I couldn’t let today end without wishing John Milton a happy quatercentenary. The Guardian has a nice birthday roundup, including a Miltoniana quiz , some musings on Milton v. Shakespeare in the greatest-poet contest (do we really have to choose?), and Philip Pulllman reading a bit o’ Paradise Lost…. Read more...
Scenes from a marathon: My story about St. Olaf College’s all-day reading of Paradise Lost is now up: In between his reading stints, Chad Goodroad, a senior majoring in English and political science, hawked black “Milton Marathon” T-shirts at a card table. Someone asked him how sales were. “Crazy,” he said. “Actually, kinda slow.” A student in one of the shirts knitted her way through Book III. A professor’s toddlers played nearby on a harvest display of pumpkins and sheaves. …Participants fortified themselves with coffee and Subway sandwiches. Another English professor contributed a devil’s-food cake and a pair of devil’s… Read more...
In case it’s not already on your calendar, Dec. 9 is Milton’s 400th birthday. A couple of weeks ago I flew out to St. Olaf College, Minn. to take part in a marathon reading of “Paradise Lost” that some folks there staged in honor of the quatercentenary. I write about it in next week’s Chronicle. If you ever have a chance to read Paradise Lost out loud, I urge you to take it. It’s more fun than you think. Among the joys? When you check back in with a classic like PL, you stumble on phrases that have taken on… Read more...
