JOHN MILTON (1608-1674)
John Milton was born in London on December 9,
1608, into a middle-class family. He was educated at St. Paul's School, then at
Christ's College, Cambridge, where he began to write poetry in Latin, Italian,
and English, and prepared to enter the clergy.
After university, however, he abandoned his
plans to join the priesthood and spent the next six years in his father's
country home in Buckinghamshire following a rigorous course of independent
study to prepare for a career as a poet. His extensive reading included both
classical and modern works of religion, science, philosophy, history, politics,
and literature. In addition, Milton was proficient in Latin, Greek, Hebrew,
French, Spanish, and Italian, and obtained a familiarity with Old English and
Dutch as well.
During his period of private study, Milton
composed a number of poems, including "On the Morning of Christ's
Nativity," "On Shakespeare," "L'Allegro," "Il
Penseroso," and the pastoral elegy "Lycidas." In May of 1638,
Milton began a 13-month tour of France and Italy, during which he met many
important intellectuals and influential people, including the astronomer
Galileo, who appears in Milton's tract against censorship,
"Areopagitica."
In 1642, Milton returned from a trip into the
countryside with a 16-year-old bride, Mary Powell. Even though they were
estranged for most of their marriage, she bore him three daughters and a son
before her death in 1652. Milton later married twice more: Katherine Woodcock
in 1656, who died giving birth in 1658, and Elizabeth Minshull in 1662.
During the English Civil War, Milton
championed the cause of the Puritans and Oliver Cromwell, and wrote a series of
pamphlets advocating radical political topics including the morality of
divorce, the freedom of the press, populism, and sanctioned regicide. Milton
served as secretary for foreign languages in Cromwell's government, composing
official statements defending the Commonwealth. During this time, Milton
steadily lost his eyesight, and was completely blind by 1651. He continued his
duties, however, with the aid of Andrew Marvell and other assistants.
After the Restoration of Charles II to the
throne in 1660, Milton was arrested as a defender of the Commonwealth, fined,
and soon released. He lived the rest of his life in seclusion in the country,
completing the blank-verse epic poem Paradise Lost in 1667, as well as its
sequel Paradise Regained and the tragedy Samson Agonistes both in 1671. Milton
oversaw the printing of a second edition of Paradise Lost in 1674, which included
an explanation of "why the poem rhymes not," clarifying his use of
blank verse, along with introductory notes by Marvell. He died shortly
afterwards, on November 8, 1674, in Buckinghamshire, England.
Paradise Lost, which chronicles Satan's temptation
of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from Eden, is widely regarded as his
masterpiece and one of the greatest epic poems in world literature. Since its
first publication, the work has continually elicited debate regarding its
theological themes, political commentary, and its depiction of the fallen angel
Satan who is often viewed as the protagonist of the work.
The epic has had a wide-reaching effect,
inspiring other long poems, such as Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock,
William Wordsworth's The Prelude and John Keats's Endymion, as well as Mary
Shelley's novel Frankenstein, and deeply influencing the work of Percy ByssheShelley and William Blake, who illustrated an edition of the epic.
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