I'm attending some lectures on the Inferno, and I'm forced to confront, yet again, my dislike of this masterpiece. It reminds me of Paradise Lost, which (hem, haw) I dislike for similar reasons:

The constant tone of denunciation, the pressure of hatred. I understand that there's genuine political passion and intelligence behind it, but I find it wearying, page after page of something at once diffuse and oppressive. (The fact that the first work by Milton that I read cover to cover was his Defensio pro Populo Anglicano may have colored subsequent experiences.)

A pomposity that pervades the whole and that makes even the good parts seem hollow and graceless. (Maybe if I read them out of context I'd appreciate them more; but I feel like a failure if I don't read works cover to cover.)
Some of Milton's word choices just make me grit my teeth. In a Milton lecture I once muttered under my breath, "atrocious," just as the lecturer was saying, "It's wonderful, isn't it?"

(this just for Dante) The thinness of the format — characters drift onto the scene, have their little outbursts, and then disappear for good. It all seems third hand.

Reading ancient epics throws into relief the poverty of these Christian epics. In the Æneid, for example, Virgil is able to inhabit so many different characters; even bit characters come to life and seem to speak as themselves, not through some editorialist's puppet. (And I actually find Virgil's Latin easier than Dante's Italian.)

Or take the battles in the Iliad: yes they're tedious, but the monotony seems meaningful; all the details of blood and sweat are so idiosyncratic and finely observed, at once so random and so revealing that I don't doubt it all happened exactly as Homer describes it. The battle scenes in Paradise Lost look like videogames next to the Iliad.

Another thing I don't like are the long explanations of astronomy or topography, which I can never follow (because I get so bored). It's like reading instruction manuals for home appliances, or pages and pages of stage directions. The fact that scholars are so taken with these passages, and spill so much ink debating the most mechanical points makes me suspicious. ("They must have nothing better to talk about"... "If they find this interesting, we'll probably disagree on everything.)

Another epic I don't like is The Faerie Queene. Don't even get me started on that!

I complained to Beatrice about Dante, and she tried to explain why she liked it. I found her more convincing than the lecturer (partly no doubt because she has no professional stake in the matter; and because she hasn't been preaching these things for 50 years, so she can conceive of disagreement). She recited her favorite bits and it was then that I thought if I only read excerpts I might conceive a fondness for the Inferno at least.

She says I should read Orlando Furioso. He's been on my list for years.

I loved Faust, so it's not as if I hate every modern epic. Or even every Christian epic: I liked Paradise Regained.

Miranda Gaw is reading Northanger Abbey, on my recommendation, and liking it. When I saw this I ran to get my own copy, so that I could relive the experience at the same time that it was all happening to her. (That's how badly I want to be reading books with people.) My copy fell open to this page:

'My horse! oh, d— it! I would not sell my horse for a hundred. Are you fond of an open carriage, Miss Morland?'
'Yes, very; I have hardly ever had an opportunity of being in one; but I am particularly fond of it.'
'I am glad of it; I will drive you out in mine every day.'
'Thank you,' said Catherine, in some distress, from a doubt of the propriety of accepting such an offer.
'I will drive you up Lansdown Hill to-morrow.'
'Thank you; but will not your horse want rest?'
'Rest! he has only come three-and-twenty miles to-day; all nonsense; nothing ruins horses so much as rest; nothing knocks them up so soon. No, no; I shall exercise mine at the average of four hours every day while I am here.'
'Shall you indeed!' said Catherine very seriously, 'that will be forty miles a day.'
'Forty! aye, fifty, for what I care. Well, I will drive you up Lansdown to-morrow; mind, I am engaged.'
'How delightful that will be!' cried Isabella, turning round; 'my dearest Catherine, I quite envy you; but I am afraid, brother, you will not have room for a third.'
'A third indeed! no, no; I did not come to Bath to drive my sisters about; that would be a good joke, faith! Morland must take care of you.'
This brought on a dialogue of civilities between the other two; but Catherine heard neither the particulars nor the result. Her companion's discourse now sunk from its hitherto animated pitch, to nothing more than a short decisive sentence of praise or condemnation on the face of every woman they met; and Catherine, after listening and agreeing as long as she could, with all the civility and deference of the youthful female mind, fearful of hazarding an opinion of its own in opposition to that of a self-assured man, especially where the beauty of her own sex is concerned, ventured at length to vary the subject by a question which had been long uppermost in her thoughts; it was, 'Have you ever read Udolpho, Mr. Thorpe?'
'Udolpho! Oh, Lord! not I; I never read novels; I have something else to do.'
Catherine, humbled and ashamed, was going to apologize for her question, but he prevented her by saying, 'Novels are so full of nonsense and stuff; there has not been a tolerably decent one come out since Tom Jones, except the Monk; I read that t'other day; but as for all the others, they are the stupidest things in creation.'

And so it goes for pages, one long drawn-out dissonance after another, delicious and painful and funny but also — poor Catherine — a bit sad too.