As our reading of book 6 comes near to the end, a few things stood out in our discussion. To briefly summarize, Milton pulls out all the sto...

The chariot in Book 6 draws upon the vision in Ezekiel : The Biblical Merkabah See also: angelology According to the verses in Ezekiel and i...

Here's a tune by  Stefano Landi that Milton might have heard on his visit to Italy in 1638-39. If nothing else, the stylized structure ...

The perpetual contention between Athens and Jerusalem, Greco-Roman tradition and Biblical Scripture, turned up in concentrated form as I was...

As many know we're beginning Ovid's Metamorphoses at our regular Wednesday time on Feb. 16th. A separate blog will concern itself wi...

We wondered yesterday about "Nisroc" -- why choose this Assyrian deity precisely to represent the Wimp Brigade among Satan's l...

Gabriel meets "Moloc" in Bk. 6.355: Mean while in other parts like deeds deservd Memorial, where the might of Gabriel fought, [ 35...

At our last meeting, the question came up of Milton's relationship to England's absolute monarchy, its authority rooted in the ...

Thespis, they say, discovered the Tragic Muse, An unknown form, presenting his plays from carts, Sung and acted by men, faces smeared with w...

I knew that Whewell had coined the term scientist , but this story of how it came about was new to me: It was June 24, 1833, at the meeting ...

A long-ish post -- I hope it begins to tap into larger themes that have preoccupied this blog from the start. As noted a while back, Book ...

… a dark Illimitable ocean without bound, Without dimension; where length, breadth, and highth, And time and place are lost; where eldest Ni...