Calvin to Host Milton Marathon

April 9, 2007 == MEDIA ADVISORY

SUMMARY: Calvin College students, faculty and staff will read Milton aloud
from 9 am to about 6 pm this Saturday, April 14.

Full story see http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2006-07/milton-marathon.htm

At 9 a.m. on Saturday, April 14, when the 10 members of David Urban’s Milton
class convene at the Fish House at Calvin College, they will be continuing a
grand literary tradition: the Milton Marathon.

The class (and any students, faculty staff and friends they can persuade to
join them) will read John Milton’s classic Paradise Lost in its entirety. The
reading will last until 6 p.m.

“People would be surprised at how quickly it goes,” says Urban, a Calvin
English professor and Milton specialist. “We’re actually able to do 10,000
lines in about nine hours -- if they don’t kick us out halfway through,” he
says with a chuckle.

The marathon will read in shifts.

“You read about a hundred lines at a time, and then someone else goes, or if
you want to keep going, that’s okay too,” Urban says of the informal
set-up. “The great thing is, you get the totality of Paradise Lost. It’s a
reading in community of the greatest British writer who falls within the
Reformed tradition.”

The community experience adds to the reading, he says.

“Usually when you’re reading something like this you’re by yourself. You
may take an inordinate length of time looking at the footnotes or perhaps
looking up words in the dictionary. This is an event where you’re enjoying
the beauty of the text and the story and doing it with others.”

Calvin professor emeritus Ed Ericson began the Milton Marathon in 1997 after
hearing about similar events at other colleges. Urban hopes the tradition,
which he revived in 2005 when he took over the Milton course, will also
rejuvenate interest in great authors.

“In the English department, we have some momentum with the creative writing
courses and keeping student excited about writing poetry and that sort of
thing,” he says. “We want to make sure we keep students excited about
upper-division literature courses: Shakespeare, Chaucer and others.”

Contact Urban at 616-526-8646 or dvu2@calvin.edu

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Received on Mon Apr 9 07:08:51 2007