Page 172 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

Unit 19: John Milton—Paradise Lost

Puritan revolution was tantamount, for Milton, to the people’s failure to govern themselves according Notes
to the will of God, rather than of a royal despot. England had had the opportunity to become an
instrument of God’s plan, but ultimately failed to realize itself as the New Israel. Paradise Lost was
more than a work of art. Indeed, it was a moral and political treatise, a poetic explanation for the
course that English history had taken.
Milton began Paradise Lost in 1658 and finished in 1667. He wrote very little of the poem in his own
hand, for he was blind throughout much of the project. Instead, Milton would dictate the poem to
an amanuensis, who would read it back to him so that he could make necessary revisions. Milton’s
daughters later described their father being like a cow ready for milking, pacing about his room
until the amanuensis arrived to “unburden” him of the verse he had stored in his mind.
Milton claimed to have dreamed much of Paradise Lost through the nighttime agency of angelic
muses. Besides lending itself to mythologization, his blindness accounts for at least one troubling
aspect of the poem: its occasional inconsistencies of plot. Because he could not read the poem back
to himself, Milton had to rely on his memory of previous events in the narrative, which sometimes
proved faulty.
Putting its infrequent (and certainly minor) plot defects aside, Paradise Lost is nothing short of a
poetic masterpiece. Along with Shakespeare’s plays, Milton’s Paradise Lost is the most influential
poem in English literature as well as being a basis for or prooftext of modern poetic theory.

19.1.2 Introduction to the Author

John Milton was born in London in 1608 at the height of the Protestant Reformation in England. His
father was a law writer who had achieved some success by the time Milton was born. This prosperity
afforded Milton an excellent education, first with private tutoring, then a private school, and finally
Cambridge. Milton, a studious boy, excelled in languages and classical studies.
His father had left Roman Catholicism and Milton was raised Protestant, with a heavy tendency
toward Puritanism. As a student, he wanted to go into the ministry, but was disillusioned with the
scholastic elements of the clergy at Cambridge. Cambridge, however, afforded him time to write
poetry. After Cambridge, he continued his studies for seven years in a leisurely life at his father’s
house. It was here that he wrote some of his first published poems, including “Comus” (1634) and
“Lycidas” (1638), both of which he published in 1645.
Milton toured the European continent in 1638-1639 and met many of the great Renaissance minds,
including Galileo and Grotius. The beginning of the Puritan Revolution found Milton back in
England, fighting for a more humanist and reformed church. For more than twenty years, Milton
set aside poetry to write political and religious pamphlets for the cause of Puritanism. For a time, he
served as Secretary for Foreign Tongues under Cromwell.
Milton was a mixed product of his time. On the one hand, as a humanist, he fought for religious
tolerance and believed that there was something inherently valuable in man. As a Puritan, however,
he believed that the Bible was the answer and the guide to all, even if it went against democracy
itself. Where the Bible didn’t afford an answer, Milton would turn to reason.
Milton himself was married three times, all of which were rather unhappy affairs. He defended
divorce in “The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce” in 1643. With this and other treatises, Milton
often came in conflict with the Puritanism he advocated.
At the end of the war, Milton was imprisoned for a short time for his views. In 1660, he emerged
blind and disillusioned with the England he saw around him.
Nevertheless, he was yet to write his greatest work. Paradise Lost was published in 1667, followed
by Paradise Regained in 1671. Milton’s ability to combine his poetry with his polemics in these and
other works, were the key to his genius.

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