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1Paradise Lost

By John Milton

Paradise Lost is the first epic of English literature written in the classical style. John Milton saw himself as the intellectual heir of Homer, Virgil, and Dante, and sought to create a work of art which fully represented the most basic tenets of the Protestant faith. His work, which was dictated from memory and transcribed by his daughter, remains as one of the most powerful English poems. (Summary by Caeristhiona)<br /><br />This is a recording of the text of Milton’s first edition of 1667, which had ten books, unlike the second edition (1674) which was redivided into twelve books in the manner of Virgil’s Aeneid. See Wikipedia entry.

2Paradise Regained

By John Milton

Paradise Regained is a poem by the 17th century English poet John Milton, published in 1671. It is connected by name to his earlier and more famous epic poem Paradise Lost, with which it shares similar theological themes. Based on the Gospel of Luke's version of the Temptation of Christ, Paradise Regained is more thoughtful in writing style, and thrives upon the imagery of Jesus' perfection in contrast to the shame of Satan. (Summary from Wikipedia) </p> The <a href="http://librivox.org/paradise-lost-by-john-milton/">Librivox recording of Paradise Lost can be found here</a>.

3Areopagitica

By John Milton

A prose tract or polemic by John Milton, published November 23, 1644, at the height of the English Civil War... Milton, though a supporter of the Parliament, argued forcefully against the Licensing Order of 1643, noting that such censorship had never been a part of classical Greek and Roman society. The tract is full of biblical and classical references which Milton uses to strengthen his argument. The issue was personal for Milton as he had suffered censorship himself in his efforts to publish several tracts defending divorce (a radical stance at the time and one which met with no favor from the censors)... Areopagitica is among history's most influential and impassioned philosophical defences of the principle of a right to free speech. (Summary by Wikipedia)

4Samson Agonistes

By John Milton

“The Sun to me is dark<br />And silent as the Moon,<br />When she deserts the night<br />Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.”<br /><br />Milton composes his last extended work as a tragedy according to the classical Unities of Time, Place and Action. Nevertheless it “never was intended for the stage” and is here declaimed by a single reader.<br /><br />Samson the blinded captive, in company with the Chorus of friends and countrymen, receives his visitors on their varying missions and through them his violent story is vividly recalled. Then he is summoned to give a final demonstration of God-given strength to entertain the Philistines, his captors. Famously – and of course, offstage – his performance brings the house down. (Summary by Martin Geeson)

LibriVox volunteers bring you 15 recordings of Adam and Eve (From “Paradise Lost,” Fourth Book) by John Milton. This was the Weekly Poetry project for <br><br>Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 (though written nearly ten years earlier) in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse. A second edition followed in 1674, redivided into twelve books (in the manner of the division of Virgil's Aeneid) with minor revisions throughout and a note on the versification; most of the poem was written while Milton was blind, and was transcribed for him.<br><br>Milton first presents Adam and Eve in Book IV with impartiality. The relationship between Adam and Eve is one of "mutual dependence, not a relation of domination or hierarchy." While the author does place Adam above Eve in regard to his intellectual knowledge, and in turn his relation to God, he also grants Eve the benefit of knowledge through experience. ( Summary from Wikipedia)

6Paradise Regain'd (version 2)

By John Milton

Having been publicly acknowledged as God's "beloved Son," Jesus retires to the desert to meditate upon what it means to be the Messiah, about whose coming many conflicting opinions have been circulating among the Jews. Although a learned rabbi, Jesus possesses no knowledge beyond what is available to all human beings. Satan also takes a new interest in this favored "son of God" and seeks to learn what threat he constitutes. The poem consists of a debate between these two adversaries, each seeking the same understanding of precisely what mankind's Savior will do in a world where the way to success typically lies through "wealth . . . honour . . . arms . . . arts . . . Kingdom . . . Empire . . . life contemplative, / Or active, tended on by glory, or fame." By withstanding Satan's temptation to all such worldly paths, Jesus proves himself to be a perfect, unfallen man and consequently worthy to win back paradise for mankind. Repeatedly invited to take action—either to secure his kingdom or to prove himself deserving of the divine favor that has been shown him or simply to save his life—he resists, patiently suffering, withstanding, waiting. Yet he learns from his temptation, clarifying in his own mind what his mission on earth must be and the means to achieve it. For although Satan knows no more of his mission than he does himself, Satan points the way by offering the wrong goals or the wrong motives or the wrong means. Thus the Father of Lies against his will opens the way to salvation for human kind. (Summary by Thomas Copeland)

7Areopagitica (Version 2)

By John Milton

The noblest and most extensive defense of freedom of the press in English. Although Milton was sufficiently practical to serve as a censor of books himself when his opposition to this practice was ignored by the government, he never lost his conviction that the best way to battle falsehood was to let it have its say and be defeated by the superior power of truth. Strangling infants in the cradle was simply not his style. In this long essay, in the form of a five-part Classical oration addressed to Parliament (the counterpart of the Areopagus or council of elders in ancient Athens), he brings to bear on this subject a wide variety of arguments, including antique precedents, philosophical and religious considerations, and his own experience as a published author. The document presents the portrait of the idealistic core of the British republic struggling against the political expediency that upholds the government. (Summary by Thomas Copeland)

8Paradise Lost (version 2)

By John Milton

As Vergil had surpassed Homer by adapting the epic form to celebrate the origin of the author’s nation, Milton developed it yet further to recount the origin of the human race itself and, in particular, the origin of and the remedy for evil; this is what he refers to as “things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.” <br /><br /> After a statement of its purpose, the poem plunges, like its epic predecessors, into the midst of the action, shockingly bringing to the front the traditional visit to the underworld, for Satan’s malice is the mainspring of the negative action. But at the center of the poem lies the triumph by the Son of God over the angelic rebels, which counteracts Satan’s evil design. To preview this pattern, the fallen angels’ council in hell is counterbalanced by a council in heaven, in which the Son offers himself as a scapegoat for mankind long before the original sin has been committed. <br /><br /> With this background, the narrator introduces us to Eden and our “Grand Parents.” Satan is detected spying on them and is expelled from the garden, after which God sends an angel to tutor Adam and Eve in the history of the heavenly war that has led to the present situation. At Adam's request, the heavenly guest then recounts the creation of the visible world, explaining also the proper nature of development, whereby all things proceed from lower to higher by refining that which nourishes them. <br /><br /> Satan, however, returning in the form of a snake, offers Eve an evolutionary shortcut in the form of a magical food capable of endowing her with super powers. He claims it has conferred on him both reason and speech. Since Eve is suffering at the moment from a fancied slight to her moral strength, she allows herself to forget her recent lesson and yields to this temptation. Adam, unable to imagine life without Eve (and failing to explore alternatives to sin), accepts the fruit from her and eats as well. <br /><br /> Satan’s triumph is short-lived, for although hell and the world of mankind are now linked by a broad highway, he and his followers are humiliated in hell by being turned involuntarily into snakes every year. <br /><br /> Whatever their reasons, both Adam and Eve have disobeyed their Maker’s sole command, and both are condemned to mortality and expulsion from the garden, but before they leave they are vouchsafed another history lesson, this time of the world to come: the progress of sin, the Savior’s coming, and the growth of the church. <br /><br /> <b>Pronunciation:</b> Although a Cambridge M.A., Milton was born and raised in Cheapside, within earshot of the bells of St. Mary-le-Bow, which would make him a Cockney, and the educated dialect which he spoke more nearly resembled the speech of modern Ireland or Ohio than of today's London. Therefore no British accent has been used for this recording, with rare exceptions like making <i>shone</i> rhyme with <i>gone</i>, as Milton's spelling <i>shon</i> specifies. For the most part, modern pronunciation has been employed, as Milton would doubtless have preferred, being so self-consciously avant garde as, for example, to require by his spelling that participles be clipped (e.g., <i>despis'd</i>, <i>rang'd</i>, <i>stretcht</i>) rather than given the syllabic <i>-ed </i>ending. However, he was equally firm about specifying personal preferences that have not survived in standard English on either side of the Atlantic, such as <i>hunderd</i>, <i>heighth</i>, <i>sate</i> (for <i>sat</i>), and elisions like <i>th'ocean</i>. Although blind, he meticulously checked the proofs of his poems and sent his publisher lists of errata with spelling corrections like these. He even distinguished between <i>their</i> and <i>thir</i>, <i>me</i> and <i>mee</i>. Wherever possible these distinctions have been respected. Research has also determined that he probably gave long vowels to the <i>-able</i> suffix and to the syllable <i>-ube</i> in <i>cherube</i>, but since there is little to be gained by honoring such idiosyncracies, they have not been consistently preserved. On the other hand, metrical considerations demand pronunciations such as <i>SUpreme</i>, <i>blasPHEmous</i>, <i>REcepTAcle</i>, and even <i>ACcepTAble</i> and <i>unACcepTAble</i>. Yet, even where corroborative evidence can be found in Shakespeare or elsewhere, such bizarre pronunciations have been kept to a minimum if the meter can be preserved without deviating from modern pronunciation (<i>TRIumph</i> has generally been preferred to <i>triUMPH</i> and <i>inVISible</i> to <i>INviSIble</i>). <br /><br /> <b>The Text:</b> Because the Rev. H. C. Beeching, editor of the volume, was sensitive to the importance of Milton's spelling and apostrophes, his text provides ample support for the pronunciations employed in this reading. However, the reader is encouraged to pay attention to the notes at the end of each book, to which Beeching has consigned some of Milton's maturest artistic decisions. <br /><br />(Thomas Copeland)

On the Late Massacre in the Piedmont was written by John Milton in 1655. It was the weekly poem for the week of Feb 21-Feb 28, 2016. - Summary by EstherbenSimonides

Comme Virgile a développé l’épopée à célébrer l’origine de sa propre patrie, Milton l’a adaptée encore plus pour raconter l’origine du mal et le remède à la chute de l’homme; c’est ce sujet qu’il appelle “des choses qui n’ont encore été tentées ni en prose ni en vers.” L’auteur continue à combiner l’innovation et la tradition quand il débute le premier livre “in medias res” avec la visite au monde infernal (cf. Odyssée livre 11, l’Enéide livre 6), car la malice de Satan est le principe déterminant de l’action négative. Mais au centre du poème se trouve le triomphe du Fils de Dieu sur les anges rebelles, ce qui neutralise le projet nocif de Satan. Ce dessein de la conquête du mal par le bien se présage dans les deux conseils d’état: En enfer Satan s’engage à trouver et ruiner la nouvelle création lorsqu’au ciel le Fils s’offre comme sacrifice pour sauver l’homme avant que Satan ne l’ait corrompu.<br> Après ces préliminaires, nous voyons Eden et “nos premiers parents.” Satan, découvert en train de les épier, est expulsé du jardin. Puis Dieu charge un ange d’expliquer à Adam et Ève l’histoire de la guerre au ciel, où a commencé le danger imminent. À la demande d’Adam, l’ange raconte la création du monde visible et surtout le développement naturel: Toute croissance se déroule de l’assimilation de la nourriture; le mangeur épure la pâture, non pas vice versa.<br> Cependant, Satan, qui rentre dans le paradis sous forme de serpent, apprend à Ève à escroquer l’évolution: Il a trouvé un fruit magique qui peut la douer d’une puissance prodigieuse. Il prétend que ce fruit lui ait conféré et la raison et l’usage de la parole. Ève, qui imagine qu’Adam vient de sous-estimer sa fortitude morale, se permet d’oublier sa leçon récente et elle succombe à cette tentation. Puis, Adam, incapable d’imaginer la vie sans Ève (et sans avoir examiné des alternatives au péché), reçoit le fruit de sa femme et le goûte, lui aussi.<br> Néanmoins, le triomphe de Satan est éphémère, car malgré une nouvelle grand-route qui relie l’enfer au monde de l’homme, lui et ses disciples souffrent l’humiliation d’une annuelle métamorphose involontaire en serpents.<br> Quels que soient leurs motifs, Adam et Ève, tous les deux, ont désobéi au seul commandement de leur Créateur, et tous les deux sont condamnés à la mortalité et à l’expulsion du jardin. Cependant, avant qu’ils ne partent, Dieu leur accorde encore une leçon d’histoire, cette fois de l’avenir: le progrès du péché, l’avènement du Sauveur, et la croissance de l’église.<br> La prose de Chateaubriand accorde avec la syntaxe de l’original assez bien, mais l’aspiration du traducteur à la clarté l’amene à l’occasion d’anéantir certains effets subtils de l’auteur.(Thomas Copeland)

A reader of this history, encountering the frequent references to “my author,” meaning the current source, will be reminded of DON QUIXOTE and of THE MORTE D'ARTHUR, for Milton employs a style that might be called dissertational rather than novelistic; he carefully identifies his sources and often quotes from them. However, much of the scholarly documentation has been omitted from the reading—all except footnotes indicating the years—to avoid cumbersome interruptions.<br><br> What will be obvious to a listener, though, is that Milton uses earlier chronicles with discretion. He doubts the very existence of Arthur and proposes an ingenious explanation of the origin of his supposed father's name, Uther. When obliged to cite George Buchanan, the world-renowned neo-Latin author and tutor (later detractor) of Mary Queen of Scots, he regularly uses more than a grain of salt, in view of that scholar’s Scottish bias.<br><br> And as he carefully weighs the reliability of his sources, so he offers his candid opinion of the wisdom and integrity of historical figures. He sneers at the story of King Canute’s famously commanding the rising tide of waves to retire, but not for the reason one might suppose. Boadicea gets low marks, Alfred high ones—but not without some reservations. And in a long digression comparing the government of Britain, newly freed from Roman domination, to the British republic under Cromwell (for which, as Secretary of the Foreign Tongues, Milton was the voice), his criticism is so frank and savage that the passage had to be suppressed during his lifetime. Such personal opinions are what make this book entertaining and useful for the serious study of the author’s thought and personality.<br><br> The endearingly affectionate life of the author, written by his elder nephew, Edward Philips, offers much first-hand information although its facts are not always accurate and its coverage spotty. One learns nothing, for example, about Milton’s visit to the home of Galileo, but Philips's discussion of the role his cousins played in their father’s scholarly pursuits is detailed and affords no basis to the myth that he ever dictated his poetry to his daughters. (Summary by T. A. Copeland)

12Milton's Minor Poems

By John Milton

“On Shakespear 1630” typifies much of Milton’s poetry. By some miracle never yet explained, at age 24 he managed to get a 16-line encomium included in the Second Folio of the Bard’s collected works, 1632. Quite a coup! And this brand new M.A., never before published, used this brief poem to contradict Shakespeare’s chief rival, the great Ben Jonson, whose 80-line panegyric had graced the First Folio eleven years earlier. Jonson had said that Shakespeare’s monument was this living book, but Milton says, no, it is rather the readers who, stunned by the poet’s verse, become living statues in his honor.<br> You will find the same audacity here in the minor poems as in Paradise Lost, which treats of “things unattempted yet in prose of rime.” You can hear it in the college student’s satirical invitation (likely to the classmate next on the program) “Rivers arise . . . ,” a travesty of the epic catalogue of rivers; and in his affectionately irreverent epitaph on Hobson (of “Hobson’s choice”), the stage coach driver for the boys of Cambridge; and again in a second epitaph on the same subject but offering a shameless burlesque of “Metaphysical” conceits. Even in his paraphrase of Psalm VII, where he takes issue with the King James Version on two points of grammar at the end of the second stanza, he is clearly the man who will write “How few somtimes may know, when thousands err.”<br> Yet for all Milton’s iconoclasm, he knows discipline. Some of the later sonnets undertake topics, express attitudes, and employ metrical devices which, by straining the delicate sonnet form almost—but not quite—to the breaking point, create such power as was never before borne by any sonnet. Such is the power of poetic discipline wedded to poetic genius.<br> But it is in “Lycidas” that Milton faces the ultimate test of inspiration vs. authority. He piles into the poem every known convention of the pastoral elegy form and even drags in by the heels St. Peter, who, as father of the Church, was a pastor, and these provide the cage within which he must work. Yet he brings them to life with such convincing shifts of sentiment—blaming, wishful thinking, savage resentment, brave facing of the truth, and finally acceptance—that they cease to be confining; sincerity transmutes his cage into his language, sincerity belying artifice. Summary by T. A. Copeland

<b>Samson Agonistes</b> is a dramatic poem by John Milton based on the Old Testament story of Samson. It was first published in 1671 alongside Paradise Regained. <br><br> The poem depicts Samson in the final day of his life, blinded ("eyeless in Gaza") and in captivity. He muses on his miserable condition and is then visited by friends from the tribe of Dan, by his father Manoa, his wife Delila and the giant Harapha. Finally he is ordered by the Philistines to publicly demonstrate his strength which leads to the dramatic end to his story and his life ("all passion spent"). <br><br> At the time Milton wrote this work he had himself lost his sight and also witnessed the collapse of Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, which he strongly supported. It is probable that these events influenced the thoughts that he puts into the mind of Samson. (Summary by Alan Mapstone) <br><br> <u>Cast list:</u><br> Samson: <a href="https://librivox.org/reader/8425">Larry Wilson</a><br> Manoa, father of Samson: <a href="https://librivox.org/reader/17576">Beeswaxcandle</a><br> Delila, his wife: <a href="https://librivox.org/reader/15373">WendyKatzHiller</a><br> Harapha of Gath: <a href="https://librivox.org/reader/8011">Greg Giordano</a><br> Public Officer: <a href="https://librivox.org/reader/10542">David Purdy</a><br> Messenger: <a href="https://librivox.org/reader/17099">Claudia Caldi</a><br> Chorus of Danites: <a href="https://librivox.org/reader/10179">Sonia</a><br> Chorus of Danites: <a href="https://librivox.org/reader/17662">Inkell</a><br> Chorus of Danites: <a href="https://librivox.org/reader/8011">Greg Giordano</a><br> Chorus of Danites: <a href="https://librivox.org/reader/13257">Elsie Selwyn</a><br> Chorus of Danites: <a href="https://librivox.org/reader/18140">Valroth</a><br> Chorus of Danites: <a href="https://librivox.org/reader/7170">Alan Mapstone</a><br>

A well educated population is the cornerstone of a strong society. On the personal level, education contributes to virtue and self-knowledge, the most necessary attributes of the ideal citizen and soldier. It is best achieved through empirical study rather than the exclusive study of books. - Summary by Thomas A. Copeland