Should I read Paradise Lost?

>>9893078
Christianity is largely a Jewish religion. Try Kevin MacDonald's Culture of Critique Series to understand the real truth

>it's just telling stories from the bible in the authors own interesting way (something like Dante's Inferno)
Anon in what paralell dimension do you live?

>>9893078
why the fuck are you people so terrified of reading books

>>9893092
/thread

thank you smart boy

>>9893078
Read it or don't read it. You don't actually have to be a Christian. From what I've read of it so far (I have read some of his lyrical poems already), the only interesting character is Satan. Also, Milton isn't known as the poet of the sublime for nothing. Read it for the enjoyable passages if nothing else.

>>9893078
The power of the bible is its mysterious brevity. The events happen in a flash but there are enough symbols, specific turns of phrase, and human universality behind it that the mind can go wild and creative in both filling out the gaps the text leaves and fleshing out the existing details. The reinterpretive power of the artist is its own power; think of a song, and then think of the same song as sung by Frank Sinatra. Those create two distinctly different forms, and that's just pop music. John Milton is possessed of extraordinary poetic powers, if he's working with such fertile evocative ground as the bible then the beautiful imagery and rich ideas for mining are near inevitable. And the poem itself is important in its context; such a rich poem coming out of the English language of all languages was neigh unthinkable, so it did two things: historically in the short term, it helped legitimize the Anglican church's claim to existing opposed to the Roman Catholic papacy, and in the long run it was instrumental in developing (alongside Shakespeare and the KJV Bible) the English language as we inevitably speak it today.

It's good you faggot read it.

>>9893092
They don't want to read something only to find out at the end it is a piece of shit

>>9893205
>Paradise Lost might be a piece of shit.
This board is beyond recovery.

It's one of the greatest works of English literature. It's worth reading it even if you don't end up "liking" it. Might want to brush up on your Bible and Classics, though. Also get an annotated edition. If you're actually asking the question of whether you should it, you clearly don't know enough to read it without help.

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>>9894888
Trips hath spoken

>stories from the bible in the authors own interesting way (something like Dante's Inferno)
Where are Farinata degli Uberti, Saladin, St. Bernard and Beatrice in the Bible, again?

>>9893092
This.

Why do people have such issues with reading the Bible so they could find out what is and what isn't in the Bible? And then compare it to texts like the Divine Comedy or Milton's works?

What the fuck?

I tried reading it a while back. I was enthralled for several pages, but it quickly started to move beyond my abilities. I decided to stop and pick it up once I've read more.

>>9894907
>Why do people have such issues with reading the Bible so they could find out what is and what isn't in the Bible? And then compare it to texts like the Divine Comedy or Milton's works?

cause muh atheism

how do you read the bible without forgetting it all

>>9895215
Milton was an educated Puritan, so he likely read the Bible many times over, including in the original languages.

>>9895048
Which is nonsense, reading it would be of primary concern to them if they're atheists in a country with at least a nominally Christian population majority.

A bigger reason than the one that makes pastors read the Qur'an.

>>9895215
There can be parts that are definitely easier to forget, yes, like the measurements of the Temple, but you encounter so many references to the Pentateuch, Gospels and Revelation, in literature and culture in general - just to name a few books - that much of it becomes impossible to forget.

Once you're done, you can no longer read The White Seal and fail to see the protagonist as the Moses of its kind. Conversely you will also remember that Dante's cosmology with its account of hell with layers of different punishments is not from the Bible.

It's not rocket science.

>>9893078
Yes

Read it purely for the abilty to stay in meter for so long let alone it's cultural and literature significance

If you aren't interested in poetry you can afford to miss it. But if you remotely care about the western Canon or consider yourself well read. Shakespeare's poem, Milton and chaucer are a must

>>9893078

read the tragedy of men by imre madách instead