Jacobean and Caroline Poetry

John Milton (1608-1674)

Life: son of a London businessman. From the beginning, showed an extraordinary talent in the study of languages: Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and modern languages. Received a Christian Humanist education. Graduated from Cambridge but did not take orders after leaving university. Conscious preparation for professional authorship from early age. Travels on the Continent visiting famous literary figures abroad. Between 1640-60 wrote a series of pamphlets defending free press (Aeropagitica, 1644), divorce, and the cause of the Commonwealth. 1642: his first marriage, his wife leaves him within a few weeks. She returns to live with Milton in 1645, gives birth to tree daughters, dies in 1652. 1651: blindness as a result of eyestrain over the years. Latin Secretary to Cromwell’s Council of State. 1656: second marriage, his second wife dies in childbirth two years later. 1660: Restoration of Charles II, although Milton defends the Commonwealth to the very last minute. Imprisoned and is in danger of execution but released on intervention from his friends (including Marvell) with a fine and the loss of his property. Lives in poverty and isolation. 1663: third marriage. Starts composing Paradise Lost, published in 1667. It is at once recognised as a supreme poetic achievement.

Periods: early period of education and poetic apprenticeship, culminating with Lycidas (1637); second period of public involvement when almost all his verse was the by-product of public events (1640-1660); mature period: Paradise Lost (1667), Paradise Regained (1671), Samson Agonistes (1671).

Style: the combination and climax of the Renaissance (rich and decorated style of writing with references to Classical literature, the ambition to write epic poetry) and the Reformation (Christian morality). Conscious preparation for the profession of authorship.

L’Allegro and Il Penseroso (1631): twin poems in tetrameter couplets. Within the framework of two contrasted days we see the cheerful, social man, and the melancholy, contemplative man.

Lycidas (1637): a pastoral elegy written in memory of a Cambridge friend. Virtue of the shepherd and peacefulness of rural life contrasted with immorality and artificiality of society. Written predominantly in pentameters but with a number of trimeter lines mixed in, with an irregular rhyme scheme but including two stanzas of ottava rima. Italian Renaissance conventions mixed with Christian references: the Good Shepherd and the Lamb of God (Christ), St Peter, and a Christian Paradise.

Sonnets: 24 sonnets between 1630-1658, five in Italian as linguistic exercises, the rest in English. On a variety of occasions, both public and private. It is not a sequence. No erotic themes. More often public than personal themes. Petrarchan sonnets but avoiding end- stopped lines. One of the great English sonneteers. Did not go back to the Elizabethan tradition, which was dead by his time. He went to Italy and absorbed and brought into England the Petrarchan tradition again. Adopts the sonnet as a continuous verse paragraph. Ignores the pause between the octave and sestet. 2

‘When I Consider How My Light Is Spent’: on his blindness. A momentary rebellion is turned to trust in God’s purpose for him.

‘On the Late Massacre in Piedmont’: written against the Pope on the massacre of the members of a religious sect in Northern Italy.

‘Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint’: on the death of his second wife. A simple, eloquent and moving sonnet.

Paradise Lost (1667): Milton’s chief epic poem on the Fall of Man and on Original Sin and about the adventures of the fallen Satan. Some argue that the main character is Satan, because he is presented to have a heroic energy that is admirable. A heroic poem. Rich and sensuous language. Carefully balanced structure of a baroque epic. Follows Renaissance conventions by including Classical references, but takes its theme from a biblical story. A traditional poem: following the Classical conventions of epic poetry: invocation, catalogue, love, war, supernatural characters, decent into the underworld, epic machinery. The aim: ‘to justify the ways of God to men’. But also: about the glory and dignity of the human condition. A great synthesis of Western culture which places the different kinds of knowledge (biblical, Classical, Medieval, Renaissance) in a logical hierarchy, and never mixes them on equal terms.

Further reading M.H. Abrams (ed.), The Norton Anthology of English Literature (New York: Norton, 1987), pp. 575-824 David Daiches, a Critical History of English Literature. Vol. 1: From the Beginnings to Milton (London: Mandarin, 1994), pp. 346-457; 390-503 Boris Ford (ed.), The Pelican Guide to English Literature. Vol.3: From Donne to Marvell (London: Penguin, 1966) Gary Waller, English Poetry of the Sixteenth Century (Harlow: Longman, 1986)