JOHN MILTON

(1608-1674)
 • b. London in 1608 into
a wealthy,
well-educated family.
• By 16 he could write in Latin and Greek
and had a good knowledge of Philosophy
• He attended Christ’s College,
Cambridge, where he took his MA
degree
• 1638- visited France and Italy and
returned home when he heard of the
outbreak of Civil War in England.
• He was a supporter of Cromwell and
Parliament and wrote a pamphlet in
approval of King Charles I’s execution.
• The Parliament offered him the position
of Latin Secretary to the Commonwealth
and in the last years of his life he went
totally blind.
JOHN MILTON - works

❖ 1629 – his first masterpiece, Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity

❖ 1634 – his masque Comus was performed (it combined music, verse, and dancing)
❖ 1637 – he published Lycidas, a pastoral elegy, considered a minor poem.
❖ 1643 – he published The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce
❖ 1644 – he published two pamphlets, Areopagitica and Of Education
❖ 1649 – The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, written to justify the execution of Charles I.
❖ 1667 – he published his great poetic masterpiece, Paradise Lost.
❖ 1671 – he published Paradise Regained in four books (the story of Christ’s temptation by Satan in the
desert) and Samson Agonistes a play on the events leading up to the killing of Samson by the Philistines).
Paradise Lost
1667
PARADISE LOST (1667)

❖ an epic, Biblical poem written in 12 books (initially 10, after revision in 1674, 12)
❖ two major events interrupted his work twice: the Great Plague (1665) and the Great Fire of London
(1666).
❖ Influences: Virgil, Plato, Christian doctrine, the tradition of nature and the garden.
❖ He influenced John Keats’s poem Hyperion and William Blake’s “Prophetic Books” (The Four Zoas,
Milton, Jerusalem).
❖ The themes of the poem = the Fall of Man (man’s first disobedience) and the education of the reader
❖ The story = Satan’s banishment from Heaven and his attempt to take revenge on God through the
temptation of Adam and Eve.
❖ The poem is written in blank verse (un-rhyming verse written in iambic pentameter).
❖ English heroic verse; didactic literature
THE EPIC POEM

❖ In its strict sense, the term epic or heroic poem is applied to a work that meets at least the following
criteria: it is a long verse narrative on a serious subject, told in a formal and elevated style and centered
on a heroic or quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, a nation, or (in the
instance of Paradise Lost) the human race.
❖ An epic poem is a ceremonial performance narrated in a ceremonial style, which is deliberately
distanced from ordinary speech.
❖ Milton imitates Homer’s epic similes and epithets.
❖ Milton wanted to write a poem in praise of God. It took him five years to complete the greatest epic
poem in English literature.
 THE CLASSICAL EPIC CONVENTIONS

❖ Adam, the hero, represents the entire human race;

❖ The setting is ample in scale: the action takes place on Earth, in Heaven and in Hell;
❖ The action depicts superhuman deeds in battle and a demanding journey: the war in heaven and Satan’s journey to
Hell;
❖ There are catalogues of some of the main characters, introduced in formal detail: in Book I Milton describes the
procession of fallen angels;
❖ An epic poem is narrated in an elevated style – Milton’s ‘grand style,’ baroque – formal diction and elaborate and
stylized syntax, often modelled on Latin poetry – aka Latinate style (references to Homer, Virgil, Dante, Tasso,
Spenser and the Bible)
❖ The narrator begins by stating his theme and invoking a muse: in the opening lines Milton calls on God to be his
guiding spirit in writing his “adventurous song;”
❖ The narrative starts “in medias res” – when the action is at a critical point: the epic opens with Satan and the
fallen angels in hell, gathering their forces and plotting revenge. It is not until Books V-VII that we learn from the
angel Raphael about the events in heaven that led to this situation.