Monday 9 May 2011

How to teach Milton…

Here's Donald Sutherland's attempt in that pedagogical classic, National Lampoon's Animal House (from 7.00-8.30).

If anyone can find an embeddable version, let me know and I'll post it.

8 comments:

The Red Witch said...

Someone is in talks to make a film out of Paradise Lost. Maybe they will figure out what it is all about and tell us so we can understand it. I took a course on Milton. Studying Roman poetry helped make some sense of him.
Marvin the Robot is awesome, btw. A brain the size of a planet and they ask me if I can make tea. :-)

The Plashing Vole said...

I like and enjoy Milton. Though I did have the fun of teaching a class this year which entirely missed the hot sex scene!
I love Marvin. He's right about everything!

Jim said...

I teach Paradise Lost but I haven't a fucking clue what it is about.

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Jim said...

In fact the clip is painfully familiar.

The Red Witch said...

@Though I did have the fun of teaching a class this year which entirely missed the hot sex scene!

I did a double take when I read that bit that angels have sex in heaven. Go, Johnny, Go!

The Plashing Vole said...

I'm not surprised at that Jim!
Red Witch: Adam and Eve, not the Angels!

Ewarwoowar said...

To the amazement of everyone, including myself, once I got into Paradise Lost I actually began to enjoy it...okay, perhaps "enjoy" isn't the right word. Perhaps "tolerate" instead.

I found that the successful way of reading it was to take it one Book at a time, and read up on what the Book is on about before you actually read it. Then you have some sense of where it's going, even if you don't understand every word/line.

The Red Witch said...

Book VIII, lines 617-629. "with a smile that glowed celestial rosie red, Loves proper hue" Blushing Raphael tells Adam "Whatever pure thou in the body enjoy'st we enjoy in eminence, and obstacle find none of membrane, joynt, or limb" and 'if Spirits embrace, total they mix, union of pure with pure desiring; nor restrain'd conveyance need as Flesh to mix with Flesh"
Easy enough to overlook, Milton liked to be subtle so that people wouldn't lynch him for saying stuff like that.