John Milton

John Milton (9 December 1608 – 9 November 1674) was an English poet who is today primarily celebrated for his twelve-book epic poem in English blank verse, Paradise Lost. Other poems for which he is remembered are Comus, a masque (or play with music); and Lycidas, an elegy on the death of a dear friend, and which features prominently, for example, in the “Nestor” episode in James Joyce’s Ulysses.

A leading intellectual of his day, Milton wrote numerous pamphlets on major political issues, such as The Reason of Church Government (1642) and The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660). Married three times, he wrote The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643), a pamphlet arguing for the efficacy of divorce in certain situations. He was appointed Latin Secretary (or, Secretary for Foreign Tongues) to the Commonwealth in February 1649, and remained in this official post until the restoration of the Monarchy on 8 May 1660. As a result of his association with Cromwell’s government, Milton was imprisoned for a time and only barely avoided the death penalty. At the age of 42 he lost his eyesight completely and had to dictate his ensuing works to various amanuenses; and in various poems, such as at the beginning of Book III of Paradise Lost, the sonnet “Me thought I saw my late espoused Saint”, and his final work, the “dramatic poem” Samson Agonistes, Milton addresses his sad feelings relating to his loss of sight.

The first edition of Paradise Lost, in ten books, was published in 1667; the now standard twelve book version was published in 1674. On Paradise Lost, literary giant John Dryden described his contemporary’s achievement as “undoubtedly one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced.” The poetry of Milton served as a profound inspiration to the later Romantic poets, particularly Shelley (e.g., Prometheus Unbound), Keats (e.g., the two Hyperion poems) and William Blake (e.g., The Four Zoas). In more recent years T. S. Eliot noted that poets can study Milton “with profit to their poetry and to the English language.” According to Gordon Campbell, "In America, where Christianity is still a vital force, Paradise Lost is valued as the supreme epic of Christendom." In his lifetime Milton received a total of £10.00 for his work on Paradise Lost.

Bibliography

• Beer, Anna. Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot (2008)
• Campbell, Gordon. "Milton, John (1608–1674)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Sept 2004; online edition, Jan 2008
• Lewalski, Barbara. The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography (2002) excerpt and text search
• Wilson, A.N. A Life of John Milton (2nd ed. 2002)

Editions

• Paradise Lost (Longman Annotated English Poets ed. by Alastair Fowler) 744 pages (1968; 2nd ed. 2006); the only recent edition to be based on the text of the first (1667) edition, now widely accepted to be closer to Milton's intention than that of 1674 excerpt and text search
• The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton (Modern Library, ed. by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon) (2007)
• The Complete Poetry of John Milton (ed. by John T. Shawcross) (1971) excerpt and text search