>>Aren't the facts of the matter that very few Americans will ever read Milton and that Milton's world and language are slipping beyond the same sort of horizon that now separates most of us from Beowulf, the Canterbury Tales, even a lot of Shakespeare?
Paraphrasing Marcus Aurelius, Shakespeare has Hamlet say: "For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
If you expect and pander to a doofus nation, surely it more easily devolves into one. In fact, I know many people who have read all of Milton, Shakespeare, and even the Canterbury Tales in Middle English. Some are in high school, some in college, some in non-humanities professions.
A bunch of passive pajama-clad sheep --attention span max 13 minutes -- ready to be slaves to globalist dictatorship and X-Box? It ain't necessarily so. No pain no gain. Excellent things should be as Spinoza said they were, as difficult as they are rare.
Enough with the quotes already, Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
