I agree with Omar that it's surely the (usually) alien subject matter that gets in the way of students' understanding Milton, and that lyric poetry is virtually untranslatable.
...although I've heard that German students used to find Kemp Smith's translation of Kant easier to undertand than the original.
Traduttore tradittore. Robert Paul ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
