I Can't Read Milton

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"I've tried to read Paradise Lost, can't do it. I even have a book that he happened to have bought before he took the course called it reading Paradise Lost." "The idea that there is a master teacher or a master trainer who with their help can open this un-inaccessible, world too hard for you to enter on your own ... That's also deeply appealing to people," she says. 'It's naturally community building when something is hard'

Tolkien read it as a tale about mortality. The poet David Whyte said it was a metaphor for the psychological demons deep in our minds. And that, insists the cartoonist and writer Zach Weinersmith, is precisely Beowulf's appeal: Its richness opens the door to endless interpretation. Listen as the author of Bea Wolf, a graphic novel for children based on the Old English poem, speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about poetry in general, Beowulf in particular, whether we should require students to memorize poems, and the value of stories for children even without a moral lesson.