Ep 17 - A Conversation on John Milton

In this episode of the Digressio Podcast, Daniel Foucachon and Dr. Joe Carlson explore John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Regained as the crowning epic of the English language, and why they deserve renewed attention today. They discuss how to read epic poetry well, the challenges and rewards of Milton’s elevated style, and the importance of approaching his work on its own terms rather than through modern distortions. The conversation also addresses common misconceptions about Milton’s theology, defending his orthodoxy from later accusations, and contrasts faithful Christian readings with the skepticism often found in mainstream editions. Ultimately, this episode is a call to recover our literary inheritance, equipping families, teachers, and pastors to engage these great works deeply and to build homes rich with books, ideas, and lasting cultural memory.

Transcript

Daniel Foucachon
This is the Digressio Podcast, helping families inherit the humanities in their home. In this episode with Dr. Carlson, we will be talking about everything John Milton—the text and reader’s guide that we published, as well as the recently released Milton curriculum. I’m here with Dr. Joe Carlson, who created—I was about to say translation, but that’s getting ahead of myself—a new reader’s guide for Milton’s Paradise Lost.

Joe Carlson
Paradise Lost and Regained, that’s right—as well as an edited edition of the work with a new introduction of the text. And also just now released is the full video course that walks you through this great epic poem in the English language.

Daniel Foucachon
So actually, that’s kind of what I want to start with. You are a translator of Dante’s Divine Comedy and most of the great epics—the five great epics: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and then Milton’s Paradise Lost. Of the five great epics, four of them are not in English, and the fifth one is. How does that change how we approach it—to have one in our own mother tongue?

Joe Carlson
Well, to begin: this is why it’s so important to teach, so important to read, so important for us English speakers to own—because it is our epic. This is the epic of our language. Yes, it’s a little older than what you know. This isn’t the kind of syntax we’re using in our text messages. Yes, it’s more complicated. It harkens back to an older style of speech and communication. But that becomes a grander style—a more elevated style. And it’s all the better for that, because it teaches us to pay attention to the text. It’s not something you can skim. Nobody can skim Paradise Lost and get anything out of it. You have to sit with it. You have to meditate on it. You have to let its cadences and syntax saturate you.

Daniel Foucachon
Anyone who has followed anything we’ve put out for the last 14 years knows—but let’s repeat it: how should you read an epic poem?

Joe Carlson
Very quickly, without paying attention to anything that you’re reading. And not out loud.

Daniel Foucachon
Out loud is the answer.

Joe Carlson
You open it up—ideally, maybe you have a nice mug of tea on the side to keep your voice moist—and you read it out loud, slowly. Reading it out loud allows you to experience it twice in the same moment. You are vocalizing it, and so you’re getting it through your vocal cords and coming over your tongue as you’re forming the words in your mouth. But then when you read it out loud, you’re also hearing it yourself, and hearing the words through your ears. Speaking the words through your mouth allows you to grasp the language in a whole new way and at a much deeper level, and it allows for comprehension at a much deeper level as well. So yes—I was being a little facetious—read it out loud and read it slowly.

Daniel Foucachon
Yes. One thing that—so you’re a translator of Dante, and we did the Dante curriculum video course, which involves a lot of reading of various passages. And as we were filming the Milton curriculum, I found that this epic poem in our own mother tongue was a little bit more—almost coarser, more difficult to my ears, less natural. And when you were reading your own translation of Dante’s Comedy, it was silky smooth. It just flowed—you did a good job. But what are we to do with this? I think you mentioned that Italian students will read Dante with the old on one side and modern on another. We’re not there with Milton, but what exhortation would you give the student who is struggling with the older English, and why they ought to push past that and learn from it?

Joe Carlson
There’s no shame in having a dictionary near at hand. If there’s a word you don’t understand—like “mauger” in one of my favorite speeches spoken by the Son in Book Three—you can look it up. Or use a reader’s guide that gives definitions and helps bring clarity to what you’re reading. It’s not so distant that it’s unapproachable or inaccessible. The syntax is intentionally mixed up, according to our ears, and so it sounds a little rougher—but that’s part of Milton’s purpose. He’s trying to copy a Latinate syntax. He’s trying to imitate Virgil. You’ll often find the main verb of the sentence six or seven lines down from where the sentence begins, and that’s on purpose. Experiencing that, struggling through it, learning to delight in it—that’s part of understanding what Milton is doing and part of enjoying it. Not every language has an epic poet like this. We’re privileged. He really is the greatest poet in the English language, so he’s worthy of our attention.

Daniel Foucachon
Now, you made some decisions of modernization, especially with spelling. Tell me about where you leave the text alone and where you make adjustments.

Joe Carlson
In most cases, changing the spelling doesn’t affect the sound, so we modernize it. For instance, older typography used “u” and “v” differently. Updating that helps readability without changing the poetry. But where modernizing spelling would affect the sound, the syllable count, or the meter, we leave it. If you change the scansion of a word, you change the scansion of the line—the rhythm Milton intended. He’s writing in blank verse, unrhymed iambic pentameter. So we preserve that wherever necessary.

Daniel Foucachon
Did Milton have any opinions on rhyming?

Joe Carlson
He was a very mild-mannered man—his opinions were very gentle. I’m being facetious. He had strong opinions. Paradise Lost was first published in 1667 and was not a bestseller. People were confused why it didn’t rhyme, since rhyming poetry was popular at the time. Readers wrote to the publisher, and Milton reluctantly wrote a defense of his choice. It’s a very terse, grumpy argument attached to the 1674 edition.

Daniel Foucachon
I think that request just about killed him. He also begrudgingly added summaries, right?

Joe Carlson
Yes. So in our edition, we have two sets of summaries. There’s a clear, helpful summary I’ve written explaining what’s happening in each section, and then there’s Milton’s own “argument,” which is much more curt and, frankly, grumpy. We also include biblical references throughout, since he’s constantly drawing from Scripture, especially regarding Christ. Then there are discussion questions and analysis sections to help readers apply the text.

Daniel Foucachon
You also have a lecture series now.

Joe Carlson
Yes—about ten hours of lectures. We cover his life, his historical context, and his theology. He lived during a fascinating time, at the beginning of what would later be called the Enlightenment. There’s a shift happening from revelation as the foundation of knowledge to human reason. Milton stands right in that moment.

Daniel Foucachon
So he has a foot in both worlds—what C.S. Lewis calls old Western culture and the emerging modern world.

Joe Carlson
Exactly. You see both in the poem. There’s an old cosmos shaping his theology, but also new scientific discussions—like whether the sun is at the center of the universe.

Daniel Foucachon
And even the opening line—“justify the ways of God to man”—has that Enlightenment flavor.

Joe Carlson
Yes. Dante assumes God’s justice and tells you to accept it. Milton presents a defense—almost like a closing argument. He’s engaging in what we call theodicy, the justification of God’s actions.

Daniel Foucachon
Let’s address the accusation that Milton was a heretic.

Joe Carlson
That claim comes from a document discovered long after his death called De Doctrina Christiana. It contains Arian theology. But we have no proof Milton wrote it. It wasn’t in his handwriting, and it contradicts everything else he published. Everything we know he wrote—especially Paradise Lost—is clearly Trinitarian and orthodox.

Daniel Foucachon
So the idea that he evolved into heresy doesn’t hold.

Joe Carlson
Correct. Paradise Lost was written after the supposed date of that document. Reading it on its own terms, it’s obvious he was an orthodox Trinitarian. We show this throughout the reader’s guide by pointing to his use of Scripture.

Daniel Foucachon
What happens if someone just picks up a standard edition, like a Penguin Classic?

Joe Carlson
Often the introduction introduces doubt—suggesting Milton might be exposing Christianity rather than defending it. That’s a manufactured debate. Secular publishers don’t want to acknowledge that the greatest English poet was a committed Christian.

Daniel Foucachon
Which is why we call them Trojan penguins.

Joe Carlson
Exactly.

Daniel Foucachon
We’re trying to recover something older—where pastors and scholars were deeply engaged in these texts.

Joe Carlson
Yes. These works help us understand the human condition. Homer wasn’t a Christian, but he still tells us something profoundly true about humanity. These works endure because they reflect reality as God made it.

Daniel Foucachon
One reason people neglect this inheritance is that it’s not tangible.

Joe Carlson
Right.

Daniel Foucachon
Which is why building a physical library matters. I remember growing up around books—my father was a minister, my mother a teacher. Those books shaped me.

Joe Carlson
Let me end with a story. My wife and I once listened to biographies of Theodore Roosevelt, the Wright brothers, and C. S. Lewis. Each biography highlighted one common factor: as children, they had access to large home libraries. That exposure shaped who they became.

Daniel Foucachon
And studies confirm that correlation—more books in the home leads to stronger development.

So—buy books.