Cambridge University is celebrating the upcoming four hundredth birthday of John Milton today with a marathon reading of the poet's epic work Paradise Lost. The reading, held by the university's English department and broadcast on the Christ's College Web site will cover all twelve books of the poem—over ten thousand lines of verse—in a projected span of twelve hours.
Beginning at 9 AM (4 AM Eastern Standard Time), the performance will take place in a black box theater on the Cambridge campus, which the university expects will result in an “absolute minimum of visual stimulus, allowing listeners to remember Milton's own blindness and to relate it to the kinds of darkness—moral and visible—which he imagines in the poem.” Other parts of the presentation will be more dramatic, with some readings incorporating visual elements such as projected images. A podcast of the reading will be available after the event.
For Christ’s College, where Milton, whose actual birthday falls on December 9, was educated, the selection of October 23 as the date of the celebratory reading is far from arbitrary. Bishop James Ussher, a contemporary and opponent of Milton, dated the origin of time to October 23, 4004 BCE, in his 1650 work Annales Veteris Testamenti (The Annals of the World Deduced from the Origin of Time). While Milton "doubtless thought the Bishop a fool," and would probably not ascribe to Ussher's assertion, the university says that the date of the reading was chosen "in a spirit of fun and of setting Milton in his context—a context with which he was often out of step."
In honor of the poet's quadricentennial, the university is also hosting lectures, concerts, and an exhibition of its Milton archives, which is on view at the Old Library at Christ's College until December 18.
