11/13/2022 0 Comments Paradise lost in modern english![]() Milton and other Protestants believed that each person was entitled to an intimate relationship with God and felt that the use of Latin by the Catholic church was no less than a brick wall standing between individuals and religious understanding. The Catholic church persisted in publishing scriptures and holding religious services in Latin long after everyday Europeans had stopped speaking Latin conversationally. Which you have to admit is totally impressive.īut here’s the thing – Milton was a Protestant, and one of the missions of the Protestant Reformation was to see the Bible and other religious texts published in vernacular language. I’ve heard it said that Milton is considered one of the best stylists of the Latin language OF ALL TIME, meaning that he is right up there with Cicero and the rest of those toga-wearing characters who, you know, LIVED IN ROME and SPOKE LATIN AS THEIR FIRST LANGUAGE. This was common practice in the 17 th century, but Milton proved exceptionally talented in these areas. His education emphasized both studying the Latin classics and not only translating them into English but also writing original argumentative essays and participating in debates in Latin. It’s well known, of course, that Milton was an expert in Latin composition and translation. I am writing this post to tell you that I think I’ve discovered something kind of cute about Milton. the ME at the beginning of the sentence) as the angels’ leader, THOUGH… and, as the leader, he advises the angels not to pine for what they’ve lost but focus on creating a kingdom for themselves in heaven.īut all of this grammar is not really the reason I’m writing this post. So “though” is like a “however,” and Satan reasons that the “just right” and “fixed laws” that “did…create” HIM (a.k.a. I must have checked the text twelve times to make sure Milton hadn’t actually written “through” – but no, it’s definitely “though.” Finally I made some sense of it (I think) by reading “though” as a qualifier of the previous sentence, in which Satan worries that the other fallen angels will spend too much time pining for heaven. And while I do understand that “just right” (meaning, basically, justice – moral rectitude, all that is fair and right, etc.) pairs well with “fixed laws” (in other words, the higher laws of the universe and all that is fair and right put Satan in power) as subjects, I just couldn’t bring myself to understand what “though” is doing there. To me, it’s easy to understand that “fixed laws” is a subject and agrees with “did create” fine. They identify “me” as the direct object of the sentence, and they point out that “just right” and “fixed laws” – both of which are principles valued by the Roman Stoic philosophers like Seneca and Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius – make up the compound subject of the sentence. They acknowledge that the syntax is “tortuous” and help us through the grammar a bit. The editors of my text do provide a footnote on this sentence. Oh, and the speaker of this passage is Satan, by the way. Then there’s the odd overuse of commas in line 19 and the general weird wordiness of “With what besides” and the two lines that follow it. So far I can’t think of a specific example that works, but I’ll keep trying). We’re already almost twenty years late in reading Paradise Lost, so what’s the harm of five more minutes? There’s the baffling use of the first person objective pronoun “me” at the beginning of the sentence (Is it even possible in modern English to correctly begin a sentence with “me”? There’s the abominably incorrect “Me and my friend played soccer” construction that children seem to pick up for a while in elementary school, then blessedly outgrow, but the only way I can even imagine making this structure work in modern English is if somehow the “me” is the object of a preposition and the preposition itself is either understood or placed somewhere else in the sentence. Thus far at least recovered, hath much more Hath been achieved of merit, yet this loss With what besides, in counsel or in fight, #PARADISE LOST IN MODERN ENGLISH FREE#Me though just right, and the fixed laws of Heav’nĭid first create your leader, next, free choice, If I had to pick a single sentence in Paradise Lost that is most linguistically intriguing (so far, anyway), it would be this one, from Book II, lines18-24: ![]()
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