Literature of puritan age

John Milton 

                                 

John Milton

     

John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual who served as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under its Council of State and later under Oliver Cromwell. English poet, pamphleteer, and historian considered the most significant English author after William Shakespeare. 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, Paradise Lost is widely considered to be one of the greatest works of literature. 

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 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 defence of the government against polemical attacks from abroad. 

 

• Life:  

  

   The phases of Milton's life parallel the major historical and political divisions in Stuart Britain. Milton studied, travelled, wrote poetry mostly for private circulation, and launched a career as a pamphleteer and publicist under the increasingly personal rule of Charles I and its breakdown into constitutional confusion and war. The shift in accepted attitudes in government placed him in public office under the Commonwealth of England, from being thought dangerously radical and heretical, and he even acted as an official spokesman in certain of his publications. The Restoration of 1660 deprived Milton, now completely blind, of his public platform, but this period saw him complete most of his major works of poetry. 

              

 

   John Milton was born in Bread Street, London, on 9 December 1608, the son of composer John Milton and his wife Sarah Jeffrey. Milton's father's prosperity provided his eldest son with a private tutor, Thomas Young, a Scottish Presbyterian with an M.A. from the University of St. Andrews. Research suggests that Young's influence served as the poet's introduction to religious radicalism. After Young's tutorship, Milton attended St Paul's School in London. There he began the study of Latin and Greek, and the classical languages left an imprint on both his poetry and prose in English (he also wrote in Latin and Italian). Milton's first datable compositions are two psalms done at age 15 at Long Bennington.

In 1625, Milton began attending Christ's College, Cambridge. He graduated with a B.A. in 1629, ranking fourth of 24 honours graduates that year in the University of Cambridge. Preparing to become an Anglican priest, Milton stayed on and obtained his Master of Arts degree on 3 July 1632. At Cambridge, Milton was on good terms with Edward King, for whom he later wrote "Lycidas". He also befriended Anglo-American dissident and theologian Roger Williams. Milton tutored Williams in Hebrew in exchange for lessons in Dutch. While at Cambridge, he wrote a number of his well-known shorter English poems, among them "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity", his "Epitaph on the admirable Dramaticke Poet, W. Shakespeare" (his first poem to appear in print), L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso. 

• Study, poetry, and travel:  

      It appears in all his writings that he had the usual concomitant of great abilities, lofty and steady confidence in himself, perhaps not without some contempt of others; for scarcely any man ever wrote so much and praised so few. Of his praise he was very frugal; as he set its value high, and considered his mention of a name as a security against the waste of time, and a certain preservative from oblivion.

                                          – Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets 

     

  Milton is considered to be among the most learned of all English poets. In addition to his years of private study, Milton had command of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Italian from his school and undergraduate days; he also added Old English to his linguistic repertoire in the 1650s while researching his History of Britain, and probably acquired proficiency in Dutch soon after. In May 1638, Milton embarked upon a tour of France and Italy that lasted until July or August 1639. His travels supplemented his study with new and direct experience of artistic and religious traditions, especially Roman Catholicism. He met famous theorists and intellectuals of the time and was able to display his poetic skills. For specific details of what happened within Milton's "grand tour", there appears to be just one primary source: Milton's own Defensio Secunda. There are other records, including some letters and some references in his other prose tracts, but the bulk of the information about the tour comes from a work that, according to Barbara Lewalski, "was not intended as autobiography but as rhetoric, designed to emphasise his sterling reputation with the learned of Europe." Originally, Milton wanted to leave Naples in order to travel to Sicily and then on to Greece, but he returned to England during the summer of 1639 because of what he claimed in Defensio Secunda were "sad tidings of civil war in England." From Switzerland, Milton travelled to Paris and then to Calais before finally arriving back in England in either July or August 1639.  

• Early translations and poems of John Milton:

By the time he returned to England in 1639, Milton had manifested remarkable talent as a linguist and translator and extraordinary versatility as a poet. While at St. Paul’s, as a 15-year-old student, Milton had translated Psalm 114 from the original Hebrew, a text that recounts the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt. This translation into English was a poetic paraphrase in heroic couplets (rhymed iambic pentameter), and later he translated and paraphrased the same psalm into Greek. Beginning such work early in his boyhood, he continued it into adulthood, especially from 1648 to 1653, a period when he was also composing pamphlets against the Church of England and the monarchy. Also in his early youth Milton composed letters in Latin verse. These letters, which range over many topics, are called elegies because they employ elegiac metre—a verse form, Classical in origin, that consists of couplets, the first line dactylic hexameter, the second dactylic pentameter. 

 In 1628 Milton composed an occasional poem, “On the Death of a Fair Infant Dying of a Cough,” which mourns the loss of his niece Anne, the daughter of his older sister. Milton tenderly commemorates the child, who was two years old. The poem’s conceits, Classical allusions, and theological overtones emphasize that the child entered the supernal realm because the human condition, having been enlightened by her brief presence, was ill-suited to bear her any longer.

In this early period, Milton’s principal poems included “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” “On Shakespeare,” and the so-called companion poems “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso.” Milton’s sixth elegy (“Elegia Sexta”), a verse letter in Latin sent to Diodati in December 1629, provides valuable insight into his conception of “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity.” Informing Diodati of his literary activity, Milton recounts that he is: 

'singing the heaven-descended King, the bringer of peace, and the blessed times promised in the sacred books—the infant cries of our God and his stabling under a mean roof who, with his Father, governs the realms above.' 

• Works on history and theology: 

Three extraordinary prose works highlight the depth of Milton’s erudition and the scope of his interests. History of Britain (1670) was long in the making, for it reflects extensive reading that he began as a very young man. Presumably, because he initially contemplated an epic centring upon British history and the heroic involvement of the legendary King Arthur, Milton researched early accounts of Britain, ranging across records from the Anglo-Saxon era through works by the Venerable Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth and into 16th- and 17th-century accounts by Raphael Holinshed and William Camden, along with many others. All the while, Milton critically evaluated his sources for their veracity. Because his own research and writing were interrupted by his service in Cromwell’s government, History of Britain remained incomplete even at publication, for the account ends with the Norman Conquest.  

De Doctrina Christiana (“On Christian Doctrine”) was probably composed between 1655 and 1660, though Milton never completed it. The unfinished manuscript was discovered in the Public Record Office in London in 1823, translated from Latin into English by Charles Sumner and published in 1825 as A Treatise on Christian Doctrine. Though Milton did not agree with all elements of their theology, like them he tended to subordinate the Son to the Father and to oppose the trinitarian orthodoxy of Roman Catholicism. 

• The work of John Milton: 

 

• Paradise Lost (1667)  
• Paradise Regained (1671) 
• L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso 
• Lycidas (1638) 
• Comus (1637) 
• Samson Agonistes (1671) 
• On Shakespeare (1632) 

• Paradise Lost: 

Paradise Lost

  

Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit

Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast

Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,

Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top

Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire

That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,

In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth

Rose out of Chaos…

Probably the greatest epic poem in the English language, Paradise Lost (1667) was not Milton’s first attempt at an epic: as a teenager, Milton began writing an epic poem in Latin about the Gunpowder Plot; but in quantum, November remained unfinished. Instead, his defining work would be this 12-book poem in blank verse about the Fall of Man, taking in Satan’s fall from Heaven, his founding of Pandemonium (the capital of Hell), and his subsequent temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden. In Paradise Lost—first published in 10 books in 1667 and then in 12 books in 1674, at a length of almost 11,000 lines—Milton observed but adapted a number of the Classical epic conventions that distinguish works such as Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey and Virgil’s The Aeneid.

Paradise Lost also directly invokes Classical epics by beginning its action in media res. Book 1 recounts the aftermath of the war in heaven, which is described only later, in Book 6. At the outset of the epic, the consequences of the loss of the war include the expulsion of the fallen angels from heaven and their descent into hell, a place of infernal torment. With the punishment of the fallen angels having been described early in the epic, Milton in later books recounts how and why their disobedience occurred. Disobedience and its consequences, therefore, come to the fore in Raphael’s instruction of Adam and Eve, who (especially in Books 6 and 8) are admonished to remain obedient. By examining the sinfulness of Satan in thought and in deed, Milton positions this part of his narrative close to the temptation of Eve. This arrangement enables Milton to highlight how and why Satan, who inhabits a serpent to seduce Eve in Book 9, induces in her the inordinate pride that brought about his own downfall. Satan arouses in Eve a comparable state of mind, which is enacted in her partaking of the forbidden fruit, an act of disobedience. Throughout Paradise, Lost Milton uses a grand style aptly suited to the elevated subject matter and tone. In a prefatory note, Milton describes the poem’s metre as “English heroic verse without rhyme,” which approximates “that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin.” Rejecting rhyme as “the jingling sound of like endings,” Milton prefers a measure that is not end-stopped, so that he may employ enjambment (run-on lines) with “the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another.” The grand style that he adopts consists of unrhymed iambic pentameter (blank verse) and features sonorous rhythms pulsating through and beyond one verse into the next. By composing his biblical epic in this measure, he invites comparison with works by Classical forebears. Without using punctuation at the end of many verses, Milton also creates voluble units of rhythm and sense that go well beyond the limitations he perceived in rhymed verse.

Throughout Paradise, Lost Milton uses a grand style aptly suited to the elevated subject matter and tone. In a prefatory note, Milton describes the poem’s metre as “English heroic verse without rhyme,” which approximates “that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin.” Rejecting rhyme as “the jingling sound of like endings,” Milton prefers a measure that is not end-stopped, so that he may employ enjambment (run-on lines) with “the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another.” The grand style that he adopts consists of unrhymed iambic pentameter (blank verse) and features sonorous rhythms pulsating through and beyond one verse into the next. Without using punctuation at the end of many verses, Milton also creates voluble units of rhythm and sense that go well beyond the limitations he perceived in rhymed verse. 

Paradise Lost is ultimately not only about the downfall of Adam and Eve but also about the clash between Satan and the Son. Many readers have admired Satan’s splendid recklessness, if not heroism, in confronting the Godhead. Satan’s defiance, anger, willfulness, and resourcefulness define a character who strives never to yield. In many ways, Satan is heroic when compared to such Classical prototypes as Achilles, Odysseus, and But Milton composed a biblical epic in order to debunk Classical heroism and to extol Christian heroism, exemplified by the Son. Notwithstanding his victory in the battle against the fallen angels, the Son is more heroic because he is willing to undergo voluntary humiliation, a sign of his consummate love for humankind. He foreknows that he will become incarnate in order to suffer death, a selfless act whereby humankind will be redeemed. By such an act, moreover, the Son fulfils what Milton calls the “great argument” of his poem: to “justify the ways of God to man,” as Milton writes in Book 1. Despite Satan’s success against Adam and Eve, the hope of regeneration after sinfulness is provided by Son’s self-sacrifice. Such hope and opportunity enable humankind to cooperate with the Godhead so as to defeat Satan, avoid damnation, overcome death, and ascend heavenward. Satan’s wiles, therefore, are thwarted by members of regenerate humankind who choose to participate in the redemptive act that the Son has undertaken on their behalf.

• Paradise Regained: 

                        

Paradise Regained

  

Paradise Regained hearkens back to the Book of Job, whose principal character is tempted by Satan to forgo his faith in God and to cease exercising patience and fortitude in the midst of ongoing and ever-increasing adversity. By adapting the trials of Job and the role of Satan as tempter and by integrating them with the accounts of Matthew and Luke of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness, Milton dramatizes how Jesus embodies Christian heroism. Less sensational than that of Classical protagonists and not requiring military action for its manifestation, Christian heroism is a continuous reaffirmation of faith in God and is manifested in renewed prayer for patience and fortitude to endure and surmount adversities. By resisting temptations that pander to one’s impulses toward ease, pleasure, worldliness, and power, a Christian hero maintains a heavenly orientation that informs his actions. Satan as the tempter in Paradise Regained fails in his unceasing endeavours to subvert Jesus by various means in the wilderness. As powerful as the temptations may be, the sophistry that accompanies them is even more insidious.

In effect, Paradise Regained unfolds as a series of debates—an ongoing dialectic—in which Jesus analyzes and refutes Satan’s arguments. With clarity and cogency, Jesus rebuts any and all arguments by using the recta ratio, always informed by faith in God, his father. Strikingly evident also is Jesus’ determination, an overwhelming sense of resolve to endure any and all trials visited upon him. Though Paradise Regained lacks the vast scope of Paradise Lost, it fulfils its purpose admirably by pursuing the idea of Christian heroism as a state of mind. More so than Paradise Lost, it dramatizes the inner workings of the mind of Jesus, his perception, and the interplay of faith and reason in his debates with Satan. When Jesus finally dismisses the tempter at the end of the work, the reader recognizes that the encounters in Paradise Regained reflect a high degree of psychological verisimilitude. 

• Milton’s later years and death:

After the Restoration and despite jeopardy to himself, Milton continued to advocate freedom of worship and republicanism for England while he supervised the publication of his major poems and other works. For a time soon after the succession of Charles II, Milton was under arrest and menaced by possible execution for involvement in the regicide and in Cromwell’s government. Although the circumstances of clemency toward Milton are not fully known, it is likely that certain figures influential with the regime of Charles II—such as Christopher Milton, Andrew Marvell, and William Davenant—interceded on his behalf. The exact date and location of Milton’s death remain unknown; he likely died in London on November 8, 1674, from complications of gout. He was buried inside St. Giles Cripplegate Church in London.

• John Milton’s Style: 

Since Milton was famous for his unique style of blank verse and sonnets, he won the praise of the romantic poets for his skills. However, they did not accept his religious views. William Wordsworth opens his popular sonnet with “Milton! thou shouldn't be living at this hour.” John Keats was also a great admirer of Miltonic verse and advocated that “Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful or rather artist’s humour”. Keats also felt that his epic poem “Hyperion” was filled with several Miltonic inversions. During that time, poetic blank verse was thought to be a unique form of poetry rather than in drama verse.

In addition to the induction of stylish innovation of Milton, he also influenced later poets. Specifically, Thomas Hardy and George Eliot of the Victorian Age were greatly inspired by his poetry. Similarly, Milton was a great influence to Ezra Pound and T.S Eliot – two of the most famous 20th-century critics. Milton gave paramount importance to liberty of conscience and the Scriptures for guidance in faith-related matters. 

Milton continued his advocacy for republicanism and freedom of worship for England despite being in trouble himself after the Restoration. He himself supervised the publication of his major works and poems. Also, Milton was arrested for involvement in possible regicide while he was in Cromwell’s government.

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