Are we meeting at a certain time on the 30th?
My guess is no. The post will go up sometime during the day, and discussion will ramble on in its usual disconnected fashion.
Oh how fun! I love Montaigne AND Milton! If anyone wants to see the bitchin' 6x5 grid I made of the various critical responses to PL and the characters/books/rhetorical strategies favored in those responses, I am happy to place it in the public domain.
Anyone know of an aesthetically pleasing edition of Paradise Lost? Preferably one I could order from amazon.de?
I've sorta wanted to read Milton ever since I read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, though I figured I should read Dante before I tackled Paradise Lost, on the grounds of important influences. So I did, and found a nice Everyman's Library edition. But EL doesn't do Milton apparently, hence this comment-bleg.
2- Oh poo. That means I'm sure I won't stumble onto until until four hours late, after everyone's either drunk or gone home and there's not much conversation left to be had. Oh well I guess I'll just keep my eye out.
But if anyone's taking requests I request an evening post.
AWB: Maybe you and the other 18c'ers can share the grid and amuse yourselves by putting poker chips, so to speak, on where the rest of us will come out in your scheme. After all, you already know what you think, and it won't spoil the game for the rest of us.
You and B and JM can then reveal your picks and your spreads when we're done.
Nah, Dante isn't that helpful for reading Milton. Knowing Latin apparently is, since he uses highly latinate sentences, but I don't, so I mostly had to read it out loud. Although many Norton editions suck, the Norton PL is very readable, with lots of space on the page and just the right amount of footnotes.
6x5 in, uh, elements. It's a project I did for a Milton course to show the hermeneutic effects of centering your reading on Satan, God, Adam, Raphael, or Michael.
That would be funny, Idp. Although I'd put most chips on everyone liking Satan the best on the first time through. He's incredibly attractive, but most Miltonists would say that's, like, duh, the point, that you have to get over how much you like Satan.
I'd appreciate a sharing of the grid - sounds interesting.
To whom should I send a file? I'll send the whole paper in Word (the grid really only makes sense with the paper) without my name on it. I'll just be happy to see it used, since I'm never going to clean it up for publication.
I don't think it contains any spoilers, since it's mostly on rhetoric.
You can send it to me; I'll post it when we do Milton.
I meant that to be another level for those who do this for a living (or hope to, God willing).
But if not confined to you, then I'll want it too, on my "ultrasound" principle: if others with no particular duties are going to know — like the technician — then I want to know.
Doug, I back AWB's suggestion of Norton. Everyman doesn't do annotation for most of its editions, and you're going to want some glossing for Paradise Lost. My honey was toting around a Penguin edition for most of last year, and while he was happy with it, I didn't like the layout or binding.
AWB's score squares would make a great permanent sidebar feature on a freestanding PL blog!
Okay, Tia, sent. I'll go bone up on Montaigne!
Yeah, but if we know what we're supposed or expected to think, then we'll game it. I'd rather it were a secret.
I want the grid! Me me me me me! I'll use it next fall, if I may.
The Norton PL is pretty good, yes. You don't need to have read Dante. God knows I never have. If this means I'm missing whole tons of things in Milton, oh well.
I've never read Dante—in translation.
Doug here Is this this sufficiently aestetically pleasing?
Are you planning on participating in the Montaigne discussion? I'm unlikely to do the PL discussion, even if you are.
Hey Bitch -- I sent you the paper too.
Did we agree on a particular Montaigne translation, and I didn't notice it?
Tia linked to Cotton. Personally, I'll probably read Montaigne in Swedish.
In college I did an annotation project on PL, for which we had access to Big State's fine old texts collection.
fine old texts collection
Say, where is our own fine old text, anyway? Do they not have the internets in his new location?
I've just finished the Cotton Of Drunkenness; I've nothing to compare it with, as I will on the others.
It seemed clear and comprehensible to me. I think it'll do fine.
28 -- he put in an appearance on t'other thread.
Say, where is our own fine old text, anyway? Do they not have the internets in his new location?
They do have the internets, just fewer of them.
you have to get over how much you like Satan
Nope. He has the best music.
But into Hell would I fain go; for into Hell fare the goodly clerks, and goodly knights that fall in tourneys and great wars, and stout men at arms, and all men noble. With these would I liefly go. And thither pass the sweet ladies and courteous that have two lovers, or three, and their lords also thereto. Thither goes the gold, and the silver, and cloth of vair, and cloth of gris, and harpers, and makers, and the princes of this world.
A footnote from the above-mentioned paper:
"It is an often-repeated apology of Ramist critics that to refute the Satanist position as 'bad reading' is to claim that many of the greatest poets, critics, and philosophers of the past three centuries are simply ignorant. If all the Miltonic Satanists went to Hell, I am sure most of us would choose that company over Heaven’s."
I hope you will cover Satan's important if little-known role as founder of the free software movement:
It's not a "bad" reading--it's just one that's clearly incompatible with the author's intent.
David Weman: Verkligen på svenska? Know a good edition? Translations of the quotations in Latin would be a must for me. My Swedish is a bit rusty but the recent Finnish translation doesn't cover the essays that were chosen . Maybe I'll unrustinate min svenskaspråket också.
David, I'll be skipping Montaigne. Good to see you here, though.
Thanks to everyone for the edition recommendations, and for the Amazon link "versandfertig in 24 Stunden" is a good thing. I'll have a look at our local academic book store, even though I prefer less critical apparatus to more. Fussiness like this is one thing that's kept me away from Milton since I finished Dante a couple of summers ago. But a reading group is much better excuse to get on with it than any other I've had. Even though I'm posting from a time zone where the unfoggedariat mostly isn't, which sometimes makes me feel like teh threadkiller.
It's not a "bad" reading--it's just one that's clearly incompatible with the author's intent.
Nonsense. The reader is the law student in Nashville.
Ksii: Jan Stolpe's 1987 translation is allegedly excellent and covers all of his essays (including the latin bits, naturally). Published by Atlantis in three separate volumes. Pocketbook editions are currently available and cheap.
Chopper actually wrote that comment several years ago, when text was still a student but not yet in Nashville. So the error is subtler than it appears.
Damnit. Text, are you practicing yet?
