/lit/ - Literature

>>12404548
>second

Milton is a one hit wonder. Lycidas is the only good thing he ever wrote and even that isn't even remotely in the same ballpark as Shakespeare.

>>12404548
Spenser?

>>12404569
>Paradise Lost is not good

>>12404576
It really isn't.

>>12404587
oh ok thanks man i wont read a seminal text of world literature

>>12404548
Probably, yes.

His competitors would be Keats, Donne, Chaucer, and Spenser. I could see Donne maybe if Milton hasn’t written Paradise Lost.

>>12404548
>second
no
>Shakespeare
he was a playwright, and he wrote some very well done sonnets but not comparable to Milton.

>>12404548
Read The Faerie Queene.

>>12404587
It is though

He's second only to Pope

>>12404587
>i didn't like the story therefore it's bad and the verse is shit

>>12404548
I don't think he's the favorite of many, but read an old anthology (like Palgrave's) where his lyric poetry's compared both to his own contemporaries and then to poems both before and after and it becomes clear that Milton's the second best (after Shakespeare) and even arguably the best. Most all his lyrics are better than solid, e.g. L'allegro and Il Penseroso are incredibly good poems. Pic'd is my favorite poet in English, however.

>>12405382
>but read an old anthology (like Palgrave's)

name of the anthology?

>>12406125
Palgrave's Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics- once very popular. What it does is mix the lyrics up somewhat topically so that one gains a sense of what this poet's verse looks like next to that one, etc. When I read it I felt a kind of relief whenever another Milton poem appeared because I got in the habit of knowing how relatively strong it would be. In fact, I really didn't 'get' how much better Milton was than the mass of English poets until I read it. That said, most all the verse is good. Also intetesting is how well regarded Shelley was among the Victorians, almost as much as Wordsworth was- early editions favor his verse far more than either Keats' or Coleridge's.

>>12406198
interesting, thanks anon