John

Milton

Biography:

• Born:

• December 9, 1608

• Bread Street, Cheapside, London, England

• Died:

• November 8, 1674 (aged 65)

• Bunhill, London, England

• Occupation:

• Poet, Prose Polemicist, Civil Servant for the English

Commonwealth

• Influences:

• Dante Alighieri, Ludovico Ariosto, The Bible, Homer, Ovid,

William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Virgil

• Influenced:

• William Blake, John Keats, Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth

• The family's financial prosperity

afforded Milton to be taught

classical languages, first by private

tutors at home, followed by

entrance to St. Paul's School at age

twelve, in 1620

• Milton's father was also a

composer of church music, and

Milton himself experienced a

lifelong delight in music.

• In 1625, Milton was admitted to

Christ's College, Cambridge.

Cambridge years

John Milton matriculated Christ's College,

Cambridge, in 1625

• in preparation for becoming an Anglican

priest, stayed on to obtain his Master of

Arts degree on 3 July 1632

• due to his hair, which he wore long, and

his general delicacy of manner, was known

as the "Lady of Christ's“

• began to write poetry in Latin, Italian,

and English

• one of Milton‘s earliest works, 'On the

Death of a Fair Infant' (1626), was written

after his sister Anne Phillips has suffered

from a miscarriage.

• While at Cambridge he wrote a number

of his well-known shorter English poems,

among them Ode on the Morning of

Christ's Nativity, his Epitaph on the

admirable Dramatick Poet, W.

Shakespeare, his first poem to appear in

print, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso.

Study, poetry, and

travel

•

Upon receiving his MA in 1632, Milton retired to his father’s

country homes at Hammersmith and Horton and undertook six

years of self-directed private study by reading both ancient and

modern works of theology, philosophy, history, politics, literature

and science, in preparation for his prospective poetical career.

•

Milton continued to write poetry during this period of study: his

masques Arcades and Comus were composed for noble patrons,

and he contributed his pastoral elegy Lycidas to a memorial

collection for one of his Cambridge classmates in 1638. Drafts of

these poems are preserved in Milton’s poetry notebook, known as

the Trinity Manuscript because it is now kept at Trinity College,

Cambridge.

•

He embarked upon a tour of France, Italy and Switzerland

A Married man...

• In the spring of 1642, Milton married Mary Powell, 17

years old to his 34

• In 1643, Milton published the Doctrine and Discipline of

Divorce, which had its second, longer edition in early

1644. In 1644, Milton also published The Judgement of

Martin Bucer Concerning Divorce.

• Areopagitica, an oration advocating freedom of the

press, in late 1644

• when Mary Powell returned Milton had made plans to

remarry /daughter Anne was born in 1646/

• daughter Mary was born in 1648 in High Holborn

...a year of sadness...

• The year 1652 was one of many personal

losses for Milton. In February, Milton lost

his sight. This prompted him to write the

sonnet "When I Consider How My Light is

Spent." In May, 1652, Mary gave birth to a

daughter, Deborah, and died a few days

later. In June, one year-old John died.

Civil war and prose tracts

• Milton put poetry aside and began to write anti-episcopal

prose tracts in the service of the Puritan and Parliamentary

cause

• Milton’s first foray into polemics was Of Reformation touching

Church Discipline in England (1641), followed by Of Prelatical

Episcopacy, and The Reason of Church Government Urged against

Prelaty. With frequent passages of real eloquence lighting up

the rough controversial style of the period, and with a wide

knowledge of ecclesiastical antiquity, he vigorously attacked

the High-church party of the Church of England and their

leader, William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury.

• in 1644 he wrote his short tract, Of Education, urging a reform

of the national universities.

• published a series of pamphlets arguing for the legality and

morality of divorce and 1645 Poems – the only poetry of his to

see print until Paradise Lost appeared in 1667.

Philosophical, political,

and

religious views

Philosophy

By the late 1650s, Milton was a proponent of monism or animist materialism, the notion that

a single material substance which is "animate, self-active, and free" composes everything in

the universe: from stones and trees and bodies to minds, souls, angels, and God. Milton

devised this position to avoid the mind-body dualism of Plato and Descartes as well as the

mechanistic determinism of Hobbes. Milton's monism is most notably reflected in Paradise

Lost when he has angels eat and have sex

Politics

Milton's fervent commitment to republicanism in an age of absolute monarchies was both

unpopular and dangerous. In coming centuries, Milton would be claimed as an early apostle

of liberalism

Religion

Milton was writing at a time of religious and political flux in England. His poetry and prose

reflect deep convictions, often reacting to contemporary circumstances, but it is not always

easy to locate the writer in any obvious religious category. His views may be described as

broadly Protestant. As an accomplished artist and an official in the government of Oliver

Cromwell, it is not always easy to distinguish where artistic licence and polemical intent

overshadowed Milton's personal views.

• Like many Renaissance artists before him, Milton

integrated Christian theology into classical modes

• In his early poems, the poet narrator express a tension

between vice and virtue, the latter invariably related to

Protestantism

• In his later poems, Milton's theological concerns become

more explicit. In Of Reformation (1641), Milton expressed

his dislike for Catholicism and episcopacy, presenting

Rome as a modern Babylon, and bishops as Egyptian

taskmasters. These analogies conform to Milton's

puritanical preference for Old Testament imagery. Milton

often presents England, as an elect nation similar to the

Old Testament Israel, and shows its leader, Oliver

Cromwell, as a latter-day Moses

• The Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 began

a new phase in Milton's work:

• In Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson

Agonistes Milton shows the end of the godly

Commonwealth

• The Garden of Eden allegory reflects Milton's

view of England's recent Fall from Grace, while

Samson's blindness and captivity – mirroring

Milton's own failing sight – is a metaphor for

England's blind acceptance of Charles II as king.

However, despite the Restoration of the

monarchy Milton did not lose his own faith;

Samson shows how the loss of national

salvation did not necessarily preclude the

salvation of the individual, while Paradise

Regained expresses Milton's continuing belief

in the promise of Christian salvation through

Jesus Christ.

Poetic and dramatic

works

• L'Allegro (1631)

• Il Penseroso (1633)

• Comus (a masque)(1634)

• Lycidas (1638)

• Poems of Mr John Milton, Both English and Latin

(1645)

• Paradise Lost (1667)

• Paradise Regained (1671)

• Samson Agonistes (1671)

• Poems Upon Several Occasions (1673)

Political, philosophical

and religious prose

•

Of Reformation (1641)

•

Of Prelatical Episcopacy (1641)

•

The Reason of Church Government (1642)

•

Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643)

•

Judgement of Martin Bucer Concerning Divorce (1644)

•

Of Education (1644)

•

Areopagitica (1644)

•

Colasterion (1645)

•

The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649)

•

Defensio pro Populo Anglicano [First Defense] (1651)

•

Defensio Secunda [Second Defense] (1654)

•

A treatise of Civil Power (1659)

•

The Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings from the Church (1659)

•

The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660)

•

Brief Notes Upon a Late Sermon (1660)

•

History of Britain (1670)

•

Artis logicae plenior institutio [Art of Logic] (1672)

•

Of True Religion (1673)

•

Epistolae Familiaries (1674)

•

Prolusiones (1674)

•

De doctrina christiana (1823)