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By Root 883 0

in the Chaucer (“when,” “when,” “then,” as if there were an inescapable seasonal logic to these human migrations) and the Google Earth–like literary zoom lens, zeroing in on a tighter and tighter focus (from the calendar and the heavenly constellations to the desire for pilgrimage and the Canterbury pilgrims), are superbly indicative not only of the economy of art but of the wit of the poet. His ability to paint genre images comparable to that of Breugel (the birds are sleepless with spring fever and desires of their own) is matched by a poetic daring—and humor—that allows the last line to flirt with bathos, nine simple single-syllable words and a past participle expressing the homeliest of sentiments (“That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke”). “Seeke” and “seke” may rhyme, but aren’t they also homophones, words that share the same pronunciation? If so, what does that doubled relation (rhyme and homophony) do to the poetic logic? Does it make the sentiment seem redundant? Does it make the fictional poet-speaker sound unartful? And did I mention that this long unfolding pageant occurs over the course of a single sentence? Many critics have noticed that the weather report seems off: March in the environs of Canterbury is distinctly not a month of drought. This is a classical trope, the meteorology of Virgilian Rome, maybe, but not an accurate forecast for England. And yet those small birds are so distinctly native. Eighteen lines. And we have just begun to talk about them.

It would be possible to pose a similar set of initial questions and observations about the opening lines of Paradise Lost. A reader needs to start somewhere: since few English majors these days come to Milton with a prior knowledge of Homer and Virgil, of the traditional epic invocatio (address to the Muse) or principium (statement of the poem’s scope of action), or, indeed, of Latin syntax, will a close-reading strategy work for unpacking this powerful and moving passage? To begin a sentence or a work with of would be familiar structure in Latin, or in early-modern English (think of Bacon’s essays titled “Of Studies” or “Of Fame,” “Of Youth and Age,” “Of Truth,” and so on, themselves based on classical models). But—or and—for a modern reader, the experience of waiting six lines to get from the prepositional clause (“Of man’s first disobedience”) to the verb (“sing”) is a powerful tactic of suspension and delay. Milton’s enjambments (the carrying over of the sentence from one line to the next) are celebrated, and they teach a great deal about how literature works. What is the effect of ending the first line of verse with “the fruit” and then carrying the sense over to the next (“Of that forbidden tree”)? The effect of double take here is similar to the enjambment of Richard III’s opening lines: “Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this son of York” (1.1.1–2). In both cases, the listener needs to rethink the syntax, and therefore the meaning, of what has gone before. “Fruit” refers both directly to the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and also to the results, or consequences, of this transgression. And so on. The personal “I” appears in the middle of line 12, after the caesura, or the pause in the verse. The commas, line breaks, caesurae, personal pronouns, and verb forms (invocations, assertions, declarations) are all underscored in the process of reciting aloud. So “having” these twenty-six lines may give the reader—even, or especially, the reader largely unfamiliar with Milton—a template for interpreting, understanding, analyzing, and responding to the rest of this long poem.

Memorization and Its Discontents

The arts of memory go back thousands of years, to cultures and literatures that flourished before printing, and before sophisticated systems of number and placement were developed to assist in retaining and collecting ideas, words, lists, and places so they could be readily and systematically recalled. What people memorize is culturally indicative, whether it’s words to a pop song or lines from a political treatise.