Fueled by Bacio’s pizza, popcorn and mocha-flavored iced coffee, the annual all-night reading marathon of John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” began in the chapel. The reading started at 6 p.m. and was estimated to end around 2 a.m. It ended at 3:56 a.m.—lasting almost 10 whole hours.
“ It’s very nerdy in a fun way,” explained Emma Youngblood ’26, the academic intern for the English Department and one of the event’s organizers. “The thought of reading a book out loud all night with your peers in a dark, moody chapel, I think that is very aesthetically enticing, honestly.” She added, “I think intellectually, Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ is the foundation for most British literature that you read.”
A highly celebrated and often referenced text, “Paradise Lost” is a cultural and literary touchstone. Written in the 1560s, the epic poem retells and explores Man’s first disobedience: of the Book of Genesis’ Adam and Eve. The Biblical narrative was well-suited for the event’s setting: the chapel.
There to kick off the reading and offer an introduction to the epic was Assistant Professor of English Pasquale Toscano, who specializes in Renaissance literature. In an interview, he explained, “[Milton] is a very helpful interlocutor for a moment where there are so many different claims about what real liberty or what real freedom is.” An anti-monarchist, Milton explores themes of tyranny and authoritarianism in his work.
Students and professors came in and out in the evening. There were consistently 25 or so readers at any given time. At the end of the long night, however, there were only 10 remaining students—three of which had stayed for the whole time, without taking a single break. First-year student Charlotte Reeves was among the few to sit through the whole reading. In a text message, she explained, “I didn’t actually think I was going to stay the whole time, but after an hour there sort of felt like I had no reason to stop. I knew that if I left before the end, I’d never be motivated to finish reading it otherwise.”
And so she stayed for 10 hours, listening and reciting Milton’s poetry. “Reading it all at once reminded me of staying up and reading a book in a single night under the covers like I did when I was younger,” explained Charlotte. “It felt weirdly nostalgic.”
Among the last 10 standing was Zifeng Zhu, a sophomore and member of the English Majors Committee. “ It’s kind of nice to have this condensed period of time to focus on this one text,” she shared almost immediately after the reading ended. “ There’s also this sense of community because there’s this group of people who are committed to do this thing and to experience this poem together.”
Zofia Rosciszewski, a first-year student and organizer of the reading, was particularly enthusiastic about the event. Having read part of the work of literature earlier this year in Professor of English on the Henry Noble MacCracken Chair Robert DeMaria’s first year writing seminar: “What Makes a Classic?” Rosciszewski jumped at the chance to finish it during a communal reading—so much so that she joined the English Majors Committee to help organize it.
When asked why she would want to spend her Thursday night reading Milton in the Chapel, Rosciszewski shared, “ The writing is just so beautiful, and I also just love the genre of an epic in general. It’s really enjoyable to be read out loud.”
What makes reading Milton’s “Paradise Lost” aloud particularly special is that Milton—with the exception of a couple of sections—dictated the entire epic. While he was writing, Milton was beginning to lose his sight. By 1652, he had gone completely blind. “ I think by reading it out loud,” explained Toscano, “and by reading it in a communal context, we’re actually getting back to the very first moments of production for the poem itself. We’re getting back to something fundamentally true about how this poem came to be.”
Before the reading, Toscano advised listeners to sit back and try to enjoy the beautiful language if they got lost in the plot. “ What the poem manages to accomplish in terms of prosody, in terms of meter, in terms of sound is absolutely amazing,” he explained. “So there’s something profoundly musical about the poem.”
Attending students and professors read the epic aloud, popcorn style, each person taking a page or so before passing it on to the next person. “ There are some people in there who are super passionate about this book,” shared Youngblood. “They’re so theatrical about it and I think that’s really fun.”
Towards the end of the night, the readings got admittedly slower and less emotive as eyes started to droop and coffee ran out. Still, new readers trickled in and out as late as two in the morning, coming in to enjoy the final stanzas of Milton’s epic.
A truly unique experience, the event was a celebration of language, community, caffeine and willpower. Maybe next year we can all read “Moby Dick” along Sunset Lake or “Dante’s Inferno” in the Raymond House basement.