Iago, for example, would not be read this way. To saddle Satan with such a growl is superfluous and distracting, and gives Satan a particular "character" or quality which Milton may not have intended. The other is the distracting voice of Satan. This is for the reader who has read PL many times, possibly. One is the slowness of the reading which can be sped up with certain audio players if downloaded and listened to on a computer.
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Two other comments not so serious as the loss of the poetry. Milton is very complex, and making objects, direct or indirect, sound like subjects is easy to do, particularly when the subject is understood, not written. The enjambment is extremely difficult to read, and credit is due most of the time for not pausing in inappropriate places, or emphasizing the wrong syllable. The reading therefore is very prose like, unfortunately. In other situations where elision is possible or even written, the syllables are sometimes pronounced in this reading. Milton pronounced ignominy as ignomy I would think, for example. There are few if any feminine endings in PL I believe, so unlike Shakespeare there may not be an 11th syllable (assuming words such as power are one syllable.) The meter and pronunciation here are sometimes incorrect. One cannot put "the" in where it does not go one must not add syllables to the line by making "ed" into a syllable where it does not belong. However, the beauty of PL is actually in the poetry, and since it is blank verse in iambic pentameter, that is how it must be read. I am not at all good at reading poetry aloud therefore I know the difficulty.
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See Wikipedia entry here.įor further information, including links to M4B audio book, online text, reader information, RSS feeds, CD cover or other formats (if available), please go to the LibriVox catalog page for this recording. This is a recording of the text of Milton's first edition of 1667, which had ten books, unlike the second edition (1674) which was redivided into twelve books in the manner of Virgil's Aeneid. His work, which was dictated from memory and transcribed by his daughter, remains as one of the most powerful English poems. John Milton saw himself as the intellectual heir of Homer, Virgil, and Dante, and sought to create a work of art which fully represented the most basic tenets of the Protestant faith. Paradise Lost is the first epic of English literature written in the classical style.