As you set out on the adventure of reading Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” note the difficulties, overcome them and enter that Miltonic range and reach of mind that is one of the greatest poetic spaces of the English tradition. Even if you do not agree with Milton that that space is a space of damnation or salvation, you will see, I hope, that it is a space of testing your limits. Seldom has the pain of gain been so pleasurable!
Dear Student,
You will be reading John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and I presume the poem (or parts of it) has been assigned in a Western Literature, a Survey of British Literature, or a John Milton course. It is a magnificent epic poem about the fall of Adam and Eve from Eden at the hands of Satan, in which Milton dilates the brief Biblical account in Genesis into a much longer, more elaborate poem. The actions in the poem are vivid and forceful, and it explores central questions about what it means to be human by imagining a time before we were recognizably us, then how we got to be who we are through alienation from one another, from our natural surroundings, from God, and from our first mythic home—i.e., how Paradise [was] Lost—all with God (in the characters of the Father and the Son), demons (especially a rather compelling Satan) and naked people (Adam and Eve, of course). If it were an HBO limited series, it would be a hit.
There is a problem in reading it, though. It’s quite, quite difficult. I know because I distinctly remember my first reading of the poem. Dr. David Bell, a talented Miltonist at California State University in Sacramento, assigned healthy portions of it in the English Department’s Introduction to British Literature I, and I can see myself on the second floor of the Student Union trying to read it. My Norton Anthology of English Literature— “the Norton”—resting on my lap, I would read in bursts of amazed incomprehension, finishing parts only to realize that I had no idea what I had just read. Bell’s discussion questions were good, forcing me to slow down when I realized that they asked questions requiring first a literal grasp of what happens in the poem before allowing one to argue and speculate. I had to admit that either Milton was a bad writer, or I was a bad reader. Although there has been, believe it not, a long tradition of arguing that Milton was a bad writer—he is not—I had to acknowledge during those arduous afternoons that I was a bad reader—or, rather, an immature one, one whose earlier education in reading mostly contemporary novels had not prepared me for the hard task of reading Milton’s poetry.
I write to you in case you are in the same position and might profit from some introductory remarks about Milton’s “grand style,” as Christopher Ricks puts it in the title to what is still the best single treatment of Milton’s language, a book that decimates the case that Milton’s style is just bad. (See the postscript, but not now.) What is style, and why is Milton’s style called “grand”? In the art of rhetoric, which Milton studied at school, he would have learned that the public speaker invents persuasive arguments, arranges them into parts within a whole, and styles those arranged arguments through words and sentences; in the art of poetry, another art he studied there, the poet imagines compelling episodes, plots them into a sequence, and styles those sequenced episodes through words and sentences. As you can see, style is much the same in both arts: it is the language writers use, specifically the features of that language that are recognizable. Milton’s style is “grand” since it is neither the low, nor the middle style, but the high. The low style is composed of simple words (usually of Anglo, not Latinate origin) in simple or coordinated sentences, the whole marked by casual clarity; the high style, of more elevated words (often from Latin) in complex sentences, the whole marked by greater difficulty. The middle style is in the middle of the two, mixing the two styles.
It’s time for an example, and the opening of Milton’s poem is as good an example of the high style as there is:
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 loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
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 heavens and earth
Rose out of Chaos: or if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th’ Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. (1.1-16)
Believe it not, that’s one sentence! And it was probably not very easy for you to read. It certainly wasn’t for me to do so before: in the Student Union of my past, I hear myself say, “Huh?” But the difficulties are due to a number of stylistic features which, once identified and explained, become easier—though never absolutely easy. One of the reasons that I love Milton is that there are still, after innumerable readings over the years, sentences I don’t completely understand. I haven’t caught up with him yet. I will shortly examine the stylistic features that boggled my mind when I first read the poem both in the hope that once you see how the style works it will be much less difficult and in the hope that you will become one of those poetry lovers who enjoy the style because of its difficulties. Milton is seldom more difficult than he needs to be, given what he is representing.
Of course, you could just read a summary or translation of the poem, and many do just that, declining the education paid for. One contemporary decided to translate the first five and a half lines—
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 loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing Heav’nly Muse—
thus: “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 prefer not to name the translator since his translation is so bad it is difficult to know where to begin carping. But if you’re reading this letter, I doubt you will read a paraphrase. You will want to listen and speak, read, and write about the poem, but know you cannot do that honestly without first having actually read it. So allow me to offer five features that make reading Milton at first difficult: his words, his sentences, his lines, his figures of speech, and his allusions. The argument of my letter to you is that the pleasure and instruction of the poem are worth the labor, or, rather, are in the labor, whose increasing ease will indicate your progress as you become a reader worthy of the poem.
English Words, Anglo-Saxon and Latinate
The standard account of Milton’s words, what is called his diction, is that he tends toward Latinate diction—that is, words whose origin is in Latin, not in Anglo Saxon. English is a strange language, in some ways, since its origins are more varied than most. In addition to its Anglo-Saxon roots, it borrows heavily from Latin and Greek, and often the Latin comes in through a French influence. Our more difficult words tend to come from Latin, and Milton, a talented student of several languages other than English, was so expert in Latin that he composed poems in the language. We get one right away: “Of man’s first disobedience.” You may know what it means, but not everyone does, and even those who do may not use it very often. “Disobedience” is a doubly difficult word since the root of “obedience” is the Latin verb, oboedire, meaning “to obey, or do as one is supposed to,” yet is negated by the prefix, “dis,” meaning “apart, asunder or away.” Those guided by disobedience move away from doing what they are supposed to. Our translator decided to just call it “sin,” but that misses the lexical effect of the positive notion of “obedience” sundered by the prefix—dis-obedience—which is more precise since Adam and Eve did not just sin, not just commit any old sin; they committed the sin of disobeying the Father. Milton’s diction is often Latinate when he wants to be precise. He has not reached for a difficult word; he’s reached for a precise one. If that is the case, why do you think Milton may have chosen the word “restore”? Why might it be a more precise word than “save,” given what Milton is narrating? The first pleasure of reading Milton’s Paradise Lost is the difficult precision of his diction.
Of course, he often reaches for words that are not difficult at all, and you will see that all my characterizations of Milton’s difficulty need to be qualified. “Fruit” is hardly a hard word. The diction of one of the most famous of its passages, Satan’s heroic boast—
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n. (1.254-255)—
is full of simple, single-syllable Anglo-Saxon words. It is not that Milton uses only Latinate words; it is that he often does so. In fact, when one encounters Anglo-Saxon bluntness after Latinate preciousness, it is thrilling.
Long, Complex Sentences
The opening of Paradise Lost is one sentence (across sixteen lines) of one-hundred and twenty-two words. That is a long sentence. Over the years I have noticed that during class discussion of the poem when I ask students for evidence, they seldom read a whole Milton sentence. If they’re lucky, they find a semi-colon, and read to it or from it. I have run a “readability” test on the sentence (the Flesch Reading Ease), and its result was, “Impossible to comprehend,” which it is not, but that lets you know that Milton is difficult. Why? In part because his sentences are often both long and complex; that is, they have more words than is common in our sentences—indeed, sentence length is something the Flesch Reading Ease test scores—and they contain multiple clauses, some of which are subordinate to others (the grammatical definition of complexity). Leave aside the opening five-line preposition phrase, and look just at the next three:
Sing Heav’nly Muse, THAT on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, WHO first taught the chosen seed….
That moment has a relative clause (beginning with “who”) within a relative clause (beginning with “that”), complexity within complexity. It is the Muse that inspired the Shephard who taught.
If one is used to simple and compound sentences, Milton’s complex-y complex sentences will tilt your head; even so, slowing down to straighten your head when reading such sentences is a wonderful experience. Complex sentences allow for more subtle relationships between clauses than compound ones do, and if truth is simple, compound, and complex, one would not want to be without complex sentences.
Blank Verse
The very first thing our unnamed translator decided to do was to convert Milton’s verse into prose. Milton did, in fact, write magnificent prose, but Paradise Lost is a poem, and its verse form was important to Milton, who defends his use of “heroic verse without rhyme” in a preface to the poem. One of the difficulties of the poem for many first readers is the fact that it is a poem; that is, since we are accustomed to prose, we struggle with verse. But converting the poem into prose demolishes one of the greatest pleasures of the poem—the tension between the sentences, which come in varied lengths (some very long indeed, as discussed earlier), and the lines, which come in a single length and house those variously lengthened sentences.
If we treat the first five and a half lines as one sentence, we can see that the one sentence pushes across over five lines of a given length and structure of ten syllables, five feet of two syllables:
Of man’s / first dis/obe/dience, and / the fruit
Of that / forbid/den tree, / whose mor/tal taste
Brought death / into / the world, / and all / our woe,
With loss / of E/den, till / one grea/ter Man
Restore / us, and / regain / the bliss/ful seat,
Sing Heav/’nly Muse….
Milton wrote Paradise Lost in blank verse; that is, in lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter. That sounds harder than it is. A pentameter line has five feet. And an iambic rhythm is dominated by the rhythm of its base foot of two syllables, unstressed-stressed (de-DUM): “Of that / forbid/den tree, / whose mor/tal taste . . ..” Now, I must confess, it took me a long time to hear the stress in words. We live in a loud culture, but one whose subtlety of enunciation has been dulled. In the metrical system of English, the accentual-syllabic, English words of more than one syllable have varied stress or accent. No native speaker of English will say. “Forbidden.” Try it. It sounds off because it’s pronounced, “Forbidden.” Single syllable words are more difficult, but in iambic verse, a foot is usually iambic, so usually scan it that way.
But, of course, a rhythm without variation can be tedious. Imagine hundreds of lines of unvaried iambic pentamer: de-DUM, de-DUM, de-DUM, de-DUM, de DUM. English Renaissance poets called that “the trot,” since it sounds like riding a horse must feel. So poets writing in iambic rhythm vary its measure by substituting one of three other kinds of feet: the trochee (DUM-de), the spondee (DUM-DUM), and the pyrrhic (de-de). So the first line scans thus:
Of man’s / first dis/obe/dience, and / the fruit
The first metrical substitution, “first dis-,” emphasizes both the original character of the disobedience and the sundering of it. Milton often varies a metrical foot to make some point.
Because the sentence’s grammar and syntax in verse will often shift within a line and move across many lines, the poet will often cut a line with a caesura (//), where grammar and metrics demand a pause, or push a line through enjambment (>) from one line to another. For example, the first two lines are cut and enjambed:
Of man’s first disobedience, // and the fruit >
Of that forbidden tree….
Try delivering the following scansion of the above:
Of man’s / first dis/obe/dience, // and / the fruit >
Of that / forbid/den tree….
Then, try delivering the first five and a half lines:
Of man’s / first dis/obe/dience, // and / the fruit >
Of that / forbid/den tree, // whose mor/tal taste >
Brought death / into / the world, // and all / our woe,
With loss / of E/den, // till / one grea/ter Man >
Restore / us, // and / regain / the bliss/ful seat,
Sing Heav/’nly Muse….
These sonic effects are pleasurable as sounds, but they also often signify meaning, the spondee of “Brought death” emphasizing the tragic consequences of the fall, for instance. None of these advanced indications in the text of how to deliver it will come through in a prose translation of the verse because it is no longer verse. Reading poetry aloud will help you begin to inhabit its rhythms and variations. Divide the remaining lines (1.5-16) above into their feet and indicate the stresses, the caesuras, and the enjambments; then, practice delivering it aloud, using your voice as Milton’s instrument. Of course, one cannot do this with the whole poem, but choose some of your favorite passages and scan them thus. What you will discover will require labor, but its own pleasures will increase your sensitivity to and understanding of Milton’s poem and your auditor’s pleasure at your delivery.
One added point: The accent of a word is not determined by the length of its vowels in English, though in Latin it is. Even so, length of vowels still determines length of delivery: we speak short vowels more quickly than long ones. “Forbidden,” for example, is a three syllable word: For-bid-den. The second syllable is stressed; the accent falls on it. But it’s short vowel, whereas the vowel of the first syllable—“for”—is long, so the word’s first syllable is delivered slightly more slowly that the first and second, and the second syllable is stressed. Sometimes, the stress falls on a syllable with long vowel, like “tree”:
Of man’s / first dis/obe/dience, // and / the fruit >
Of that / forbid/den tree,…
Remember: Milton composed poetry in Latin, as well in English, so he was tuned into the relationship between stress and duration. As you read passages of Paradise Lost aloud, you will be, too.
Figures of Speech
As a student of rhetoric and poetics, Milton studied figures of speech, extraordinary forms of language: they come in two types, unusual syntax (schemes) and unusual usage (tropes). There are hundreds, but one in particular is both difficult for readers and favored by Milton. It has two names: hyperbaton or anastrophe. I like to call it Yoda-speak. When Yoda says in Star Wars, “Powerful you have become,” the syntax is strange since we normally put predicate adjectives after their verbs: “You have become powerful.” The original piece of dialogue illustrates hyperbaton, also called anastrophe, also called “Yoda-speak,” since the character uses the figure so often. A well-known English Renaissance literary critic, George Puttenham called this figure of speech “the Trespasser,” since it trespasses against lawful word order. Milton loved “Yoda-speak.” If I asked a singer what they would like to sing about, they would answer, “I would like to sing about love.” The preposition “about” is part of the verb phrase “to sing about.” But, extraordinarily, Milton will often split verb phrases and re-arrange their parts:
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 loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,]
Sing Heav’nly Muse—
All five lines after “Of” are the object of that preposition, separated and transposed with its verb in the verb phrase, “to sing of”! Milton loves to throw propositional phrases way back before their normal location. This is, at first, a little frustrating—until, that is, you realize that doing so creates suspense. “[M]y advent’rous Song, / . . . with no middle flight intends to soar /
Above th’ Aonian mount”: this sentence suspends a reader’s mind since, between the subject (“Song”) and its verb phrase (“intends to soar”), comes a prepositional phrase (“with no middle flight”) which does not make full sense until the reader gets to the verb. Although Milton deploys innumerable other figures of speech, his Yoda-speak causes first-time readers the most trouble. Even so, that mental suspension is one of the many Miltonic poetics pleasures.
Allusions
Milton was supremely learned, and he often subtly refers to literature he assumes his reader has also read, especially from the Bible and Greek and Latin classics. Such references are called allusions. Our opener has one especially important allusion to the Bible and another to the Greek and Latin epic traditions.
The Bible first. When Milton asks to be inspired by the same agent who inspired “That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed, / In the Beginning how the heavens and earth / Rose out of Chaos,” he does not tell the reader that that shepherd is Moses, who was in the west the reputed author of the Pentateuch, including the Genesis wherein creation of heaven and earth occurred. Biblical scholars no longer believe that, but Milton probably did and assumed his reader knew that. The classics next. When Milton asks to be inspired by the Holy Spirit who inspired Moses, he says, “Sing, Heavenly Muse.” The Muse is not a Judeo-Christian deity, but a pagan one, and the ancient epic poets—especially Homer, then Virgil, invoked or called for her assistance since the epic task is too large for merely human endeavor. The Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid open with invocations to the Muse. (There were numerous Muses, in fact, but do not worry about that for now.) Milton presumes he can allude to Genesis and the ancient epics, and his readers will remember them.
These days, an edition of Paradise Lost will offer the sources of many of Milton’s allusions in the footnotes, but, as Samuel Johnson explains, footnotes are “a necessary evil” since they “refrigerate the mind.” But the process of “figuring out” allusions, thus relating a poem to earlier poems in the tradition carried by allusions—we are made by what we allude to—is one of the great pleasures of reading more and more literature. The textual texture in your mind increases in connectivity, density, and subtlety. The delightful process—so many books, so little time—of reading literature equips one to read more of it and do so more and more expertly as one becomes more and more literate.
The five features of Milton’s style above—his diction, his syntax, his prosody, his figuration, and his allusiveness—make him difficult, but they also make him pleasurable; or, rather, they make him pleasurable in part because he is difficult. We dwell in an age of information (and disinformation), and expect things to be communicated to us directly, simply, easily. And much should be so delivered. I do not want voting instructions to be complicated. But the demands of bureaucratic prose in the modern company and state, while legitimate, often create habits of mind that limit us from vast and fascinating ranges and reaches of imaginative and cognitive territory that require some habit of mind that are more… heroic. As you set out on the adventure of reading Milton’s Paradise Lost, note the difficulties, overcome them and enter that Miltonic range and reach of mind that is one of the greatest poetic spaces of the English tradition. Even if you do not agree with Milton that that space is a space of damnation or salvation, you will see, I hope, that it is a space of testing your limits. Seldom has the pain of gain been so pleasurable! Enjoy the poem.
Sincerely,
Dr. C
P.S. If you would like to pursue treatments of Milton’s style, allow me to offer four titles. Three very fine introductory treatments, though more extensive than this letter, are Michael Cavanagh’s Paradise Lost: A Primer, ed. by Scott Newstock (Washington, D.C.: Catholic U of America P, 2020), esp. its last chapter on Milton’s style (167-200), Maggie Kilgour’s Milton’s Poetical Style (New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 2021), and C.S. Lewis’ A Preface to Paradise Lost (New York: HarperOne, 2022), esp. Chapters. 7-8. Each is also a wonderful treatment of the poem altogether. For a more advanced treatment of Milton’s style, begin with Christopher Ricks’ Milton’s Grand Style (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1963). Those four are just a beginning, but they will do for now.
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The featured image is an oil painting on canvas by Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix illustrating Milton dictating, his poem, Paradise Lost, to his daughters (c. 1826), and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.