poems having to do with the United States Civil War. I've read a few; they are, at least, interesting.
>>25580643I'm referring to Clarel.
>start reading the divine comedy>it's essentially just dante going "and then all my political enemies are burning in hell and vergil is just so epic we can walk through hell"
>>25580438Obviously Milton. Shakespeare transcends them both anyway even if you could argue he never wrote anything on the level of La Divina Commedia or Paradife Loft
>>25580696This is such a trite thing to post at this point. At least post something about the Purgatorio.
>>25580709Most people who post or say what he did, haven’t read past inferno.
>>25580696yeah, yeah
>>25580485Blake is brilliant no doubt. But in comparison to these two? Not even close.>>25580462Once you understand Latin it syntactically becomes much easier. Just reading it there, it doesn’t take much to know the man was a genius. The only man I’d consider worthy of a place in the trinity with Dante and Shakespeare.
>>25580742>The only man I’d consider worthy of a place in the trinity with Dante and Shakespeare.Not even Chaucer?
>>25580743I was going to say Homer, myself. Eliot's famous line about "there is no third" with Shakespeare and Dante always feels like it overlooks Homer, but Homer is the reason Western Literature exists at all. We wouldn't be here without the Iliad and the Odyssey.
>>25580743>>25580751It’s a tough one, because as brilliant and influential as those two, especially Homer, were, i feel as though Milton, in terms of what he was aiming for, surpasses that, rhetorically and stylistically anyway. That’s just my stance; you could easily argue for Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Chaucer, even Spenser.
>>25580462LUCIFER SAID "MY FELLOW LOSER ANGELS WHO GOT KICKED OUT OF HEAVENWE DIDN'T REALLY LOSEI MEAN, WE DID BUT NOT REALLY BROWE'RE GONNA MAKE OUR OWN HEAVEN BRO IT'S GONNA BE TOTALLY SWEETOH BY THE WAY, WE'RE ALSO GOING TO FIGHT GOD AGAIN AND IT'S GONNA WORK THIS TIMEWHO'LL BE OUR LEADER? WHO WANT'S TO BE THE TARGET OF GOD'S WRATH WHEN WE ATTACK HEAVEN A SECOND TIME? NO ONE WANTS TO BE THE BOSSWE WON'T HAVE A LEADER, WE'LL VOTE FOR OUR STRATEGY INSTEAD! SO WILL WE TRY TO ATTACK HEAVEN DIRECTLY OR SHOULD WE TRY TO BE SNEAKY AND CLEVER ABOUT IT?""WHOEVER WANTS TO GIVE A SUGGESTION NOW IS THE TIME TO DO IT"MOLOCH, THE STRONGEST ANGEL, STOOD UP AND SAID, "WE SHOULD FIGHT GOD HEAD ON AGAIN BUT THIS TIME WITH MORE BRUTE FORCE."
>>25580696Your next take: dante's divine comedy is literally a self-insert fanfic
>>25580643Didn't he write a hard AF epic poetry near the end of his life.
>>25580438Dante. It's not even close.
>>25580703Shakespeare character: "My God and My King do I love."Me: "Oh, he loves his God and his king."Shakespeare annotater: "The character was making a humorous commentary on the size of his penis and the impressiveness of his sexual prowess."
>>25581032Enough about country matters.
>>25580742>The only man I’d consider worthy of a place in the trinity with Dante and Shakespearelol
>>25580438shakespeare.
>>25581057lol
>>25580742
>>25581180I get Inferno and Paradife Loft, but the Aeneid is as entertaining as Homer. Dido+Aeneas scene is legendary for a reason.
>>25580438Milton, because I only speak American.
>>25580485Bafed.
>>25581202Does favouring Milton over Shakespeare give rise to schizophrenic art such as this?
>>25581208>schizophrenicweird way to spell "based" but ok
>>25581209I didn’t mean it pejoratively, I love both Blake and Milton.
milton
>>25580643>interestingWhich is more one could say for most novelists who foray into poetry. Mostly off topic but is Redburn any good? I’ve been wanting to check it out for a while.
>>25580462If I read Milton will this click after a while? I brute forced Shakespeare in a similar fashion, I figure Milton should probably be easier, but some anons are saying here that I need to read more Latin to understand the syntax.
>>25580751>but Homer is the reason Western Literature exists at all. We wouldn't be here without the Iliad and the Odyssey.Scaruffi destroyed your arguments YEARS AGO Beatlesfag
>>25582764NTA but I've gotten filtered the two times I tried reading Paradise Lost and never had trouble reading Shakespeare even back in HS. I'd say Milton is way harder and PL especially has tons of religious references that can easily fly over your head similar to reading Dante
>>25582783Do you know of any good annotated copies?
>>25582764>>25582796Define "good".>I-1. Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit / Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast / Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, / With loss of Eden, till one greater Man / Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,I-1. Tell me about man's first sin, when he tasted the forbidden fruit and caused all our troubles, until Jesus came and saved us.>I-6. Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top / Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire / That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed, / In the Beginning how the Heav'ns and Earth / Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill / Delight thee more, and Siloa's Brook that flow'dI-6. Inspire me with this knowledge. You are the heavenly spirit who inspired Moses in his teachings.>I-12. Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence / Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song, / That with no middle flight intends to soar / Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues / Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.I-12. I'm asking for your help because I want to write a great work different from any that has ever been written before.>I-17. And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer / Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure,I-17. I want you to teach me, Holy Spirit, because you value goodness more than fancy churches.>I-19. Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first / Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread / Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss / And mad'st it pregnant: What in me is darkI-19. You know everything. You were there at the beginning. You sat like a dove with your wings spread over the dark emptiness and made it come to life.>I-23. Illumin, what is low raise and support; / That to the highth of this great Argument / I may assert Eternal Providence, / And justifie the wayes of God to men.I-23. Enlighten me where I am ignorant and strengthen my abilities so that I can correctly explain God's great purpose to men.>I-27. Say first, for Heav'n hides nothing from thy view / Nor the deep Tract of Hell, say first what cause / Mov'd our Grand Parents in that happy State, / Favour'd of Heav'n so highly, to fall off / From thir Creator, and transgress his Will / For one restraint, Lords of the World besides?I-27. You know everything about Heaven and Hell, so tell me, what was it that made Adam and Eve go against God's orders? They seemed so happy. He had given them the whole world, except for one little thing.>I-33. Who first seduc'd them to that foul revolt? / Th' infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile / Stird up with Envy and Revenge, deceiv'd / The Mother of Mankind, what time his PrideI-33. Who made them do this awful thing? It was the snake, wasn’t it. His envy and thirst for revenge made him go trick Eve the way he did.
>>25582810I want something which is good as in it encourages me to understand the language. Sort of like training wheels.
>>25582810>I want you to teach me, Holy Spirit, because you value goodness more than fancy churches.This is shit because heart literally means heart here, not a metaphor for goodness. Milton's writing about how the human body is the temple of God, and how the Holy Ghost abides in the heart itself.
>>25582764>>25582783Retarded ESL here. Milton clicked for me roughly halfway through book 1, pretty early in my reading journey too. Shakespeare is still giving me trouble even after going through Joyce+Pynchon wombo combo.
>>25582764I think Milton is harder to understand than Shakespeare, but you don't need to learn latin or anything like that, idk why someone said that. He does have a very large vocabulary though
>>25580462
>>25580438lucan
>>25581032Tbf Shakespeare wrote that appeal led to everyone regardless of class status. What sounds like a deep and meaningful commentary to the rich is a bawdy dick joke to the poor. And boy do the poors love their dick jokes
>>25583258I said it because though yeah, Latin isn’t a requirement, it definitely helps you understand that he’s not just being grammatically incorrect or obscure. As well as this, his form is reminiscent of Latin poetry, with his pattern of object to subject to verb, the hyperbaton, “Through the palpable obscure find out his way” in which the central noun is tightly placed as a result of the adjectives being cast to the periphery of the phrase; i think that is called synchysis.Then you’ve got phrases like “since created man” which is like the Latin “hominem creatum” as opposed to “since man had been/was created” which is ablative absolute. There’s more, but I’m working so I’ll have to effortpost another time. I just love the poem so much I wanted to autistically analyse it despite knowing that many first time readers will probably not want that.
>>25582871I found Shakespeare to be weirdly legible if I read it quickly. It felt impressionistic (?) to read almost. I'm probably misusing that word, but eventually I could slow down and read into the dick jokes more. Shakespeare is also endlessly referenced in most Western Media, so you will recognize plot points even if they are buried in iambic pentameter. If you are an ESL with a native Latin language the relative ease of Milton might lend credence to Latinanons view, though it seems to me that he just really liked Paradise Lost, which is perfectly understandable.
>>25584334>read into the dick jokes moreAy, there's the rub. I read very slowly and I always try to get the most out of the text, and with Shakespeare there's always 5 layers of puns, plenty of neologisms and words used outside of their usual meaning, on top of unusual metaphors and images and wild leaps in logic. Meanwhile the main difficulty in Milton comes from the syntax, which you can get used to, and from the allusions (which aren't even that dense in Paradise Lost, Lycidas was way worse about it), and that's what annotated copies are for.>If you are an ESL with a native Latin language the relative ease of Milton might lend credence to Latinanons viewI'm Polish. Our language isn't as latinate as Romanian or Italian are, but it's also governed by rather complex grammar rules, so maybe that helps.>he just really liked Paradise Lost, which is perfectly understandable.Paradise Lost is my all-time favourite work of literature, so I am with him on that. Its language strikes the perfect balance between grace and power, elegance and rhapsody. And it's also immensely readable, I don't have the same feeling of getting stuck on minutiae as I do with Shakespeare or Joyce. I think Milton's use of enjambment is what makes it so; rather than making you appreciate a single line of verse in 'isolation', so to speak (it's never as easy as that in poetry), his lines are all interconnected and form new compounds of meaning that you are able to gleam all at once just by reading continuously. The famous "Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit / of that forbidden tree" is the chief example - the metaphorical fruit of disobedience and the physical fruit of the tree of knowledge. Enjambment also simply keeps you reading, you're not stopped at end lines, but you're forced by inertia to try to get to the end of the sentence.The one thing I completely missed while reading PL is its connection with the English civil war. I know Milton was heavily influenced by it, but that raises interpretative difficulty; he was a revolutionary anti-monarchist, yet he chose Satan as his rebel hero, in turn depicting revolution in a negative light. Maybe reading his biography before an inevitable reread will make it clearer what effect Milton is trying to achieve here.
>>25580438I'd die for Dante but have read neither.
>>25583317>this truly is a Paradise Lostwoah...
>>25585946Missing out big time, chump
>>25580438Hahaha Milton, bet he got bullied
Dante was someone who dedicated his masterpiece to a woman he barely knew. Milton hated his own daughters women were so repulsive to him.So what do you prefer? A chud or a simp?
>Neither
>>25588057a normie
>>25588089He seemed too depressed and insightful with regard to human psychology to be a complete normie.
>>25588159if those two represent chud and simp then will is normie. married a girl at 19 (after having already gotten her pregnant), had a sort of tumultuous marriage and he clearly cheated (often).to be honest, normies (the ones touching grass) seem perfectly poised to know a thing or two about human psychology.
>>25580438In a short while, I will overshadow both, and your question will be redundant. As is becoming of fathers, they will perish at my hand.
>>25588653Oh yeah? Give me your best short poem, go!
>>25580438>Dante or MiltonNot even closeDante was Literally divinely inspired. And I'm saying this as a non-Christian
>>25588663Oh there once was a manwho posted on 4chan.He wrote a short poemand said "This'll show 'em."
>>25588663Of moots first permabanOf hiroshimoots take over
>>25588721is that a joke? milton was said to be literally divinely inspired when writing paradise lost
>>25588721all epic poems are composed under divine inspiration.
