John Milton was an English poet, prose writer, and civil servant born in 1608 in London. He is best known for his epic poems Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Milton was a prolific writer who produced works in several genres including epic and lyric poetry, as well as theological, philosophical and political treatises. He was a staunch supporter of Oliver Cromwell and republicanism. Milton went blind in 1652 and continued writing until his death in 1674.

1. John
Milton

2. Biography:
• Born:
• December 9, 1608
• Bread Street, Cheapside, London, England
• Died:
• November 8, 1674 (aged 65)
• Bunhill, London, England
• Occupation:
• Poet, Prose Polemicist, Civil Servant for the English
Commonwealth
• Influences:
• Dante Alighieri, Ludovico Ariosto, The Bible, Homer, Ovid,
William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Virgil
• Influenced:
• William Blake, John Keats, Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth

3. • The family's financial prosperity
afforded Milton to be taught
classical languages, first by private
tutors at home, followed by
entrance to St. Paul's School at age
twelve, in 1620
• Milton's father was also a
composer of church music, and
Milton himself experienced a
lifelong delight in music.
• In 1625, Milton was admitted to
Christ's College, Cambridge.

4. Cambridge years
John Milton matriculated Christ's College,
Cambridge, in 1625
• in preparation for becoming an Anglican
priest, stayed on to obtain his Master of
Arts degree on 3 July 1632
• due to his hair, which he wore long, and
his general delicacy of manner, was known
as the "Lady of Christ's“

5. • began to write poetry in Latin, Italian,
and English
• one of Milton‘s earliest works, 'On the
Death of a Fair Infant' (1626), was
written after his sister Anne Phillips has
suffered from a miscarriage.
• While at Cambridge he wrote a number
of his well-known shorter English poems,
among them Ode on the Morning of
Christ's Nativity, his Epitaph on the
admirable Dramatick Poet, W.
Shakespeare, his first poem to appear in
print, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso.

6. Study, poetry, and
travel
• Upon receiving his MA in 1632, Milton retired to his father’s
country homes at Hammersmith and Horton and undertook six
years of self-directed private study by reading both ancient
and modern works of theology, philosophy, history, politics,
literature and science, in preparation for his prospective
poetical career.
• Milton continued to write poetry during this period of study:
his masques Arcades and Comus were composed for noble
patrons, and he contributed his pastoral elegy Lycidas to a
memorial collection for one of his Cambridge classmates in
1638. Drafts of these poems are preserved in Milton’s poetry
notebook, known as the Trinity Manuscript because it is now
kept at Trinity College, Cambridge.
• He embarked upon a tour of France, Italy and Switzerland

7. A Married man...
• In the spring of 1642, Milton married Mary
Powell, 17 years old to his 34
• In 1643, Milton published the Doctrine and
Discipline of Divorce, which had its second, longer
edition in early 1644. In 1644, Milton also
published The Judgement of Martin Bucer
Concerning Divorce.
• Areopagitica, an oration advocating freedom of
the press, in late 1644
• when Mary Powell returned Milton had made plans
to remarry /daughter Anne was born in 1646/
• daughter Mary was born in 1648 in High Holborn

8. ...a year of sadness...
• The year 1652 was one of many personal
losses for Milton. In February, Milton lost
his sight. This prompted him to write the
sonnet "When I Consider How My Light is
Spent." In May, 1652, Mary gave birth to
a daughter, Deborah, and died a few days
later. In June, one year-old John died.

9. Civil war and prose tracts
• Milton put poetry aside and began to write anti-episcopal prose
tracts in the service of the Puritan and Parliamentary cause
• Milton’s first foray into polemics was Of Reformation touching
Church Discipline in England (1641), followed by Of Prelatical
Episcopacy, and The Reason of Church Government Urged
against Prelaty. With frequent passages of real eloquence
lighting up the rough controversial style of the period, and with
a wide knowledge of ecclesiastical antiquity, he vigorously
attacked the High-church party of the Church of England and
their leader, William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury.
• in 1644 he wrote his short tract, Of Education, urging a reform
of the national universities.
• published a series of pamphlets arguing for the legality and
morality of divorce and 1645 Poems – the only poetry of his to
see print until Paradise Lost appeared in 1667.

10. Philosophical, political,
and
religious views
Philosophy
By the late 1650s, Milton was a proponent of monism or animist materialism, the
notion that a single material substance which is "animate, self-active, and free"
composes everything in the universe: from stones and trees and bodies to minds,
souls, angels, and God. Milton devised this position to avoid the mind-body
dualism of Plato and Descartes as well as the mechanistic determinism of
Hobbes. Milton's monism is most notably reflected in Paradise Lost when he has
angels eat and have sex
Politics
Milton's fervent commitment to republicanism in an age of absolute
monarchies was both unpopular and dangerous. In coming centuries, Milton would
be claimed as an early apostle of liberalism
Religion
Milton was writing at a time of religious and political flux in England. His poetry
and prose reflect deep convictions, often reacting to contemporary
circumstances, but it is not always easy to locate the writer in any obvious
religious category. His views may be described as broadly Protestant. As an
accomplished artist and an official in the government of Oliver Cromwell, it is
not always easy to distinguish where artistic licence and polemical intent
overshadowed Milton's personal views.

11. • Like many Renaissance artists before him, Milton
integrated Christian theology into classical modes
• In his early poems, the poet narrator express a tension
between vice and virtue, the latter invariably related to
Protestantism
• In his later poems, Milton's theological concerns become
more explicit. In Of Reformation (1641), Milton
expressed his dislike for Catholicism and episcopacy,
presenting Rome as a modern Babylon, and bishops as
Egyptian taskmasters. These analogies conform to
Milton's puritanical preference for Old Testament
imagery. Milton often presents England, as an elect nation
similar to the Old Testament Israel, and shows its
leader, Oliver Cromwell, as a latter-day Moses
• The Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 began a
new phase in Milton's work:

12. • In Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson
Agonistes Milton shows the end of the godly
Commonwealth
• The Garden of Eden allegory reflects Milton's
view of England's recent Fall from Grace, while
Samson's blindness and captivity – mirroring
Milton's own failing sight – is a metaphor for
England's blind acceptance of Charles II as
king. However, despite the Restoration of the
monarchy Milton did not lose his own faith;
Samson shows how the loss of national salvation
did not necessarily preclude the salvation of
the individual, while Paradise Regained
expresses Milton's continuing belief in the
promise of Christian salvation through Jesus
Christ.

13. Poetic and dramatic
works
• L'Allegro (1631)
• Il Penseroso (1633)
• Comus (a masque)(1634)
• Lycidas (1638)
• Poems of Mr John Milton, Both English and Latin
(1645)
• Paradise Lost (1667)
• Paradise Regained (1671)
• Samson Agonistes (1671)
• Poems Upon Several Occasions (1673)

14. Political, philosophical
and religious prose
• Of Reformation (1641)
• Of Prelatical Episcopacy (1641)
• The Reason of Church Government (1642)
• Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643)
• Judgement of Martin Bucer Concerning Divorce (1644)
• Of Education (1644)
• Areopagitica (1644)
• Colasterion (1645)
• The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649)
• Defensio pro Populo Anglicano [First Defense] (1651)
• Defensio Secunda [Second Defense] (1654)
• A treatise of Civil Power (1659)
• The Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings from the Church (1659)
• The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660)
• Brief Notes Upon a Late Sermon (1660)
• History of Britain (1670)
• Artis logicae plenior institutio [Art of Logic] (1672)
• Of True Religion (1673)
• Epistolae Familiaries (1674)
• Prolusiones (1674)
• De doctrina christiana (1823)