Where to start with Milton
Montaigne tunes the ear to Milton's humanist questions; Paradise Lost then asks you to hear its argument in the verse.
Paradise Lost loses you within a page or two, and footnotes begin competing with the sound before the poem has taken hold.
Reading Paradise Lost silently, on the page, at normal prose pace, drowning in the syntax and the classical references, and concluding the poem is unreadable. Or reading it through the apparatus first — every footnote, every gloss — and finding you have read about Milton without having read Milton.
Books in order
- Essays — Montaigne in the generation before Milton, working in prose on the same humanist questions — freedom of mind, the cost of knowledge, what a serious self looks like. A few essays at a sitting prepare the ear for Paradise Lost without competing with it.
- Paradise Lost — Read it aloud. Two books a sitting at most. A modern annotated edition for the classical references. Books One and Two — the council in Hell — are the famous ones; Book Nine, the temptation, is where the moral architecture lands. Do not race. The verse is the point.
Further reading
- Paradise Regained — The shorter sequel. Save it for after Paradise Lost; the form is colder and more austere, and it rewards a reader who already loves the long poem.
- Samson Agonistes — Milton's late dramatic poem in the Greek tragic form. Save it for last; it is the most personal of the major poems and reads best after the long poem has done its work.