Speaker 1: Hey everyone, I'm Andrew Snyder. I am the host of
Speaker 1: the Mythic Mind podcast and the founder of the Mythic
Speaker 1: Mind Fellowship. Now, if you're listening through the podcast, you
Speaker 1: probably already know that, but I'm as supposeding this to YouTube,
Speaker 1: and you know who knows it's going to come across it. Now.
Speaker 1: We've been doing a number of things through the Mythic
Speaker 1: Mind Fellowship over the last year or so. The podcast
Speaker 1: has been going on for a while, but the larger
Speaker 1: fellowship has really been taken off over last year or so.
Speaker 1: This fellowship is made of a number I'm at this
Speaker 1: point over fifty mostly Christians who are generally interested in
Speaker 1: the humanities, in literature. I'm representing a number of traditions,
Speaker 1: number of philosophies, but we all come around just the
Speaker 1: same general focus on literature, on myths, on legends, on
Speaker 1: you know, things like Tolkien and Lewis and the various
Speaker 1: things that inspire them. That sends to be our general focus.
Speaker 1: Starting last year I began leading some independent courses out
Speaker 1: of the Fellowship, and so, beginning with the philosophy and
Speaker 1: Fiction of CS I led a course on Beowulf and
Speaker 1: Boethius just wrapped up a course on Tolkien and the
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings, and I've got a number of
Speaker 1: courses that are lined up throughout this year and into
Speaker 1: the next. But what's really exciting right now and I
Speaker 1: want to talk about, is that we are now including
Speaker 1: some other course creators who are coming alongside us, who
Speaker 1: are joining with us in this fellowship to draw on
Speaker 1: their interest, to draw on their expertise in order to
Speaker 1: just add to the catalog, the the array of courses
Speaker 1: that we're able to provide for you. And in particular
Speaker 1: right now, I want to talk about Josh Taylor's Paradise
Speaker 1: Lost course, which as I post this has just gotten started,
Speaker 1: and so it's not too late for you to join in.
Speaker 1: But you know, whether you're able to join us live
Speaker 1: or maybe you're you're viewing this or you're listening to
Speaker 1: this in the future, this is going to be a
Speaker 1: set up materials. It's going to be invaluable to you
Speaker 1: as you approach this. This this pivotal text in the
Speaker 1: English literary tradition. And so you know, if you're somebody
Speaker 1: who you know, you like Lewis for example, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to find many more significant influences on
Speaker 1: Lewis's writing. I mean, especially when're talking about something like
Speaker 1: Peril Andrew, but even beyond then than we have in
Speaker 1: Paradise Lost. And so you know, if you're somebody who
Speaker 1: is inclined to watch this channel or listen to this podcast,
Speaker 1: then you're somebody who's going to be who's going to
Speaker 1: benefit from having a strong guide to walk you through,
Speaker 1: to walk you into, to walk you, you know, further
Speaker 1: up and further into Paradise Lost. And Josh is really
Speaker 1: going to be a great guide for you, and that
Speaker 1: as you're gonna be able to tell through this episode today,
Speaker 1: as I'm going to provide you with his introduction to reading,
Speaker 1: to studying, to working with Paradise Lost. Now, if you
Speaker 1: want to continue on with Josh, and I strongly recommend
Speaker 1: that you do, then I'll leave a link to his
Speaker 1: his patron page, which is kind of what's the front
Speaker 1: door to the Google classroom. I'll leave that link in
Speaker 1: the show notes, both on YouTube and on the podcast.
Speaker 1: And also if you're already a Mythic Mind patron, then
Speaker 1: you can access that course which is already very inexpensive,
Speaker 1: but you can access that course for half price and
Speaker 1: you can find that code on Patreon. If you have
Speaker 1: a hard time, then contact me on X contact me
Speaker 1: through Patreon, contact me through Discord, and I'll make sure
Speaker 1: that you get that patron code. But for now, let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and jump right into Josh's introductory lesson on
Speaker 1: studying Paradise Lost.
Speaker 2: Good day, everybody, So today this is going to be
Speaker 2: the biggest video for the introductory portion of this course.
Speaker 2: This videos is simply an introduction to Paradise Lost itself.
Speaker 2: Already talked about the life of John Milton, the historical context.
Speaker 2: Now we're going to get into talking about just a
Speaker 2: sweeping overview of the text itself. So where I wanted
Speaker 2: to start with that was with some of the influences
Speaker 2: on Paradise Lost. Like any other great work or even
Speaker 2: not great work, Paradise Lost was written. It was written
Speaker 2: in a context, right. It was written with not just
Speaker 2: a historical context, but within a tradition and a literary canon,
Speaker 2: with philosophical influences and different paradigms of thought. So we
Speaker 2: need to talk about how those things have influenced this,
Speaker 2: just very briefly and at a high level. So first
Speaker 2: and foremost, the number one influence on Paradise Lost should
Speaker 2: obviously be the Bible scripture, Old Testament and New Testament,
Speaker 2: though there's going to be more allusions to the Old Testament.
Speaker 2: It's all one cohesive work, and Milton is going to
Speaker 2: see it that way, and they're a redemptive historical narrative
Speaker 2: that runs throughout scripture, which he will absolutely talk about it,
Speaker 2: especially towards the end of Paradise Lost in the last
Speaker 2: two books. So Milton is a Christian. Sometimes even Milton scholars,
Speaker 2: the secular ones, don't understand this point. We see this
Speaker 2: sometimes with the Donte too, where there's just so many
Speaker 2: misreadings that come from people not understanding orthodox Christianity, not
Speaker 2: specific denominational Christianity, but you know, the theology of the
Speaker 2: Nicene Creed and the Calcedonian definition and things that would
Speaker 2: be seen as historic Christian core beliefs. So people not
Speaker 2: understanding these things often limits their interpretation of something like
Speaker 2: Paradise Lost. But nevertheless Milton was influenced by those things.
Speaker 2: Milton was an Orthodox Christian. The work De Doctrina Christiano,
Speaker 2: which I'll get to talking about in a different video,
Speaker 2: sometimes seems to reveal that he was heretical in some
Speaker 2: ways being Aryan, which again we can talk about that
Speaker 2: later if you don't know what that is. But there's
Speaker 2: a lot of there's a lot of things we don't
Speaker 2: know about that work. It's hard to say what Milton
Speaker 2: was doing with it, and it was written at the
Speaker 2: end of his life, so we paradise loss is absolutely
Speaker 2: written from the perspective of Orthodox Christianity. There's way too
Speaker 2: much to unpack and comb through there for this video,
Speaker 2: but just know that, and certainly if you don't see
Speaker 2: it that way during the class, please feel free to
Speaker 2: ask questions and bring it up and we will have
Speaker 2: a good, healthy dialogue about that. The main foundation for
Speaker 2: this poem, of course, is going to be Genesis chapters
Speaker 2: one through three in the Biblical canon. So this is
Speaker 2: going to be foundational for the entire poem because there's
Speaker 2: events that take place before Genesis one and events that
Speaker 2: take place after the Fall in Genesis three, and the
Speaker 2: archangel Michael at the end of this poem is going
Speaker 2: to explain to Adam the history that takes place throughout
Speaker 2: the Old and New Testament. But Genesis one to three
Speaker 2: of the main backdrop, I highly highly recommend that you
Speaker 2: are reading and meditating on God's word, especially Genesis one
Speaker 2: through three throughout this entire class, and just seeing the
Speaker 2: pieces connecting there and trying to see what Milton's doing
Speaker 2: with the imagination and with the questions He's asking there
Speaker 2: things that scripture doesn't clearly answer for us. And God
Speaker 2: certainly is not required to answer all of our questions
Speaker 2: and provide more. Right, he revealed to us what he
Speaker 2: chose to. But these questions are good to ask, they're interesting,
Speaker 2: they can even be helpful for the Christian life, and
Speaker 2: Milton's working with that. So another thing is just the
Speaker 2: Exodus journey. There's going to be kind of this pattern
Speaker 2: of the Exodus journey with the social context and the
Speaker 2: journey through the wilderness. Important to keep that in the
Speaker 2: in the back of your mind as well. In Paradise Laws,
Speaker 2: it starts with Promise Land Eden and it ends with
Speaker 2: wilderness exile from Eden because of the Fall, where Michael
Speaker 2: has to kick them out of Eden because of them
Speaker 2: being sinful now, and that's sort of like almost like
Speaker 2: a reverse Exodus, where like they're in the Promise Land
Speaker 2: and then they leave the Promised Land, whereas if you
Speaker 2: know the Exodus story, they're in Egypt, Moses leads them
Speaker 2: out of Egypt through the wilderness, doesn't actually enter the
Speaker 2: Promised Land. That's that's gonna be Joshua and Caleb's journey,
Speaker 2: and in the Book of Joshua right after the Torah
Speaker 2: and the English Bible. But nevertheless we see those those patterns.
Speaker 2: It's almost like a reverse Exodus in a way. So
Speaker 2: just keeping keeping that in mind as well. There's certainly
Speaker 2: Theman influence there, all right. So most important influence is
Speaker 2: the Bible, no question about it. Just the history of
Speaker 2: the theology of the Christian Church as well, just broadly
Speaker 2: speaking in terms of Orthodoxy and Catholicity. But outside of
Speaker 2: Christian influences, the biggest influence is going to be the
Speaker 2: epic poets, the great epic poets of our Western canon.
Speaker 2: So the first really maybe the usually consider the first
Speaker 2: literary author of our Western canon is Homer. Homer, writing
Speaker 2: out of usually roughly eight hundred BC, maybe sometimes dated
Speaker 2: all the way back to one thousand BC, being the
Speaker 2: first person to write down the oral tradition of the
Speaker 2: Trojan Wars, which occurred before all of that. And so
Speaker 2: we see so many Homeric styles and themes and conceptions
Speaker 2: throughout Paradise Lost. No doubt Milne is writing intentionally this
Speaker 2: as an epic, not any other type of poem or
Speaker 2: any other type of narrative. Is specifically trying to write
Speaker 2: a great epic here, and I believe, of course he
Speaker 2: accomplishes that, as many would agree. But there's going to
Speaker 2: be influences here. So we're going to see at one
Speaker 2: point in Paradise Lost. I cannot remember the exact book
Speaker 2: off the top of my head. It might be like
Speaker 2: book four or five, maybe even six. But somewhere in
Speaker 2: the middle of Paradise Lost, there's going to be a
Speaker 2: recounting of the story of the war between the rebellious
Speaker 2: Angels aka the Fallen Angels and the demons, Satan being
Speaker 2: their leader, Satan wants Lucifer, the unfallen Angel, leads the
Speaker 2: rebellion against God, who he sees as a tyrant. And
Speaker 2: the military conflict recounted here is very, very, very much
Speaker 2: in the style of many of the passages in the Iliad.
Speaker 2: If you've ever read the Iliad, and if you haven't,
Speaker 2: I'll tell you now, there is a lot of warfare
Speaker 2: in the Iliad. There's a lot of military conflict there's
Speaker 2: a lot of descriptions of battle scenes. This is very
Speaker 2: You might see this in some like modern you know,
Speaker 2: like modern fantasy stories or something here and there, but
Speaker 2: other than that, you don't really see a lot of
Speaker 2: battle scenes. This is there's a section of Paradise Loss
Speaker 2: that really pays homage to Homer in a way, talking
Speaker 2: about the battle between God's angels who remained faithful to
Speaker 2: him and those who fall away from God and his grace.
Speaker 2: Another Homeric convention is the the idea of really the
Speaker 2: action being split into two, so you kind of have
Speaker 2: this hero's peril and social context or quest theme, and
Speaker 2: then the setting of social order in a way. So
Speaker 2: in the Odyssey, you have first Odysseus in the hero's
Speaker 2: journey is his journey back to Ithaca from the Trojan war.
Speaker 2: Ithaca is his homeland, he is the king of that.
Speaker 2: He's trying to return and he's going to get back there,
Speaker 2: and he has to establish social order because he's been
Speaker 2: gone for a long time, and he has a wife
Speaker 2: and a son named Telemachus who are going to be
Speaker 2: He has to reorder his house, the Oikos, and he
Speaker 2: has to reorder the police his city state, those are
Speaker 2: themes in this two part epic of the Odyssey, and
Speaker 2: you're gonna you're you kind of see that in a
Speaker 2: little bit with Paradise Lost in some ways or another,
Speaker 2: you're gonna kind of see things taking place really before
Speaker 2: the fall and after the Fall. But really Milton says
Speaker 2: that book seven is where the rest of the poem is,
Speaker 2: and he shows us that the poem is confined to
Speaker 2: Earth basically from book seven on where a lot of
Speaker 2: things are taking place outside of Earth from the perspective
Speaker 2: of God and the perspective of Satan in the first
Speaker 2: half of Paradise Lost books one through six. So we
Speaker 2: kind of have this, uh, this this twofold way where
Speaker 2: it's almost like two arcs maybe in a way. You
Speaker 2: see this also in Virgil as well. So in the Anea,
Speaker 2: the action is split into two. The first part of
Speaker 2: the Enia is Eneas journeying out of Troy, which has
Speaker 2: been sacked, sieged, and destroyed, and he's going to be
Speaker 2: taking his journey, fulfilling his destiny to establish what eventually
Speaker 2: becomes Rome in the Roman Republic and then later the
Speaker 2: Roman Empire. And he moves out of the Italian Peninsula
Speaker 2: and or moves out of Troy to the Italian Peninsula.
Speaker 2: And then when he gets to the Italian Peninsula he
Speaker 2: has to set some sort of social order there. It
Speaker 2: has conflict with all of the different Italian War awards,
Speaker 2: and that's what the second half of the Aenia is about.
Speaker 2: It's him establishing that and then receiving this prophecy that
Speaker 2: you know, one day from this Romulus and Remus are
Speaker 2: going to be you know, born from Reya, Sylvia. They
Speaker 2: are going to be nursed by the she wolf, and
Speaker 2: they are going to one day establish Rome, and Romulus
Speaker 2: is going to be the first king of Rome. If
Speaker 2: you never read read Olivy, specifically the Roman author, that's
Speaker 2: a great place to read all of that at as
Speaker 2: kind of I guess as like a sequel to the Eneid. Okay,
Speaker 2: So that's one aspect. Another aspect that we absolutely need
Speaker 2: to talk about is this epic convention of media res.
Speaker 2: So media res is basically Latin for in the middle
Speaker 2: of things, And what this is going to mean is
Speaker 2: that we don't get the story from the beginning. The
Speaker 2: Ilia does not take place at the beginning of the
Speaker 2: Trojan War. It takes place at the end. It takes
Speaker 2: place in year ten of ten, really towards the very
Speaker 2: end of the war, leading up to finally sacking the
Speaker 2: city of Troy, which is what the entire war was
Speaker 2: about for ten years anyway. And we see the same
Speaker 2: thing in the Odyssey where Odysseus. We do not start
Speaker 2: with Odysseus. We don't start with him at Troy like
Speaker 2: right after the sack, in him with his military platoon,
Speaker 2: but we rather we see him on Calypso's Island, so
Speaker 2: we wonder what happened there. Homer doesn't tell us. He
Speaker 2: doesn't tell us what happens at the beginning of the
Speaker 2: for most of the Trojan War, though there's references and
Speaker 2: allusions to things, a lot of that is left open.
Speaker 2: And we see the same thing with the Aeneid in
Speaker 2: a sense as well, where he starts at the destruction
Speaker 2: of Troy, not before that, goes on a journey and
Speaker 2: then ends in New Troy what eventually becomes Rome. And
Speaker 2: here's whe we're going to see this in Paradise Lost.
Speaker 2: It opens and you might expect, I'm not sure what
Speaker 2: you would expect, to be honest, but perhaps you might
Speaker 2: expect that it'll start with the battle, or that it'll
Speaker 2: start with creation, but it doesn't. It starts with Satan
Speaker 2: and his demons waking up basically in Hell. They're going
Speaker 2: to wake up by the Lake of Fire and Hell.
Speaker 2: They've already lost the war. It's going to be recounted later.
Speaker 2: This is an epic convention. It's the media res. Satan's
Speaker 2: in the middle of things. He hasn't gotten to Eden
Speaker 2: to tempt and corrupt earth and humanity yet, but he
Speaker 2: has already lost the fight. He's already lost to that battle.
Speaker 2: And this is this is the media res. That's where
Speaker 2: Paradise loss begins. Undoubtedly, this is where this is where
Speaker 2: John Milton is pulling these thrones and these from. And
Speaker 2: I believe that it's completely intentional at the end of
Speaker 2: the day, certainly an epic convention. A couple other influences
Speaker 2: I just want to mention here is the Ecclesiastical History
Speaker 2: by Caedmon. This is basically just a medieval text recounting
Speaker 2: the history of the English Church. And this is where
Speaker 2: Milton's going to draw a lot of his British history from,
Speaker 2: and his invocation of the muse. That's going to be
Speaker 2: another convention here where you know, you think like sing
Speaker 2: demo muse and Homer he's going to invoke the Muse,
Speaker 2: and this is the Muse of all muses. It's the
Speaker 2: Holy Spirit that's You're going to see that right at
Speaker 2: the beginning of book one. But Cadman famously claimed to
Speaker 2: have talked to an angel before he wrote this, and
Speaker 2: whatever angel that was, that was supposedly supposed to be
Speaker 2: his muse. Another key epic convention. Another one is it'd
Speaker 2: be hard to mention in English epic without mentioning the
Speaker 2: Arthurian Legend, the works of you know, Sir Thomas Mallory
Speaker 2: being the most profound, but other ones of course, like
Speaker 2: Jeffrey of Monmouth and other medieval texts as well. But
Speaker 2: we see themes of chivalry a very key theme in
Speaker 2: the Arthurian legend, and we see those in Paradise lost,
Speaker 2: especially as Adam falls, Eve falls and they have to
Speaker 2: leave Eden and go on a journey just the two
Speaker 2: of them because no one their humans exists yet and
Speaker 2: Adam Adam failed at chivalry in a sense, but he
Speaker 2: still has to aim at the good of chivalry in
Speaker 2: a way to lead his wife start a family with
Speaker 2: her and properly lead the people after falling from Eden,
Speaker 2: He's still, you know, he's promised of this future hope,
Speaker 2: like the seed of the woman crushing the head of
Speaker 2: the serpent. And so with that theological virtue of hope,
Speaker 2: he's going to carry on out there from from uh,
Speaker 2: from that, from that hope he's been given by Michael,
Speaker 2: who is sent by God, and he's going to have
Speaker 2: to really have these masculine and chivalric virtues as he
Speaker 2: properly leads his woman and his family through the new world,
Speaker 2: the fallen world, which they will inhabit and dwell in
Speaker 2: from here on out. Milton actually wanted to write his
Speaker 2: own Arthurian epic. He toyed around with the idea as
Speaker 2: for the Great English Epic, but he ended up writing
Speaker 2: Paradise Lost instead. Alfred Lord Tennyson in the late nineteenth
Speaker 2: century would take up the Man to Love, doing so
Speaker 2: with his Ideals of the King, which was written throughout
Speaker 2: it written and published throughout the second half of the
Speaker 2: nineteenth century. Other influences were just medieval courtly love poetry.
Speaker 2: So this was kind of just like a don't think
Speaker 2: of this as like a romance, like a like a
Speaker 2: soap opera or a romance to see book or anything
Speaker 2: that we would, you know, associate with romance in our time.
Speaker 2: I certainly can be quite critical of those things, and
Speaker 2: in some ways we should be, because I don't think
Speaker 2: they portray love and romance and such things very well.
Speaker 2: But courtly love poetry did portray these things in a
Speaker 2: more wholesome and I think true way. And we see
Speaker 2: this even influence with Dante and the way that he
Speaker 2: talks about Beatrice in the Divine Comedy certainly influenced by
Speaker 2: Italian and French courtly love poetry, and Milton's going to
Speaker 2: be drawing on these things as well. There's a lot
Speaker 2: to say about the connection between Milton and Dante. Hopefully
Speaker 2: to talk about that at some point, but just time permitting,
Speaker 2: because there's a lot there as well. There's yeah, there's
Speaker 2: many questions up there and wondering if he actually, you know,
Speaker 2: if he actually was alluding to Dante in any way,
Speaker 2: or whether he read Dante, whether he liked him, whether
Speaker 2: he saw them as like a somebody who was challenging
Speaker 2: for the Laurel crown in a sense. A lot there.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna I'm not going to digress into that
Speaker 2: right now, but I hope we can talk about it
Speaker 2: at some point. And one last piece I want to
Speaker 2: hit on here as far as literary influences, This is
Speaker 2: not an exhaustive list, by the way, there are certainly many, many,
Speaker 2: many more, but the concept of a Socratic dialogue. A
Speaker 2: lot of the dramatic scenes you're going to see where
Speaker 2: characters are dialoguing with one another, it's usually one character
Speaker 2: talking to another for pretty much the entirety of the poem.
Speaker 2: And you see this especially in a scene where Raphael
Speaker 2: is educating Adam, trying to prepare him and educate him
Speaker 2: properly to be virtuous and not take the fruit from
Speaker 2: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and
Speaker 2: do also lead his wife to not do the same.
Speaker 2: That's going to be a key component here. But like
Speaker 2: the way even Satan just talking to his demons, or
Speaker 2: Adam and Eve talking to one another, Michael and Adam
Speaker 2: talking at the end of the poem, these all have
Speaker 2: a very Socratic dialogue feel. And if you've never read
Speaker 2: the dialogues of Plato, there's certainly a couple that are
Speaker 2: absolute essential reads, absolute essential parts of the Western canon.
Speaker 2: One of the most important authors of all time in
Speaker 2: my opinion, and I think in the opinions of many,
Speaker 2: I don't think that's even much of an opinion practically effect. So,
Speaker 2: moving out of influences, I would like to talk about
Speaker 2: the poem itself, the text of the poem. So what's
Speaker 2: the style here? Well, first of all, it is going
Speaker 2: to be i ambic pentameter, blank verse, So this is
Speaker 2: just a poetry sc poetry, poetry way of method of
Speaker 2: doing things. Sorry, losing my losing my voice here a
Speaker 2: little bit. But it's going to be a five foot
Speaker 2: line and it's going to be essentially just like ten
Speaker 2: syllables long, so you can count it out dead dead.
Speaker 2: You see that a lot in Shakespeare. Right, like to
Speaker 2: be or not to be? That is the question you're
Speaker 2: going to see these this same convention, Milton coming right
Speaker 2: out of the English Renaissance, that Shakespeare was one of
Speaker 2: the predominant authors of that. But more than I am
Speaker 2: bit pandemic or I want to focus on the idea
Speaker 2: of blank verse here. So blank verse essentially means that
Speaker 2: it doesn't rhyme. Milton saw this as extremely vulgar. He
Speaker 2: did not see it as fitting the epic convention, and
Speaker 2: he actually wanted poetry to move away from rhyming and
Speaker 2: these this idea of like these couplets, the you know,
Speaker 2: the suffix of one line we're on with the suffix
Speaker 2: of the next line. He wanted to move away from
Speaker 2: that entirely. And we certainly see that a lot in
Speaker 2: the English poetic tradition. People think about poetry and they're like,
Speaker 2: you know, in rhymes. George Lucas, of course, once said
Speaker 2: it's like poetry rhymes. This isn't exactly what he was
Speaker 2: talking about, but poetry doesn't rhyme a lot of the time.
Speaker 2: That's a common misconception, and Milton was trying to move
Speaker 2: away from that. And so there's no rhyming scheme here.
Speaker 2: There's no rhyming scheme in Homer, there's not a rhyming
Speaker 2: scheme in Virgil or Avid, the main epic poets of
Speaker 2: the classical Greco Roman world. In fact, you know the
Speaker 2: same thing with Beowulf, right, We really only see this
Speaker 2: in Dante in a sense, with this terce arima rhyme scheme,
Speaker 2: which I'm not going to digress to explain what that means.
Speaker 2: But Dante had a very specific rhyme scheme, and he
Speaker 2: used that, and you see that in the original Italian.
Speaker 2: But Milton's not going with that. He's not going to
Speaker 2: do the same thing that Dante was trying to do
Speaker 2: in Italy in the you know, early fourteenth century. Milton's
Speaker 2: Milton's going back past Dante to the epics that previously named.
Speaker 2: So he's gonna write it in blank verse. So don't
Speaker 2: expect rhymes and don't get hung up on rhyming being
Speaker 2: you know, essential to poetry. It just it's it just
Speaker 2: is not. In the history of the English poetic tradition
Speaker 2: as well as other poetic traditions, just shows that that is,
Speaker 2: it's just not true. It's not an essential component or
Speaker 2: element of poetry. So beyond style, let's talk about some
Speaker 2: themes here for a minute. So first team, and I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna list some themes, not unpack them too heavily.
Speaker 2: I mean, I also, after this pose some questions to
Speaker 2: be chewing on throughout the play, throughout the drama, sorry,
Speaker 2: the poem. There's a lot of things you kind of
Speaker 2: classify this. Milan was also influenced by dramatic elements by
Speaker 2: the way, like think of like Sophocles or Euripides, or
Speaker 2: you know Shakespeare of course others. But just think about
Speaker 2: these themes and these questions if you have to, just
Speaker 2: type them out on a separate word document, write them
Speaker 2: down somewhere in a journal or a notebook, just have
Speaker 2: them on a hand because you're gonna want to see
Speaker 2: where these things are coming alive all throughout. So I'm
Speaker 2: just going to list some here. One theme obedience to
Speaker 2: God and the consequences of disobedience. Another theme divine justice
Speaker 2: and divine love, and how those things are interrelated to
Speaker 2: one another. In fact, as a Christian, you kind of
Speaker 2: have to come to the terms to agree that they're
Speaker 2: completely inseparable in a way. Third theme the revelation between
Speaker 2: general or natural revelation and its fulfillment from special revelation
Speaker 2: aka what God provided us in scripture and general revelation
Speaker 2: being one and connected to special revelation, these things being
Speaker 2: tied together, but special revelation further telling us specifically from
Speaker 2: God how to understand his word, but also natural order
Speaker 2: and creation which is all around us. And you see
Speaker 2: this a lot in the Christian humanist tradition. Again, think
Speaker 2: myth became fact. The famous C. S. Lewis essay, I
Speaker 2: think on fairy stories by J. R. R. Tolkien. I could
Speaker 2: name a few more, but I won't. But Milton is
Speaker 2: absolutely in this tradition. And it only takes reading the
Speaker 2: first you know, thirty or forty lines of the of
Speaker 2: Paradise Lost to see this basically his preamble to the
Speaker 2: whole poem. Another theme the relationship between divine providence and
Speaker 2: free will. Milton was a Puritan? Is he a Calvinist?
Speaker 2: Is he Arminian? Is he something else? Because those aren't
Speaker 2: the only two views of this in the grand theological tradition,
Speaker 2: And there's mystery and paradox there pretty much no matter
Speaker 2: how you slice it. So how does Milton deal with that?
Speaker 2: Excellent thing to ponder throughout the poem? Think about how
Speaker 2: he's doing that. Is Adam responsible? Is he responsible? Is
Speaker 2: God responsible? Does he blame God in some way? He
Speaker 2: does not? But you will see how he deals with
Speaker 2: all of that in the poem. Another theme, another goes
Speaker 2: hand in hand with the last one, is the problem
Speaker 2: of evil. You know, how does a how does a good, loving,
Speaker 2: all powerful, all knowing God exist in a world where
Speaker 2: evil also exists? Is it his fault that evil exists,
Speaker 2: Is it man's fault? How does that all reconcile out?
Speaker 2: How do we how do we deal with that? And
Speaker 2: Milton's poem is kind of one giant theodicy, or a
Speaker 2: way of justifying the ways of God to men, defending
Speaker 2: the problem of evil in a sense, so all things
Speaker 2: to consider there. Another big one for Milton is the
Speaker 2: relationship between monarchy, liberty, and tyranny. Milton was very, very
Speaker 2: very libertarian in a sense in his time. He was
Speaker 2: very pro liberty, pro freedom of conscience, freedom of choice,
Speaker 2: freedom of religion. He was very against the monarchy in
Speaker 2: his life. He saw monarchy as tyrannical. He even saw
Speaker 2: there some of the Presbyteries in the in the in
Speaker 2: the Church of Scotland as tyrannical in his time as well.
Speaker 2: That might be hard to believe for some of you,
Speaker 2: but he did. He very much was for personal liberty,
Speaker 2: very congregationalistic in a sense, and you'll see that come
Speaker 2: out in the poem as well, just in the concept
Speaker 2: of God as the monarch, and Satan is the tyrant
Speaker 2: Satan accusing God as being tyrannical. All of those things.
Speaker 2: The nature of evil itself so you know, there's a
Speaker 2: conception of dualism in some philosophical traditions, where good and
Speaker 2: evil are both just these eye powers that are equal
Speaker 2: to one another. But Milton is not going to see
Speaker 2: it that way. He sees the nature of evil as
Speaker 2: you know Augustine's concept of pravatio boni here or privation
Speaker 2: of the good. He's going to see evil as not
Speaker 2: being created by God, but as a corruption of the
Speaker 2: good things that God created. If you're in the book
Speaker 2: club right now with Andrew Snyder and other mythic mind
Speaker 2: patrons and fellows, you'll definitely come across this, if you're
Speaker 2: reading the Confessions and discussing it right now. Augustine mentions
Speaker 2: it there and in other works. But evil as a
Speaker 2: privation of the good, It's a corruption of the good.
Speaker 2: God didn't create it, and that is absolutely the view
Speaker 2: that Milton is putting into this poem. See chapter ten
Speaker 2: of C. S. Lewis's preface of Paradise Lost if you
Speaker 2: want to read on Milton's relationship with Augustine and how
Speaker 2: he is drawing from that A long time, over a
Speaker 2: thousand year old at his time, Augustinian trot So now
Speaker 2: I'm going to just ask some questions, and some of
Speaker 2: these are they're pretty much all directly tie in with
Speaker 2: the themes, but I want to put some of these
Speaker 2: questions out there. Again, these are things to just chew on,
Speaker 2: reflect on, meditate on as you are reading and hopefully
Speaker 2: even in some sense rereading the poem as we go
Speaker 2: through this class. What were Adam and Eve meant to be?
Speaker 2: Were they supposed to grow in knowledge over time? Would
Speaker 2: there have eventually been a time where they could have
Speaker 2: been ready to partake of and ingest the knowledge of
Speaker 2: the Tree of Good and evil? What is the role
Speaker 2: of procreation before the Fall? Were Adam and Eve's supposed
Speaker 2: to procreate? If so, why didn't they have any children
Speaker 2: before the fall? How long were they there? How did
Speaker 2: they not have children? Did they even engage in sexual intercourse?
Speaker 2: Were they abstinate? Was that the way that they didn't
Speaker 2: have children? If you could get pregnant, What would labor, delivery,
Speaker 2: and childbirth look like? As in Genesis three, we see
Speaker 2: that there's labor and toil and pain that's going to
Speaker 2: be multiplied in the process of childbirth, But what would
Speaker 2: that have looked like before the fall? What would parenting
Speaker 2: have looked like before the fall like, how would it
Speaker 2: look like to have these unfallen, sinless parents and children?
Speaker 2: You know, imagine what that would look like. Could Adam
Speaker 2: and Eve have never fallen? Was it possible that they
Speaker 2: could have never actually fallen and that we never would
Speaker 2: have needed Jesus to come down incarnate and to save
Speaker 2: us from our sins via his life, death and resurrection.
Speaker 2: Is that possible? Could they have never fallen at all?
Speaker 2: Could they have freely chosen to not disobey, just as
Speaker 2: they unfortunately freely chose to disobey. Is it possible at
Speaker 2: all that this could have happened? Or did God actively
Speaker 2: will for it to happen so that one day the
Speaker 2: mono myth and the yu catastrophe of Christ could occur?
Speaker 2: Did Adam and Eve have free will at all? Was
Speaker 2: there free will libertarian? Did they have some sort of
Speaker 2: compatibilist form of free will in accordance with God's sovereignty?
Speaker 2: Did God ordain the fault? Did he actively will for
Speaker 2: this to happen? If so, does that mean that it
Speaker 2: was faded? And if so, does that mean that all
Speaker 2: of humanity is deterministic in a sense? Do we not
Speaker 2: have a choice on whether to obey or disobey God
Speaker 2: to attain salvation through the work of Christ. Ultimately, do
Speaker 2: we choose any of that or is it all elected
Speaker 2: or predestined? And Milton's not going to use that concept
Speaker 2: predestination and election in the calvinistic terms. He's going to
Speaker 2: sort of cash that out in a different way. We
Speaker 2: can talk about that another another time, though. Shifting towards
Speaker 2: the character Satan, why is Satan so charismatic? Why does
Speaker 2: he get so much screen time or so much of
Speaker 2: the text? Like? Why why is he such a prominent
Speaker 2: character in this? Does Milton want us to relate to him?
Speaker 2: Is that why he's a prominent character? Or did Milton
Speaker 2: have some strange fascination with Satan? As the poets the
Speaker 2: Romantic poets? William Blake and a little later Percy Shelley
Speaker 2: accused him of almost basically being some closet Satanic fanatic
Speaker 2: of some sort? Is that true? Is there is their
Speaker 2: merit to their claims or are they misunderstanding and misinterpreting
Speaker 2: the literary quality of Satan in this? And this is
Speaker 2: important to contrast with Dante, who basically makes just Satan
Speaker 2: a hideous disgusting, pathetic monster at the bottom of Inferno
Speaker 2: in the ninth the lowest circle of Dante's Inferno, Dante's Hell.
Speaker 2: He's half frozen, he's static, he can't do anything, and
Speaker 2: he continually an active rebellion, just like Milton Satan. But
Speaker 2: Milton Satan is he has a swagger about him. He's charismatic,
Speaker 2: he's he's cunning. He's very dynamic rather than static. He's
Speaker 2: constantly moving around and doing things. You know, why is that?
Speaker 2: Why isn't he static? Why is he so dynamic? And
Speaker 2: Paradise Lost? What does Milton's portray of Adam have to
Speaker 2: say about masculinity? What does portrayal of Eve have to
Speaker 2: say about femininity? Themes that we see and C. S.
Speaker 2: Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet unfallen masculinity and in
Speaker 2: Perilandra onfallen femininity, especially with like the Green Lady. We
Speaker 2: see this a lot. There's gonna be parallels between the
Speaker 2: Unman and the Green Lady as well as there's going
Speaker 2: to be with Satan and Eve in Paradise Lost. Absolutely
Speaker 2: a direct influence. By the way, is Eve representative of
Speaker 2: every woman to Milton? Or is she just a character
Speaker 2: in the story. So she is she an archetype. Is
Speaker 2: he's saying something universal about with Eve, or is he
Speaker 2: merely saying some things about women or some things just
Speaker 2: about her character. And to give you an example what
Speaker 2: I mean from here, think of Jane's static and that
Speaker 2: hideous strength. If you've read it. If not, you should
Speaker 2: absolutely read it. Here's a shameless plug for that. But people,
Speaker 2: there's a debate whether Jane represents Lewis's vision of female
Speaker 2: academics as a whole, if Jane's a symbol for that,
Speaker 2: or if she's merely just an instantiation or just a
Speaker 2: character in a story who happens to be a female
Speaker 2: academic with certain circumstances of certain personality, certain dispositions and
Speaker 2: struggles or etc. Some female academics actually dislike the way
Speaker 2: that Jane is portrayed in this for this reason, but
Speaker 2: others will say that she is She's not represented of
Speaker 2: all female academics, She's just a certain type of female
Speaker 2: academic as a character in the story. I agree with
Speaker 2: the latter on that one, but not here to parse
Speaker 2: that out of debate. That just an interesting thought, for
Speaker 2: I know there's many Lewis fans probably signing up for
Speaker 2: this course, many who have read the Ransom trilogy. So
Speaker 2: I'm throwing those out there as examples. All right, So
Speaker 2: I just want to talk about some interpretive challenges. Now,
Speaker 2: these are just more questions, and I know I'm throwing
Speaker 2: just a ridiculous amount of questions at you. These aren't
Speaker 2: supposed to be things that you're you're answering on the spot.
Speaker 2: These are things that I want you to be thinking
Speaker 2: about throughout the course, and you might answer some just
Speaker 2: to find out, in classic academic effect fashion, that as
Speaker 2: you answer these questions, you get answers, only to receive
Speaker 2: more questions that spawn. It's kind of like a hydra.
Speaker 2: You cut off the head, more head spawn. That's how
Speaker 2: these things work. And that's why it's such a great book,
Speaker 2: right because you can just endlessly ask questions and never
Speaker 2: know all the answers at the end of the day.
Speaker 2: Is the amount of scholarship is just enormous, and we'll
Speaker 2: just continue to go on and on and on. The
Speaker 2: mark of a great book, truly, So does some questions
Speaker 2: about the interpretation itself. How does one imagine a Prelapseyrian world?
Speaker 2: I'm a fallen creature. I'm finite. I don't know what
Speaker 2: it's like to be born in a time where sin
Speaker 2: and death head and entered the world. As I have
Speaker 2: that in common with every person who will ever watch
Speaker 2: this video and listen to me talk about it. Everybody
Speaker 2: who is not Adam and Eve Christ is obviously born
Speaker 2: through the emmaticlate conception sinless. So he's an exception here too.
Speaker 2: But Adam and Eve are They're not God, but they're
Speaker 2: they're unfallen humans, right, and they exist in Eden. So
Speaker 2: Milton is a fallen creature just like we are, right,
Speaker 2: So how does that? How does that work? How does
Speaker 2: how does how? How can he imagine a Prelapserian world properly?
Speaker 2: Is there are there limitations to that? Are there going
Speaker 2: to be struggles to that? How does he deal with that?
Speaker 2: How does he handle that? Should he even be trying
Speaker 2: and attempting to imagine the pre lapse Serian world? Right? Like?
Speaker 2: Should he be doing that? The same thing you could
Speaker 2: go with C. S Lewis with you know, out of
Speaker 2: the Silent Planet in Perilandra, where he's imagining these unfallen worlds?
Speaker 2: And does does C. S Lewis do that? In a
Speaker 2: better way than Milton, or does Milton do that in
Speaker 2: a better way? Does Milton take it too far in
Speaker 2: some ways? And how we can imagine that we see
Speaker 2: another influence here, and I'm drawing a lot of parallels
Speaker 2: to Dante for a reason. But in Paradiso, which is
Speaker 2: the third and final part of Dante's Divine Comedy, he
Speaker 2: leaves Eden, the earthly paradise which sits at the very
Speaker 2: top of Mount Purgatorio, that's the setting of his the
Speaker 2: second part of the poem, Purgatorio or Purgatory, and he
Speaker 2: ascends out of Eden into the medieval cosmos, the spheres,
Speaker 2: the heavens, if you may, and Dante arrives on Luna
Speaker 2: or what we would know today as the Moon, and
Speaker 2: as soon as he gets there, he's he's struggling to
Speaker 2: comprehend things. He's struggling to see things. He's he's having
Speaker 2: a really hard time putting all of his experiences from
Speaker 2: the parody so into words in the poem parodies so.
Speaker 2: And that's because he's a human and he's limited in
Speaker 2: a sense, even if he's been purified, he's struggling with that.
Speaker 2: And that's different than in a sense than Paradise Loss.
Speaker 2: But it's also not because John Milton is going to
Speaker 2: write parts of the story that take place outside of time.
Speaker 2: They take place in God's transcendence in the imperium, right
Speaker 2: where he is outside of time, He's outside of space,
Speaker 2: he's outside of the cosmos. How does Milton deal with that?
Speaker 2: How does he imagine that as a finite human being
Speaker 2: dealing with an infinite being akaa God like? How does
Speaker 2: he handle that? All things just to consider? And so
Speaker 2: that kind of leads me to my next question and
Speaker 2: challenge is how do we deal with a poem that
Speaker 2: takes place both outside of time and within time? So,
Speaker 2: like a Paradise Lost, has scenes, but it is not
Speaker 2: always clear when the scene shifts. So you see this
Speaker 2: in Shakespeare the editions we have today, they have acts
Speaker 2: and various scenes that takes place within the act of
Speaker 2: the play. Usually it's a five five act drama with
Speaker 2: multiple scenes within each act. See that you see. Usually
Speaker 2: scene shifts are clearly articulated in things like sophocles Sentipus
Speaker 2: cycle or Isulus's Orestia, or in some of Euripides as tragedies,
Speaker 2: but a lot of the additions, at least any of
Speaker 2: the ones I've seen don't have this in Paradise Loss.
Speaker 2: So how do we understand a scene shift? We don't
Speaker 2: have the clear scene shifts as much in Paradise Lost,
Speaker 2: and so this requires a lot of careful attention. And
Speaker 2: I kind of touch on this as the last one.
Speaker 2: But how do we take place? How do we how
Speaker 2: do we understand what's taking place between the Godhead? Where
Speaker 2: God the Father and God the Son, both characters in
Speaker 2: this poem are they're having a dialogue with one another.
Speaker 2: How are we supposed to handle that and deal with that?
Speaker 2: How can Milton even know that? Interpretive challenges? How are
Speaker 2: we supposed to understand whose perspective to read from? And
Speaker 2: are there some parts? There are some parts from Satan's perspective,
Speaker 2: there are some parts from God's perspective? How do we
Speaker 2: imagine and interpret those properly? All things to consider as
Speaker 2: you dive in and ponder these things reading throughout the poem.
Speaker 2: All Right, so we've posed a lot of questions. Those
Speaker 2: are maybe too many, maybe not, but I hope those
Speaker 2: are really helpful for just kind of where to aim
Speaker 2: your focus and how to think about Paradise Lost. Now
Speaker 2: it's time to talk more about the characters of the poem. So,
Speaker 2: first and foremost, God the Father is a character in
Speaker 2: the poem. God the Son is a character in the poem.
Speaker 2: Milton is not. He doesn't reject the trinity, so he
Speaker 2: does believe that God the Father, God the Son, and
Speaker 2: God the Holy Spirit are all you know, all share
Speaker 2: the divine essence. They're all fully God, but they're all
Speaker 2: distinctly their own persons in the Godhead. But these are
Speaker 2: God the Father and God the Son are going to
Speaker 2: take up the the role of the dialogue within the Godhead.
Speaker 2: Satan is a major character. Like I said before, makes
Speaker 2: created a lot of controversy because Satan that the king
Speaker 2: of Hell and that the king of the demons, is
Speaker 2: essentially a main character in this uh in this drama,
Speaker 2: he's he's portrayed as the main antagonist, if you may.
Speaker 2: But he's he gets a lot of light, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of there's a lot of a a focus on him, right,
Speaker 2: He's almost like a almost like a byronic hero in
Speaker 2: a sense of pre byronic hero and Lord Byron with
Speaker 2: like Don Juan and other works most likely to draw
Speaker 2: influence from this. As the Romantics talked about Milton quite
Speaker 2: a bit more on that another time. Perhaps bails above
Speaker 2: as a character, He's not another name for Satan in
Speaker 2: this he is Satan's right hand man. He's his his
Speaker 2: second in command, and he he gets a scene with
Speaker 2: Satan right at the beginning of book one. Satan has
Speaker 2: Satan has some followers who are other named characters. These
Speaker 2: are basically like his generals in a sense, and they
Speaker 2: they're going to give speeches at the Infernal Council in
Speaker 2: book two and talk about how the best to get
Speaker 2: back at God for defeating them and banishing them to hell.
Speaker 2: So we have Blile, Mammon, Maloc and Molkaiber, and Mulkaiber
Speaker 2: of course, is an allusion to King Vulcan in Roman mythology.
Speaker 2: Also Hepastius and Greek mythology. Those are usually interchangeable names.
Speaker 2: And he's the god of forge and smith ory in
Speaker 2: Roman mythology, just as Hephaestius is in Greek mythology. So
Speaker 2: that name is another name for King Vulcan. And there's
Speaker 2: some illusions here to be gleaned. Perhaps is he's the
Speaker 2: builder of the Palace of Pandemonium. But pay pay strong
Speaker 2: attention to the motives and what these characters are getting
Speaker 2: at when they when they have Thisti of Counsel and
Speaker 2: Book two, it's fascinating to to get there, excited to
Speaker 2: get there and talk about it with you all. So
Speaker 2: sin and death are each literally a character in this poem.
Speaker 2: Death you might think of like personified as the grim Reaper,
Speaker 2: but Michael says that death has many faces. An interesting
Speaker 2: thing to consider. There other characters, of course, Adam and
Speaker 2: Eve are human characters, are our first parents, as Milton
Speaker 2: will call them. They're basically, in a sense of the
Speaker 2: protagonists of this story. And the angels, of course, are
Speaker 2: important characters in the story. Literary critic Northrop Frye and
Speaker 2: his essay The Story of All Things says the angelic
Speaker 2: order is there to provide models for human action. They
Speaker 2: form a community of service and obedience, often doing things
Speaker 2: meaningless to them except that as the will of God,
Speaker 2: they have meaning. The angels here there's all we can
Speaker 2: say about Milton's angels and his angelology. But the characters
Speaker 2: are supposed to be They're representing obedience to God. Obedience
Speaker 2: and disobedience are motifs in this in this poem, and
Speaker 2: Milton is absolutely showing the angels as basically exemplars and
Speaker 2: paragons of virtue and obedience to God. Fully, they can't
Speaker 2: fall away because they'll be like Satan's demons, and they don't,
Speaker 2: and they don't. They don't get redeemed like humans do,
Speaker 2: as many Theoogians have believed. So the angels in this
Speaker 2: poem are Gabriel, then Raphael, who's going to be Adam's
Speaker 2: teacher before the fall. He is essentially a historian. He's
Speaker 2: going to use history to try to educate Adam and
Speaker 2: prepare him to not fall, and warn him that Satan
Speaker 2: is coming as a serpent, Uriel as another angel, Abdeal
Speaker 2: as an angel. I know Abdila is mentioned, and I
Speaker 2: can't remember. It might be baruk Or, but one of
Speaker 2: the duterial canonical books. Obviously if you're Roman Catholic, that's
Speaker 2: going to be a part of the biblical canon. For
Speaker 2: Protestants it's more extra biblical. But I believe he's mentioned
Speaker 2: in one of those. I can look into that later.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry I did not write that one down, but
Speaker 2: it's actually one of my favorite character moments in Paradise
Speaker 2: Lost is when ab Deal stands up alone against Satan
Speaker 2: and all his demons is basically says no, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to do this, and you guys shouldn't rebel against God.
Speaker 2: This is before they actually enact and engage warfare against
Speaker 2: God and the obedient angels. And Abdial serves as basically
Speaker 2: the model of Christian virtue and the cardinal virtue of
Speaker 2: fortitude or courage. One who is wisely standing up against evil.
Speaker 2: He's not being a coward, but he's also not exercising
Speaker 2: a false form of courage and being a rash fool. No,
Speaker 2: he's properly in that Aristotelian mean between the two extreme eames,
Speaker 2: and he is. He's faithful, he's courageous, he's exercising fortitude.
Speaker 2: I did write about this. I wrote a piece called
Speaker 2: ab Deal the Faithful, a celestial model of Christian fortitude.
Speaker 2: You can find that on my substack. You can also
Speaker 2: find a d a pdf on the course page. Highly
Speaker 2: highly recommend that. I'm not to shamelessly plug my own work,
Speaker 2: but it's nothing scholarly, but it's about, you know, fifteen
Speaker 2: hundred words or so to kind of talk about ab
Speaker 2: Deal in that scene. When you get to book five,
Speaker 2: maybe go give that a read. And I hope we
Speaker 2: can talk about it further. Michael another character in this.
Speaker 2: Michael's the one who's responsible and tasked by God to
Speaker 2: kick them out of Eden, but he's also tasked with
Speaker 2: how to educating Adam and preparing him for life outside
Speaker 2: of Eden, fallen life, and he's going to teach him
Speaker 2: about the history of his descendants, sort of looking forward
Speaker 2: down the corridors of time, of what's to come with
Speaker 2: his people and the hope that's aalt going to come
Speaker 2: through Jesus Christ and giving him that theological virtue of hope. Okay,
Speaker 2: I have said a lot here about the poem, about
Speaker 2: this magnificent work, and I just wanted to close with
Speaker 2: some advice for how to read Paradise Lost, some really
Speaker 2: kind of practical tips for just how to go through
Speaker 2: the poem. I hope these are helpful to you, as
Speaker 2: they've been helpful to me. I did not do these
Speaker 2: the first time I read them. At a professor at
Speaker 2: Memoria College recommend this to me, and I did it
Speaker 2: the second time that I read the poem, and it
Speaker 2: was extremely helpful, to say the least, so first off,
Speaker 2: and I did do this one the first time. Actually,
Speaker 2: the other ones I didn't do. But annotate, and the
Speaker 2: annotate the work. Always annotate a great book. Right, write
Speaker 2: in the margins, write questions, right answers. Circle words that
Speaker 2: you don't understand, Maybe look some of them up, Keep
Speaker 2: a journal of quotes that you love, and perhaps even
Speaker 2: commit these to memory. The beauty of memory, though our
Speaker 2: memory has fallen and fickle and fails us at times.
Speaker 2: If you memorize poetry, you take the poems with you
Speaker 2: wherever you go, and there's some beauty about that, or
Speaker 2: like one you. First of all, you don't have to
Speaker 2: have a conversation with somebody and say, hold on, let
Speaker 2: me uh, let me look up this, uh, this thing
Speaker 2: that T. S. Eliots said one time, Let me look
Speaker 2: up this poem and then sit there on your phone
Speaker 2: and try to google it. No, how profound is it
Speaker 2: if you can just recite those words from memory, recite
Speaker 2: things from Paradise Lost, and pull them out in real
Speaker 2: life scenarios and conversations with friends and family and others,
Speaker 2: that's a magnificent and underrated thing. Perhaps, if you are
Speaker 2: like me and you like to occasionally unplug and go
Speaker 2: backpacking out in the woods where you don't have reception
Speaker 2: You don't lose Paradise Lost just because you don't have
Speaker 2: a copy of it with you, Because you've kept it
Speaker 2: up here, you've committed it to memory, and that poem
Speaker 2: can essentially not leave you in a way. Okay, so
Speaker 2: here's some advice that did come from my professor at
Speaker 2: Memorial College. So write the name of the speaker and
Speaker 2: the margins every time there's a new speaker in the poem.
Speaker 2: This is an easy way to just keep track of
Speaker 2: who's talking. It's not always so easy to do that.
Speaker 2: It's not like if you go to Barnes and Noble
Speaker 2: today and pick up like a fantasy or sci fi
Speaker 2: novel or something, it's usually pretty easy to keep track
Speaker 2: of that, and I don't find that to be the
Speaker 2: case with Paradise Lost. Furthermore, with that, write in quotation
Speaker 2: marks where they begin speaking, and write the ending quotation
Speaker 2: marks at the end of their speech. This helps you
Speaker 2: to keep track of where they're speaking where they're not.
Speaker 2: Some editions might have some quotation marks in them, but
Speaker 2: I haven't seen any that have them for every speech.
Speaker 2: So it helps you to know when somebody's actually talking
Speaker 2: and when there's just a descriptive poetic narrative about what's happening.
Speaker 2: And then, thirdly, and finally with this, this goes hand
Speaker 2: in hand with the speaker, write the setting out every
Speaker 2: time the setting changes. This will there will be multiple
Speaker 2: settings at times within just one book of Paradise Lost.
Speaker 2: So write that there's you're going to get a description
Speaker 2: of when the setting changes, right right, the setting right, Oh,
Speaker 2: they're in Eden now, now they're in Heaven and the
Speaker 2: angels are talking. Now they're within the Godhead, and perhaps
Speaker 2: even in the in the Empyre and in the in
Speaker 2: the transcendent realm that goes beyond all the cosmos. Right when,
Speaker 2: right when they're in Hell, when Satan's talking to his demons,
Speaker 2: or when he's at the gates of Hell trying to
Speaker 2: get out, keep track of all these things. There's this.
Speaker 2: It's it's good to note that at the end of
Speaker 2: the day. And I think that'll be extremely helpful for
Speaker 2: especially when you try to revisit things and reread things
Speaker 2: for further comprehension. That'll be extremely helpful. And just remember
Speaker 2: if you're not if you can't get over the writing
Speaker 2: on a book thing, write in your books, especially the
Speaker 2: hard ones, and don't see rereading a book with notes
Speaker 2: and as a bad thing. See it as a good thing.
Speaker 2: Because if you come back and there's questions that you
Speaker 2: are things you wrote down and you think, oh, that
Speaker 2: was stupid, that was foolish. I wasn't thinking about this, right,
Speaker 2: Celebrate that, you know why, because that's growth. That means
Speaker 2: you've learned something since your last visit, and you will
Speaker 2: grow in every revisitation of a great book. And it's
Speaker 2: wonderful to be able to see your progress with that.
Speaker 2: So don't look that as a bad thing. We'll get
Speaker 2: as a good thing and a beautiful thing. You are
Speaker 2: growing in your intellectual life and journey, and that is wonderful. Anyway,
Speaker 2: this has been rather lengthy. This is the longest video
Speaker 2: I'm going to record for these introductory videos, but this
Speaker 2: is the most important one and the one that you
Speaker 2: would want to pay the most attention to you and
Speaker 2: hopefully take notes on. I hope this has been really
Speaker 2: helpful though overall, and I really look forward to our
Speaker 2: journey through Paradise Lost together this semester. Thank you and
Speaker 2: God bless.
Speaker 1: All right. I hope that you enjoyed that presentation, as
Speaker 1: I know that I certainly did. I personally look forward
Speaker 1: to benefiting from Josh's expertise here, and I know that
Speaker 1: you will as well. And so if that interests you
Speaker 1: and you want more of that, then please go and
Speaker 1: enroll in Josh's course, whether you're able to join with
Speaker 1: us live or you simply want these materials to use
Speaker 1: at your own leisure. All right, Well that's it for now.
Speaker 1: I hope to see you around until next time. Godspeed,