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John Milton

  "The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven"

John Milton was an English poet, pamphleteer, and historian, considered the most significant English author after William Shakespeare. John Milton served as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under its Council of State and later under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious shifts and political instability, 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 ever written. He was a staunch Puritan or Protestant. He is called Lady of the christ. He known ten languages. Milton was a private schoolmaster. Milton was the greatest poet of the Puritan age, and he stands head and shoulders above all his contemporaries. 

Fame

William Hayley's 1796 biography called him the greatest English author and he remains generally regarded "as one of the pre eminent writers in the English language." Samuel Johnson praised Paradise Lost as "a poem. Poets such as William Blake, William Wordsworth and Thomas Hardy revered him. he achieved international renown within his lifetime. As a civil servant, Milton became the voice of the English Commonwealth. Milton's political reputation got him appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues by the Council of State in March 1649. Milton influenced many writers. Some, like John Dryden, admired his work and used it as the basis for their own writing. Others, including Alexander Pope. 

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Life 

John Milton was born 9 December 1608, in Bread Street, London and he was died on 8 November 1674. He was the son of composer John Milton and his mother was Sarah Jeffrey. Three of their children survived infancy. He had an older sister Anne, and a younger brother Christopher, and several siblings who died before reaching adulthood. His mother was a woman of refinement and grace, with a deep interest in religion and in local charities. So the boy grew up in a home which combined the culture of the renaissance with the piety and moral strength of early Puritanism. Shakespeare is the poet of impulse, of the loves, hates, fears, jealousies and ambitions. Milton is the poet of steadfast will and purpose, who moves like a God amid the fears and hopes and changing impulse of the world.

Education 

John Milton attended St. Paul’s School, and in his lifetime he learned Latin, Greek, Italian, Hebrew, French, and Spanish. He attended Christ’s College, Cambridge, at the age of fifteen, graduating in 1629 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and 1632 with a Master of Arts. He wanted (intended) to become clergyman, Anglican priest in the Church of England. Milton may have been rusticated (suspended) in his first year for quarrelling with his tutor, in 1626. After Cambridge, Milton spent six years living with his family in Buckinghamshire and studying independently. He translated and paraphrased psalms from Greek into English. Milton was a Puritan who believed in the authority of the Bible, and opposed religious institutions like the Church of England, and the monarchy, with which it was entwined. He wrote pamphlets on radical topics like freedom of the press. As a Protestant, he believed that the individual reader should interpret the Bible. 

Marriage 

John Milton married third time in his life. Milton married Mary Powell in May 1642, she was 16 year old, Unhappy marriage. In 1656, four years after his first wife's death, Milton married Kathrine Woodcock. Two years later she died after giving birth to a child, and he tenderly memorialized her in a sonnet, To my late departed Saint. In 1663, Milton married for the third time, this time to Elizabeth Minsull. 

Works

His notable works are Comus, Paradise Lost, Areopagitica, Samson Agonistes, Lycidas, ( a pastoral elegy, address to his close friend Edward King) Il Penseroso, L’Allegro, Eikonoklastes, Paradise Regained, History of Britain. Lycidas, It was written to mourn the death of Milton’s friend, Edward King, but it is also contains serious criticism of contemporary religion and politics.

In 1667, he published Paradise Lost in 10 volumes. It is considered his greatest work and the greatest epic poem written in English. The free-verse poem tells the story of how Satan tempted Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. In 1671, he published Paradise Regained, in which Jesus overcomes Satan’s temptations, and Samson Agonistes, in which Samson first succumbs to temptation and then redeems himself. it confirms Milton’s reputation as one of the greatest English poets.

In 1628 Milton wrote his first major English poem, On the Death of a Fair Infant, Dying of the Cough, about the death of his sister's baby. A year later he wrote On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, celebrating the harmonizing power of divine love. Areopagitica (1644), written in condemnation of pre publication censorship. During the crisis preceding restoration of the monarchy he wrote several tracts. In A Treatise of Civil Power (1659) he again urged toleration and separation of Church and state. Ready and Easy Way (1660) argued for preservation of a republic, a government in which citizens hold power and vote to elect officials as their representatives in the government.

He wrote poetry mostly for private circulation, and launched a career as 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. 

Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost, the epic published in 1667, is inspired by the Bible story of the Creation, the fall of Adam and Eve, the rebellion of Satan against God, and Satan being cast out from heaven. In it Milton tried to convey some insight into God's wisdom and providence, but he did not intend it to be taken literally. Paradise Lost is generally regarded as the greatest epic poem in the English language. In 1671 its sequel, Paradise Regained, appeared in one volume with Samson Agonistes. Paradise Regained treats the rejection by Jesus of Satan's temptations. Its central point is that the true hero conquers not by force but by humility and faith in God. Samson Agonistes deals with the theme of temptation, dramatizing how the Hebrew strong man yielded to passion and seeming self-interest.

Undoubtedly the noblest of Milton's works, written when he was blind and suffering, are paradise lost, paradise regained and Samson agonistes. Milton had been losing his eyesight, and in 1652 he was totally blind. He wrote on his blindness. 

scholars generally agree that the book was banned because of Milton's anti-Catholic sentiments and the anti-Catholic theology contained in the epic poem. 

Death 

John Milton died in England in November 1674. He was buried in the church of St Giles-without-Cripplegate, Fore Street, London. According to an early biographer, his funeral was attended by "his learned and great Friends in London. There is a monument dedicated to him in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey in London.   

Others

In 1638 and 1639 Milton toured France and Italy. His good looks, enthusiasm, and his ability to speak many languages helped him to enter polite society abroad. He intended also to go to Greece, but news of the growing political and religious crisis in England led him to return to London. 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.

When Charles II, son of the executed Charles I, regained the throne in 1660, Milton was in danger for supporting the overthrow of the monarchy. Milton was harassed and imprisoned and several of his books were burned. However, he was included in a general pardon.

"Freely we serve, because freely we love"



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