John Milton (December 9, 1608 – November 8, 1674) was an English poet, prose polemicist, and civil servant for the English Commonwealth. Most famed for his epic poem Paradise Lost, Milton is celebrated as well for his eloquent treatise condemning censorship, Areopagitica. Long considered the supreme English poet, Milton experienced a dip in popularity after attacks by T.S. Eliot and F.R. Leavis in the mid 20th century; but with multiple societies and scholarly journals devoted to his study, Milton’s reputation remains as strong as ever in the 21st century.
Very soon after his death – and continuing to the present day – Milton became the subject of partisan biographies, confirming T.S. Eliot’s belief that “of no other poet is it so difficult to consider the poetry simply as poetry, without our theological and political dispositions…making unlawful entry.” Milton’s radical, republican politics and heretical religious views, coupled with the perceived artificiality of...
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Paradise Regain'd is a poem by the 17th century English poet John Milton, published in 1671. It is connected by name to his earlier and more famous epic poem Paradise Lost, with which it shares similar theological themes. The writing style, however, is more thoughtful and thrives upon the imagery of Jesus' perfection in contrast to the shame of Satan, making it less epic than that of Paradise Lost, and accounting for why some consider this later work inferior. Based on the Gospel of Luke's version of the Temptation of Christ, Paradise Regained is four books in length, in contrast with Paradise Lost's twelve. In it Milton uses parody to show Satan's folly in stark contrast with Jesus, the epitome of perfect heroism. One of the major concepts emphasized throughout Paradise Regained is the use of reversals. As implied by its title, Milton sets out to reverse the 'loss' of Paradise. Thus, antonyms are often found next to each other throughout the story, reinforcing the idea that...
The History of Britain, that Part especially now called England; from the first traditional Beginning, continued to the Norman Conquest. Collected out of the antientest and best Authours thereof, a prose work by the English poet John Milton, was published in 1670. Milton, who had supported the revolutionary cause during the English Civil War, mixed history based on a wide range of sources with comments on the restored monarchy of his time. He admitted the unreliability of many of his sources, but justified his use of popular fables "be it for nothing else but in favour of our English poets and rhetoricians, who by their art will know how to use them judiciously". Milton began work on the History around 1649, completing four books in the first phase, then continued in the 1650s with a further two books. The History was first printed at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul's Church-yard.The six books are untitled in the free on-line version of the text. The titles below have been added to...,
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books; a second edition followed in 1674, redivided into twelve books (in the manner of the division of Virgil's Aeneid) with minor revisions throughout and a note on the versification. The poem concerns the Judeo-Christian story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton's purpose, stated in Book I, is "to justify the ways of God to men" (l. 26) and elucidate the conflict between God's eternal foresight and free will. The protagonist of this epic is the fallen angel, Satan. Looked at from a modern perspective it may appear to some that Milton presents Satan sympathetically, as an ambitious and proud being who defies his tyrannical creator, omnipotent God, and wages war on Heaven, only to be defeated and cast down. Indeed, William Blake, a great admirer of Milton and illustrator of the...
In The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, John Milton defends the right of people to execute a guilty sovereign. In the text John Milton conjectures about the formation of commonwealths. He comes up with a kind of constitutionalism but not an outright anti-monarchical argument. He gives a theory of how people come into commonwealths and come to elect kings. He explains what the role of a king should be, and conversely what a tyrant is. ...
Areopagitica: A speech of Mr John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed printing to the Parliament of England is a prose tract or polemic by John Milton, published November 23, 1644, at the height of the English Civil War. Milton's Areopagitica is titled after a speech written by the Athenian orator Isocrates in the 5th century BC. (The Areopagus is a hill in Athens, the site of real and mythical tribunals. Isocrates hoped to restore the Council of the Areopagus.) Like Isocrates, Milton had no intention of delivering his speech orally. Instead it was distributed via pamphlet, defying the same publication censorship he argued against.Milton, though a supporter of the Parliament, argued forcefully against the Licensing Order of 1643, noting that such censorship had never been a part of classical Greek and Roman society. The tract is full of biblical and classical references that Milton uses to strengthen his argument. The issue was personal for Milton as he had suffered censorship...,
The tractate Of Education was published in 1644, first appearing anonymously as a single eight-page quarto sheet (Ainsworth 6). Presented as a letter written in response to a request from the Puritan educational reformer Samuel Hartlib, it represents John Milton's most comprehensive statement on educational reform (Viswanathan 352), and gives voice to his views “concerning the best and noblest way of education” (Milton 63). As outlined in the tractate, education carried for Milton a dual objective: one public, to “fit a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war” (55); and the other private, to “repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love Him, to be like Him, as we may the nearest by possessing our soul of true virtue” (52). The influences at work in the tractate are an interesting blend of Renaissance humanism with its emphasis on the via activa,...,
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