MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Literary Highly Challenging Nominations • July 2013

fantasyfan · 07-01-2013, 05:30 AM

I'll open things up with a nomination I made a good while back. I think that a book can be nominated again after 6 months and I think that this qualifies. Please let me know if it doesn't and I will withdraw it.

My nomination is Paradise Lost by John Milton. This is a gigantic, highly challenging poem by any standards and is considered the greatest epic in the English language and perhaps the greatest in Western Literature since Dante.

It has everything! There's the wonderful, Titanic figure of Satan, splendid, heroic, powerful, angry, and very seductive. The story spans the entire Creation as Milton conceived it and is filled with drama, huge battles, and dramatisations concerning the nature of free will.

It is written in a powerful, resonant, incredibly beautiful blank verse which has given us the adjective "Miltonic" to convey its special combination of poetic power, majesty and brilliant flow.

I'll conclude with an excerpt describing Satan's Fall from early in the poem:

"Him the Almighty Power
Hurld headlong flaming from th' Ethereal Skie
With hideous ruine and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire,
Who durst defie th' Omnipotent to Arms.
Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe
Confounded though immortal: "

This masterpiece is available free from Project Gutenberg and from other sources {not always free} including Amazon UK, Amazon.com, Kobo etc.

07-01-2013, 05:30 AM	#2
fantasyfan Wizard Posts: 1,368 Karma: 26886344 Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: Ireland Device: Kindle Oasis 3, 4G, iPad Air 2, iPhone IE	I'll open things up with a nomination I made a good while back. I think that a book can be nominated again after 6 months and I think that this qualifies. Please let me know if it doesn't and I will withdraw it. My nomination is Paradise Lost by John Milton. This is a gigantic, highly challenging poem by any standards and is considered the greatest epic in the English language and perhaps the greatest in Western Literature since Dante. It has everything! There's the wonderful, Titanic figure of Satan, splendid, heroic, powerful, angry, and very seductive. The story spans the entire Creation as Milton conceived it and is filled with drama, huge battles, and dramatisations concerning the nature of free will. It is written in a powerful, resonant, incredibly beautiful blank verse which has given us the adjective "Miltonic" to convey its special combination of poetic power, majesty and brilliant flow. I'll conclude with an excerpt describing Satan's Fall from early in the poem: "Him the Almighty Power Hurld headlong flaming from th' Ethereal Skie With hideous ruine and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire, Who durst defie th' Omnipotent to Arms. Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night To mortal men, he with his horrid crew Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe Confounded though immortal: " This masterpiece is available free from Project Gutenberg and from other sources {not always free} including Amazon UK, Amazon.com, Kobo etc. Last edited by fantasyfan; 07-01-2013 at 08:21 AM.