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John Milton

John Milton (1608-1674) was a 17th century English poet and author best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost. He was born into a Protestant family and studied at Cambridge. His early works included Latin poems and English masques, elegies, and sonnets. As a pamphleteer he advocated for causes like freedom of the press and divorce. His masterwork, Paradise Lost, was published in 1665 and used epic conventions to retell the Biblical story of Adam and Eve's fall from Eden. The poem explores complex characters like Satan, who is both a heroic rebel and villainous anti-hero.

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87 views

John Milton

John Milton (1608-1674) was a 17th century English poet and author best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost. He was born into a Protestant family and studied at Cambridge. His early works included Latin poems and English masques, elegies, and sonnets. As a pamphleteer he advocated for causes like freedom of the press and divorce. His masterwork, Paradise Lost, was published in 1665 and used epic conventions to retell the Biblical story of Adam and Eve's fall from Eden. The poem explores complex characters like Satan, who is both a heroic rebel and villainous anti-hero.

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Cristina HistoryTeacher
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JOHN MILTON

(1608-1674)
Dra. Sonia Hernández Santano
Dra. Pilar Cuder Domínguez
 John Milton’s biography and his main
works.
 General characteristics of his masterpiece,
Paradise Lost (1665)

In this powerpoint presentation


you will learn about:
John Milton (1608-74)
Biography and Works
 Early years:
 Born in a family highly devoted to Protestantism and committed to
religion.
 He studied at Christ College, Cambridge (M.A. in 1632).
 A voracious reader from his early years, he understood Greek, Latin and several modern
languages.

 Early literary concerns and productions:


 Rhetoric was one of his main concerns in literary
composition. He practised Latin rhetoric through the
composition of a considerable number of Latin poems.
 Experiments with poetic GENRES:
 Elegiac, epistolary, mock-heroic, pastoral.
 Major poem of this period: “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” (1629): Treats
the subject of the substitution of pagan mythology by the birth of a new truth; allusion to Puritan
aims for Reformation.
 Italian sonnets.
 “L’Allegro” (1645)/”Il Penseroso” (1645) two pastoral poems.
 After his degree:
 Period of intense reading and study of eloquence:
 Comus (1637): a masque performed at Ludlow Castle in 1634.
 Lycidas (composed, 1637; publ. 1638): elegy upon the death of his friend Edward King.
 He set out for a tour of Europe (1638), interrupted by
rumours of Civil War. Italy was for him a region of creative
imagination.

 London, 1640s:
 He became a private school master.
 Highly committed to the public world, he became an active
prose polemicist:
• Against the bishops: ‘Of Reformation touching Church Discipline’.
• Advocating freedom of the press: Areopagitica (1644)
• In favour of divorce on the grounds of incompatibility: The Doctrine and
Discipline of Divorce (1643).
• Of Education: Centrality of humanist literary and phylosophical
disciplines.
 1649, Execution of Charles I:
 Milton was a Republicanist. He probably
witnessed the public execution of the king.
 Tenure of kings and magistrates (1649):
defending the right of people to execute
guilty sovereigns.

 1660, Restoration:
 He attacked the roots of Royalist cult.
 Disappointment at the return of a
Stuart king. Persecuted by the king and
released.

 Last decades: blindness from 1651.


 “When I consider how my light is spent”: a sonnet on
his blindness.
 Paradise Lost, 1665.
 Paradise Regained, 1671.
 Samson Agonistes, 1671: a tragedy based
of the story of Samson in the Old
Testament.
 Poetry on occasions:
◦ Not lyric outspourings, but responses to events.
◦ Art applied to a specific subject.

 Concern with poetry:


◦ Self-referential poetry. Poems about poetry and poets.
◦ Poet: literary knowledge and divine inspiration:
 poet-prophet
◦ Balance between literary skills and content.
◦ Technique is essential but not an end in itself.

 Reliance on Inspiration over traditional knowledge:


◦ Trusting inspiration meant rejecting authority and rules.
◦ Inspiration becomes the ideology of the radicals during
Revolution.

Literary concerns
Paradise Lost
(1665)
 Written in order to “justify the ways of God to men”
◦ (“Invocation,” I.26)
 Written in blank verse
◦ READ: “The verse”, p. 6
 Milton’s “Latinate” style: language in PL is strongly
influenced by Latin
◦ Long, complex sentences, running over several lines;
◦ Unusual word order.
 Structure: 12 books, introduced by section “The
Argument”
 Milton’s Paradise Lost Book 1 (8’):
◦ animated version with male voice-over narration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-itSWydxBM
 Milton is a genre-conscious poet; he exploits genres deliberately.
 He uses elements from epic, lyric, pastoral and drama.
 Epic conventions in PL:
 Precedents: Virgil’s Aeneid
 PL provides a redefinition of classical heroism in Christian terms.
 tragic epic subject (woe derives from disobedience).
 hero (Satan) motivated by a sense of “injured merit”.
 Military scenes
 READ l. 544-71
 Satan’s adventures on seas and new lands (Chaos in Book II); cf. Homer’s
Odyssey.
 Stylistic features:
 beginning in ‘media res’ (not at the rebellion but its aftermath)
 invocation to Muse.
 READ I.1-26
 Compare to Virgil’s Aeneid
 http://classics.mit.edu/Virgil/aeneid.1.i.html
 division in 12 books.
 epic similes, epic catalogues (I.376-80 & I.392-418)

Generic features (Source: Lewalsky, B. ‘The


Genres of PL’. Cambridge Companion, 1989)
 Dramatic elements:
 tragic protagonists who fall from happiness to misery.
 tragic soliloquies of Adam and Satan.
 domestic tragedy.
 villain hero driven by ambition (cf. Macbeth)

 Pastoral elements
 landscape descriptions of Arcadian settings.
 pastoral scenes describing the otium of Heaven and Eden.

 Lyric elements
 Characters reveal their natures and values through the lyrics they devise.

 Why this generic variery?


◦ multiple genres create multiple perspectives upon the subject.
◦ Invites the reader to refine their responses to cultural values.
 EX: Satan (heroic genre)—promotes an examination of the concept of heroism.

Generic features (Source: Lewalsky, B. ‘The


Genres of PL’. Cambridge Companion, 1989)
 Ambiguities in
major
characters:

 Adam:
 a villain/a hero
 Satan:
 victor/victim
 Eve:
 wife/mother

 Characters’ construction:
 Milton’s anti-hero: Satan
 No convincing single source for Milton’s Satan.
 Few Biblical references.

 Why Satan?
 Manichean view of the moral universe.
 God’s Supreme Goodness vs Satan-Supreme evil.
 Evil represented in a single being: containable, punished.
 though the Church stated that evil had no real being, but it was the privation of Good;
 contrast to Shakespeare’s idea that evil is enmeshed in collective human experience.

 Milton’s Satan is seldom so simple: sometimes superior to God: True


hero.
◦ Pro-Satanists: emphasize Satan’s courage to oppose oppression.
 READ I.242-63 (on freedom vs. servitude)
◦ Anti-Satanists: emphasize his selfishness or folly.
 The main feature of Milton’s Satan:
 DEPTH AS A CHARACTER:
Depth in a fictional character depends on the reader’s
degree of knowledge and ignorance about his/her
fictional persona
Ex: Adam, Eve, God: they exist simply at the level of the words they
speak.

 Satan is more complex:


 Endowed with the habit of DISSIMULATION.
 Endowed with strong powers of ELOQUENCE.
 READ I.314-30

 Satan as Archangel is never shown. We don’t know


which powers he may have kept. HIDDEN
DIMENSION AND A PAST.

 Creature of ‘DYNAMIC TENSIONS’. A STRONG


LEADER.
 READ the narrator’s introduction: I.50-75
 READ the narrator’s description I. 587-612
 Aware that he could avoid punishment
but chooses evil. Apprehends reality
through SELF-DECEPTION.
 READ I.157-68.

 AMBIVALENT NATURE (Book IX). Natural


tendency to love/chooses to destroy:
guilt; free will.

 IMAGINATIVE BEING. Develops


imagination in ways unattainable to other
characters. Book IX.575-97.
 John Milton’s biography and works;
 The main features of his masterpiece
Paradise Lost, and particularly:
◦ The epic traits in Book I;
◦ The complex characterization of Satan, both
hero and anti-hero.

In this powerpoint presentation


you have learnt about:
JOHN MILTON
(1608-1674)
Dra. Sonia Hernández Santano
Dra. Pilar Cuder Domínguez

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