John Milton is regarded as the most significant English author after William Shakespeare.
John Milton
Milton is best known for Paradise Lost, which is widely regarded as the greatest epic poem ever written in English. Along with Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, it bolsters Milton’s position as one of the greatest English poets. Milton supported Charles I’s execution and the abolition of the Church of England in his prose works. From the beginning of the English Civil Wars in 1642 until well after Charles II’s restoration as king in 1660, he advocated a political philosophy that opposed tyranny and state-sanctioned religion in all of his writings. Along with the civil wars and the time between them, he also had an impact on the American and French revolutions. In his theological writings, he emphasized the importance of religious tolerance for heretics, Scripture’s primacy as the only reliable source of information, and the right to conscience freedom. Milton became known as the voice of the English Commonwealth after 1649 by handling the government’s correspondence with other countries and defending it against outside criticism.
Childhood and Education
Milton’s maternal grandfather Richard was a devoted Roman Catholic who expelled his son John from their Oxfordshire home after he read an English (i.e. e. e. (Protestant) Bible. After being exiled and losing his inheritance, Milton’s father established a scrivener’s business in London. He wrote legal documents. In order to obtain loans for his clients, he also worked as a moneylender, haggling with creditors. Christopher was close to his older brother throughout his life, despite going on to become a lawyer, a Royalist, and possibly a Roman Catholic. Following the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, Christopher might have intervened to stop the execution of his brother.
Overseas Travel
The bulk of Milton’s tour of the Continent in 1638, which lasted about 15 months and was accompanied by a manservant, took place in Italy, primarily in Rome and Florence. Milton was particularly drawn to the Florentine academies, where he made friends with young Italian writers who shared his appreciation for humanism. He never ran into his Italian friends again, but he was inspired by their respect for him and wrote to them after returning to England. Milton also crossed paths with Galileo while he was in Florence; he was essentially under house arrest.
The specifics of this extraordinary encounter, during which a young Englishman, around the age of 30, was able to approach the elderly and blind astronomer, are unknown. (In the end, Milton’s Paradise Lost would name only one other contemporary by name: Galileo. In 1638, Milton was in Italy when he learned of Charles Diodati’s passing. His close friend from St. Louis was Charles. Paul’s School, which might have succumbed to the plague; he also learned that a civil war was about to start in England, which prompted him to return home earlier than he had intended.
Not far from the Bread Street neighborhood where he was born, Milton made his home in London after returning to his native country. John and Edward Phillips, the brothers of his sister Anne, who resided in his house, were taught by him. The Latin elegy “Epitaphian Damone’s” (also known as “Damon’s Epitaph”) that he wrote after his return honored Diodati.
poems and early translations by John Milton
By the time Milton returned to England in 1639, he had not only proven his extraordinary talent as a linguist and translator, but also his extraordinary versatility as a poet. While in St. The Hebrew original of Psalm 114, which describes how the Israelites were set free from Egypt, was translated by Milton when he was 15 years old and a student of Paul. After translating it into English, he paraphrased the same psalm in Greek. His Greek translation was a heroic couplet-style poem in iambic pentameter.
He started this type of work when he was young and continued it into adulthood, especially between 1648 and 1653, when he was also writing pamphlets critical of both the Church of England and the monarchy. When he was still a young man, Milton also composed letters in Latin verse. These letters, which cover a wide range of topics, are referred to as elegies because they are written in elegiac metre, a couplet-based verse style with classical roots. Milton’s first elegy, “Elegia prima ad Carolum Diodatum,” was written in a letter to Carol Diodati, an Oxford student who was Carol’s friend while Milton was a Cambridge student. Milton wrote his letter in 1626 from London even though he was being rusticated at the time. In the poem, he expresses desire for reinstatement and vows to go back to the boisterous school and the reedy fens of the Cam.
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