I thought it was relatively weaker but still interesting - Edit 1
Before modification by Legolas at 13/01/2011 10:13:30 PM
I've had several grad classes on religious history, including a couple on Early Modern English cultural/religious history, so I'm going to be drawn into noticing those things and to find them to be quite fascinating and far from tedious. That's where I figured we'd disagree, since the theological arguments intrigue me, particularly how Milton worked them in throughout his lines.
So at the various points where he was clearly taking a stance on a theological issue, I did notice that, even if I don't have the religious history background to know much about those issues, and I suppose those held a certain amount of interest to me, yes. Unfortunately he has a tendency of beating you around the head with it and going on about the things at length.
And what about the astronomy bit? Did you find that quite fascinating too?
</quoteYou mean where he tries to riff off of Dante?
As for the "beating you around the head", I didn't find it to be that way, perhaps because I didn't approach it as reading a polemical work.