“Calling this "the greatest writing in the English language' raises all sorts of interesting questions..like how do you define "greatest"..if you only stuck to long poems Chaucer has a greater range, Byron is funnier and more entertaining, whoever wrote Gawain and the Green Knight could do things Milton couldn't....It is a great poem: he has some memorable lines and some great set pieces and up until about mid twentieth century it was hugely influential, but his god's unpleasant, his Ideal relationship depends on women worshipping their husbands, and there are long long sections of endless failure to justify what he sets out to justify. The set pieces may be memorable, but there are huge swathes which aren't. ”
posted Wednesday, January 9 2008
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