Just ordered it. Opinions?

It's a classic. It's great literature. There's really nothing more to be said. It's almost like asking what do you think of Macbeth. It's not particularly easy to read, but it's very worthwhile.

the fack u liddle goody two shoes (endearingly)

op, as with any early modern english lit, ur gonna have to spend more time looking at footnotes explaining wat the archaic and classical words and phrases used mean instead of actually reading the text.
ur not going to understand it and its not going to be fun. cliffnote that shit and read something at earliest 19th ce and up, preferably 1890+
the only reason to read this imo is if ur an educated atheist, the only way it was interesting for me anyway

I don't even know what that means



Or, you could read it because you enjoy reading good literature. And, really, it's not that hard. If you are the kind of reader who would be interested in the first place you've probably read enough to be able to make your way without Cliff's Notes. It's not like reading Finnegan's Wake, anyway. And, by the way, you really should stop trying to discourage people from reading the classics. As someone said in the Jules Verne post, they're classics for a reason. Few enough people read quality stuff anymore to begin with. Milton was a great author. Everyone should read him. If you take the time to appreciate and understand it, you will come away--at the very least--entertained. Then, if you like it, you should read Dante next (probably first, but that's starting down a long of road of, but then you should read The Bible [as literature], Homer, and Virgil before Dante, etc.). If it's stood the test of time, it's worth checking out just to see what the fuss is.

o good, a debate

though the student of lit that has experience with early modern english has a slightly easier time reading milton, the attitude that milton can be enjoyed is problematic. the official attitude is ofc, yes, milton is great, epic writer in the literal sense. but i guarantee that almost all college students wont find this entertaining. its excruciating, like doing complex math. and as for understanding it, i know for sure that u didnt understand a lot of it. whole schools of scholars debate the meaning. i protest that joyce is if not more facile, certainly more entertaining to my sensibility. at least i know what the words mean as he meant them. and i didnt say verne was bad, its just that he created a vapid thriller, wholly unpoetic. i loved it when i read it at age 12. a much better novel in the same genre? shelley's frankenstein.

are u not at all familiar with postmodernist thought? this is what all ranks of our academy should claim themselves to be, unless ur some kinda conservative/reactionary/really old person. u should already kno that postmodernism critiques the literary tradition as bourgeois, patriarchal, colonial. the classics cheated at the 'test of time,' they had all the answers. i wont lie and say that i dont enjoy a lot of them, but we must be wary of how they influence our rhetoric and ideology.

note to anyone interested:
go ahead and try for urself. according to this thread anyway u have a 50/50 shot

First of all, I am very familiar with post-modernist thought. I'm just generally of a mind that it's largely crap. Post-modernists (I'm talking about scholars here) are far to prone--as your admonishment demonstrates--to insist that anyone that doesn't think the way they do is a neanderthal. It's one thing to like the literature which is dubbed post-modern by scholars--which I do, quite a bit--it's quite another to embrace a scholarly tradition, which, at its heart, is propaganda to make women, minorities, etc., feel better by demonizing and downgrading what came before. Good writing is good writing. I don't need a school of thought to tell me what to read and how to read it. This, by the way, is exactly the view of the best professors I had--some of whom were very much post-modernist writers. In fact, some of the best critiques I've heard of post-modern scholarship came from writers that post-modernists love to hold up as examples.

Your critique of Verne, by the way, falls exactly into this post-modern trap. Certainly, Frankenstein is better in many ways (interesting, by the way, that you settle on a book written by a woman that is often over-interpreted by feminists as a an attack on traditional gender roles and sexuality). If you are fan of science fiction, though, you should read Jules Verne at some point, just like every fan of English literature should read Beowulf and Chaucer. There are certainly better authors than Verne, but ignoring him is kind of like saying don't listen to Chuck Berry because (Insert your favorite group here) is better. Besides, compared to the usual drivel that people read on this Forum, Verne is an unqualified genius.

As for Milton, I agree with you that I like Joyce better, too. Ulysses is one of my favorite novels. But Finnegan's Wake is in no way easier to read than Paradise Lost. In fact, much of the point of Finnegan's Wake is to play games with the language--to be the exact opposite of facile. In many, ways, Finnegan's Wake was written for Joyce--not readers. If you can make your way through Finnegan's Wake like it was a Times' best-seller, then you are a better reader than anyone I have even met.

By the way, I also agree with you that the average college student won't like Milton. Having worked as a TA while a grad student, I put that down as far more a critique of college students than of Milton.

tis most ironic that im taking early modern brit lit this spring quarter and largely covering milton and spencer.. *groooan*

postmodernism's laurels as ideology is most compelling as a means of rejection of ideology, ie skepticism. theres so many diff meanings of postmodernism for us to have a simple convo about it.
imo the rejection of subjectivity breeds relativism and egalitarianism, combined w/ postmodern rhetorical theory becomes meta-theory, meta-ideology, meta-politics.

If you said that last sentence to Hemingway, he'd punch you in the mouth. That you can even come up with a sentence that empty yet that filled with jargon exemplifies all that is wrong with post-modernism.

"And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good -- Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"