Milton - Audio

I’m teaching a class on paradise lost for high school and this was such a great way to help me prepare for the class. These lectures helped me to understand so much more of where Milton was coming from and how his political perspective influenced his religious perspective and in turn influenced his poetry. I wish there was some way to contact the professor because it seemed as though he was struggling a bit with the concept of God’s expelling Adam and Eve out of the garden. Perviously the professor mentioned Milton’s seeming obsession with the digestive process and I was surprised that he did not reference this in respect to the expulsion (or could you say excretion) of Adam and Eve from the garden. Milton’s view on this seems to be connected with his previous references to food and the digestive process.

I loved these lectures and didn't want them to end. I hope there will be more courses by John Rogers available!

It took hearing -- rather than reading -- Paradise Lost (via the Lesser recording on Naxos) to get me into Milton, but once there Roger's course was enough to cement my interest in the works and the man. His personable, at times self-confessional style (how many Milton scholars would admit they watch soap operas) lightly carries the burden this most weighty of poets. Taking a generally chronological approach to the life and works, he discusses, with some degree of iconoclastic insight, Milton's involvement in politics, his family life, misogyny and blindness, among other things. My favorite moments are when Roger's does a "close reading" of a line or two, extracting deep meanings, often quite movingly. There usually is at least one of these in each lecture. My main regret is that the lectures by Roger's two teaching fellows were not included, especially since one of them apparently covered Paradise Lost's Battle in Heaven. As portrayed by Milton this a sort of mash-up of the battles in the Lord of the Rings but with even grander cosmological consequences. (The script writers for the LOTR movies undoubtedly knew their Milton.) The course presupposes some knowledge of the basic tenants of Christianity and the contents of the Bible, mainly the Old Testament. It also helps to have some background in Greek and Roman mythology. What you need to know can be looked up online or can usually be found in the footnotes of a good printed edition of Milton (such as the new one by Kerrigan or the old one by Hughes, the latter being the edition used in the course).