[Milton-L] dictating PL

[jfleming at sfu.ca]

May I ask (a perhaps leading or obvious or even annoying question): why
would one want to think that M had large parts of the poem "in his head"
before speaking it? JD Fleming

On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 14:01:07 -0400 milton-l at lists.richmond.edu wrote:
> I too would like to know that number.  Was it "20" or so? dictated
> each morning?
> 
>      My own sense is that Milton _composed_ PL rather completely
> before he began dictating it. It has been suggested [A. Fowler (and
> perhaps others???)], based on internal evidence, that M may in fact
> have had  both the 10 book AND the 12 book versions clearly in mind
> from the 'get go.'	
> 
>      (I attempted, about 6 years ago in a post to Milton-l, to offer
> an observation that could support the above view, but it was an
> impossibly, yea unconscionably long & poorly written post which, I
> believe --happily-- almost nobody read. )
> 
>      If indeed Milton dictated roughly the same number of lines each
> day, couldn't that be seen as supporting evidence for the view that
> the poem was already finished and memorized in his mind? Else that
> daily sum could vary greatly depending on any number of issues such as 
> the nature of the text at hand [a 10 line paragraph? a 55 line
> invocation?, a 26 line invocation? a 78 line speech?] or, I suppose,
> depending on Milton's mood on a given morning, his physical health,
> the intensity of inspiration...	
> 
> "Still as I pulled, it came; and so I penned It down..." J. B.
> 
> cheers,
> Carl
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
>   From: Margaret Thickstun 
>   To: John Milton Discussion List 
>   Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 2:13 PM
>   Subject: [Milton-L] dictating PL
> 
> 
>   I'm sure I could find this information if I were to look in the
> biographies, but this path seems easier.  My students asked, "about
> how many lines of Paradise Lost did Milton compose on a given night?"  
> Does anyone on the list have a ballpark answer? 
> 
>   Thanks.--Margie
> 
>   Margaret Thickstun
>   Elizabeth J. McCormack Professor of English
>   Hamilton College
>   198 College Hill Road
>   Clinton, NY 13323
> 
> 
> 
>
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James Dougal Fleming
Department of English
Simon Fraser University
(778)-782-4713
cell: 778-865-0926