JOHN MILTON
John
Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an
English poet, pamphleteer,and historian, polemicist, man of letters, and a civil servant
for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of
religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), written in blank verse. He is considered the most
significant English author after William
Shakespeare
Milton's
poetry and prose reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and
self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day.
Writing in English, Latin, Greek, and Italian, he achieved international renown
within his lifetime, and his celebrated Areopagitica (1644)—written in condemnation of
pre-publication censorship—is among history's most influential and impassioned
defences of free speech and freedom of the press.
Milton
is best known for Paradise
Lost, widely regarded as
the greatest epic poem in English. Together with Paradise Regained and Samson
Agonistes, it confirms Milton’s reputation as one of the greatest English
poets. In his prose works Milton advocated the abolition of the Church of England and the execution of King Charles
I. From the beginning of the English Civil Wars in 1642 to long after the restoration of Charles II as king in 1660, he espoused in all his works a political
philosophy that opposed tyranny and state-sanctioned religion. His influence extended not only through the civil wars and interregnum
but also to the American and French revolutions. In his works on theology, he valued liberty of conscience, the paramount importance of Scripture
as a guide in matters of faith, and religious toleration toward dissidents. As
a civil servant, Milton became the voice of the English Commonwealth after 1649
through his handling of its international correspondence and his defense of the government against polemical attacks from abroad.
John milton’s poetic style
The poetic style of John Milton,
also known as Miltonic verse, Miltonic epic, or Miltonic blank verse, was a
highly influential poetic structure popularized by Milton. Although Milton wrote
earlier poetry, his influence is largely grounded in his later poems: Paradise Lost, Paradise
Regained, and Samson
Agonistes.
Miltonic verse
Although
Milton was not the first to use blank verse, his use of it was very influential
and he became known for the style. When Miltonic verse became popular, Samuel Johnson mocked Milton
for inspiring bad blank verse, but he recognized that Milton's verse style was
very influential. Poets such as Alexander
Pope, whose final, incomplete, work was intended to
be written in the form, and John
Keats, who complained that he relied too heavily on
Milton, adopted and picked up various aspects of his poetry. In particular,
Miltonic blank verse became the standard for those attempting to write English
epics for centuries following the publication of Paradise Lost and his later poetry.
Christian epic
Milton was not the first
to write an epic poem on a Christian theme. There are some well-known
precursors:
Ø La Battaglia celeste tra Michele e Lucifero (1568), by Antonio Alfani;
Ø La Sepmaine (1578), by Guillaume Du Bartas;
Ø La Gerusalemme liberata (1581), by Torquato
Tasso;
Ø Angeleida (1590), by Erasmo di Valvasone;
Ø Le sette giornate del mondo creato (1607), by Tasso;
Ø De la creación Del mundo (1615), by Alonso de Acevedo.
He was, on the other hand and according to Tobias Gregory:
The
most theologically learned among early modern epic poets. He was, moreover, a
theologian of great independence of mind, and one who developed his talents
within a society where the problem of divine justice was debated with
particular intensity.
He
is able to establish divine action and his divine characters in a superior way
to other Renaissance epic poets, including Ludovico Ariosto or Tasso.
In Paradise Lost Milton also ignores the traditional
epic format, which started with Homer, of a
plot based on a mortal conflict between opposing armies with deities watching
over and occasionally interfering with the action. Instead, both divinity and
mortal are involved in a conflict that, while momentarily ending in tragedy,
offers a future salvation. In both Paradise
Lost and Paradise Regained, Milton
incorporates aspects of Lucan's epic model, the epic from the view
of the defeated. Although he does not accept the model completely within Paradise Regained, he
incorporates the "anti-Virgilian, anti-imperial epic tradition of
Lucan". Milton goes further than Lucan in this belief and "Paradise
Lost and Paradise Regained carry further, too, the movement
toward and valorization of romance that Lucan's tradition had begun, to the
point where Milton's poems effectively create their own new genre".
Greek tragedy
Milton
defined his views of Greek tragedy in the preface to Samson Agonistes. His
understanding of what would make an appropriate Christian tragedy combines
aspects of Greek Tragedy with Hebrew Scripture, which alters both forms. Here
again he was not an innovator, following for example the Adamus Exul (1601) of Hugo Grotius, and the Adamo (1615) of Giovanni Battista Andreini.
Milton
believed that the Bible was a precursor to the classical forms relied on by the
Greeks and Romans, and that the Bible accomplished what the Greeks and Romans
wished in a more suitable manner. In his introduction, Milton discusses
Aristotle's definition of tragedy and sets out his own paraphrase of it to
connect it to Samson Agonistes:
Tragedy,
as it was anciently composed, hath been ever held the gravest, moralest, and
most profitable of all other poems: therefore said by Aristotle to be of power
by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge the mind of those and such-like
passions, that is to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of
delight, stirred up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is
nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion: for so in physic
things of melancholic hue and quality are used against melancholy, sour against
sour, salt to remove salt humors.
Milton
continues, "Of the style and uniformity, and that commonly called the
plot, whether intricate or explicit... they only will best judge who are not
unacquainted with Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the three tragic poets
unequaled yet by any, and the best rule to all who endeavor to write tragedy".
As with his Christian epics, Milton fused classical and Scriptural ideas in
order to create better English literature.
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