I'd hate to see a word lost from Paradise Lost or for that matter
Paradise Regained. I more than suspect that the only reason the later
writing is considered inferior is that no one wants to be bothered
reading it.
I don't know about Spenser. Perhaps he just got bored. You can't say
he lacked a narrative technique though, and so was capable of a true
ending even if he didn't reach it.
As for epic and lyric, the final words of Paradise Regained are--
hee unobserv'd
Home to his Mother's house private return'd.
PR
On 19 Oct 2016, at 18:02, Robin Hamilton wrote:
Peter:
> Because, I suppose (this is a desperate attempt) both the language
> formulations and the poetical resources are "lyric" in a wide sense,
> and, having deliberately cast aside a known set of working
> techniques for narrative poetry, they then want to tell the story of
> the world and have nothing in their hands but chips. With various
> loads of documentation dumped on it. Neither of these works has any
> progressive *line*, they are diary entries, adding each day what you
> experienced, learned or invented and in that way the work
> accumulates. There is thus no reason for either of them to end, and
> indeed they don't.
>
> I'm here insisting of course on poetical concepts which were chucked
> out of the window long before.
> P
Long, long ago, in this case, since Spenser's Faerie Queen ends,
incomplete, with the Mutability Cantos, and the lyric vs narrative
question is pertinent to Paradise Lost.
For all of me, both Paradise Lost and The Cantos are flawed
masterpieces which would benefit from the pruning of a sympathetic
editor -- and I'm not talking about the hackwork that Bentley
inflicted on Milton, but something comparable to Pound's intervention
in the composition of The Wasteland.
Robin
