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John Milton (1608 – 1674) Lecture 16 (A) by Asher Ashkar Gohar 1 Credit Hr JOHN MILTON (1608 – 1674) LECTURE 16 (A) BY ASHER ASHKAR GOHAR 1 CREDIT HR. INTRODUCTION: John Milton (1608 – 1674), the last great poet of the English Renaissance, laid down in his work the foundations for the emerging aesthetic of the post-Renaissance period. Milton had a concept of the public role of the poet even more elevated than Jonson’s, because he declared his hope to do for his native tongue what “the greatest and choicest wits of Athens, Rome, or modern Italy” had done for theirs. He wished to “contribute to the progress of real and substantial liberty, which is to be sought for not from without, but within.” Therefore, his early verse aligned him, poetically and politically, with the Spenserians due to his religious and pastoral odes. His Lycidas (1637), is a pastoral elegy that incidentally bewails the state of the church; and Comus (1634), is a masque against “masquing,” performed privately in the country and opposing a private heroism in chastity and virtue to the courtly round of revelry and pleasure. He was also well read in Latin and modern Italian literature and was ambitious to write, in English, a poem to compare with Virgil’s Aeneid. During the Civil Wars and the Cromwellian republic (1642–60), Milton saw his role as the intellectual serving the state in a glorious cause. He devoted his energies to pamphleteering, first in the cause of church reform and then in defense of the fledgling republic, and he became Latin secretary to Cromwell’s Council of State. INTRODUCTION: The republic of virtue failed to materialize, and the Cromwellian settlement was swept aside in 1660 by the returning monarchy. Milton showed himself virtually the last defender of the republic with his tract The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660), a courageous but desperate program for a permanent oligarchy of the Puritan elect, the only device he could suggest to prevent the return to royal slavery. Milton’s greatest achievements were yet to come, for Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes were not published until after the Restoration (1660). For Milton and his contemporaries, 1660 was a watershed that necessitated a complete rethinking of assumptions and a corresponding reassessment of the literary language, traditions, and forms appropriate to the new age. MILTON’S LIFE: This literary genius whose fame and influence are second to none, and on whose life and works more commentary is written than on any author except Shakespeare, was born on 9th December, 1608. Three days later, at the parish church of All Hallows, also on Bread Street, he was baptized into the Protestant faith of the Church of England. His parents were John Milton , Sr., and Sara Jeffrey Milton , and the place of birth was the family home, marked with the sign of the spread eagle, on Bread Street, London. He compares his father’s talent at musical composition, harmonizing sounds to numbers and modulating the voices of singers, to his own dedication to the muses and to his developing artistry as a poet. The father’s “generosities” and “kindnesses” enabled the young man to study Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, and Italian.” In the years 1618-1620 Milton was tutored in the family home. One of his tutors was Thomas Young, who became chaplain to the English merchants in Hamburg during the 1620s. Though he departed England when Milton was approximately eleven years old, Young’s impression on the young pupil was long standing. Two of Milton’s familiar letters, as well as “Elegia quarta” (Elegy IV), are addressed to Young. From 1620 until 1625 Milton attended St. Paul’s School, within close walking distance of his home and within view of the cathedral, where almost certainly he heard the sermons of Dr. John Donne, who served as dean from 1621 until 1631. MILTON’S LIFE: On 9 April 1625 Milton , then sixteen years of age, matriculated at Christ’s College, Cambridge, evidently in preparation for the ministry. For seven years he studied assiduously to receive the bachelor of arts degree (1629) and the master of arts degree (1632). By 1632 Milton had completed a sizable body of poetry. At St. Paul’s he had translated and paraphrased Psalms 114 and 136 from Greek into English. Throughout his Cambridge years he composed many of the poems in the 1645 volume: the seven Latin elegies (three verse letters, two funeral tributes, a celebration of spring, and an acknowledgment of the power of Cupid), other Latin verse, seven prolusions, six or seven sonnets (some in Italian), and numerous poems in English. His works in English during this period include “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” “The Passion,” “On Shakespeare,” the Hobson poems, “L’Allegro,” and “Il Penseroso.” While at Cambridge it was the desire of his parents that Milton should take orders in the Church of England; but the intense love of mental liberty which stamped the Puritan was too strong within him, and he refused to consider the "oath of servitude," as he called it, which would mark his ordination. Throughout his life Milton, though profoundly religious, held aloof from the strife of sects. In belief, he belonged to the extreme Puritans, called Separatists, Independents, Congregationalists, but he refused to be bound by any creed or church discipline. Having spent seven years at Cambridge, Milton entered into studious leisure at his parents’ home in Hammersmith (1632-1635) and then at Horton (1635-1638). Perhaps he was caring for his parents in their old age because his sister and brother were unable to do so. MILTON’S LIFE: Out of solitude, where his talent was perfected, Milton entered the busy world where his character was to be proved to the utmost. From Horton he traveled abroad, through France, Switzerland, and Italy, everywhere received with admiration for his learning and courtesy, winning the friendship of the exiled Dutch scholar Grotius, in Paris, and of Galileo in his sad imprisonment in Florence. He was on his way to Greece when news reached him of the break between king and parliament. However, Milton's opportunity to serve came in the crisis of 1649. The king had been sent to the scaffold, paying the penalty of his own treachery, and England sat shivering at its own deed, like a child or a Russian peasant who in sudden passion resists unbearable brutality and then is afraid of the consequences. The last part of Milton's life is a picture of solitary grandeur unequaled in literary history. Milton was immediately marked for persecution; he remained for months in hiding; he was reduced to poverty, and his books were burned by the public hangman. His daughters, upon whom he depended in his blindness, rebelled at the task of reading to him and recording his thoughts. The exact date and location of Milton’s death remain unknown, but most likely he died in London on November 8, 1674, from complications of the gout (possibly renal failure). He was buried inside St. Giles Cripplegate Church in London. Milton’s reputation as one of the finest English poets was widespread soon after his death. While most of the critical attention was directed at Paradise Lost, it is essential to realize that his other works drew extensive commentary. Such commentary and the controversies that it ignites demonstrate that Milton’s poetry, like his prose, has durability and applicability beyond the era in which it was composed. It is not simply of an age but for all time. MILTON’S WORKS Milton’s most important early poems, Comus and Lycidas, are major literary achievements, to the extent that his reputation as an author would have been secure by 1640 even without his later works. Comus, a dramatic entertainment, or masque, is also called A Mask. It was first published as A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle in 1638, but, since the late 17th century, it has typically been called by the name of its most vivid character, the villainous Comus. Performed in 1634 on Michaelmas (September 29) at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire, Comus celebrates the installation of John Egerton, earl of Bridgewater and Viscount Brackley and a member of Charles I’s Privy Council, as lord president of Wales. Late in 1637 Milton composed a pastoral elegy called “Lycidas,” which commemorates the death of a fellow student at Cambridge, Edward King, who drowned while crossing the Irish Sea. Published in 1638 in Justa Edouardo King Naufrago (“Obsequies in Memory of Edward King”), a compilation of elegies by Cambridge students, “Lycidas” is one of several poems in English, whereas most of the others are in Greek and Latin. As a pastoral elegy—often considered the most outstanding example of the genre—Milton’s poem is richly allegorical. King is called Lycidas, a shepherd’s name that recurs in Classical elegies. By choosing this name, Milton signals his participation in the tradition of memorializing a loved one through pastoral poetry, a practice that may be traced from ancient Greek Sicily through Roman culture and into the Christian Middle Ages and early Renaissance. MILTON’S WORKS The most renowned tract by Milton is Areopagitica (1644), which opposes governmental licensing of publications or procedures of censorship. Milton contends that governments insisting on the expression of uniform beliefs are tyrannical. In his tract, he investigates historical examples of censorship, which, he argues, invariably emanate from repressive governments. The aim of Areopagitica, he explains, is to promote knowledge, test experience, and strive for the truth without any hindrances. Milton composed it after the manner of a Classical oration of the same title by Isocrates, directed to the Areopagus, or Athenian council.
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