Milton

John Milton
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John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost. Milton 's poetry and prose reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day. Writing in English, Latin, and Italian, he achieved international renown within his lifetime, and his celebrated Areopagitica (written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship) is among history 's most influential and impassioned defenses of free speech and freedom of the press. William Hayley 's 1796 biography called him the "greatest English author,"[1] and he remains generally regarded "as one of the preeminent writers in the English language,"[2] though critical reception has oscillated in the centuries since his death (often on account of his republicanism). Samuel Johnson praised Paradise Lost as "a poem which...with respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the human mind," though he (a Tory and recipient of royal patronage) described Milton 's politics as those of an "acrimonious and surly republican".[3] Because of his republicanism, Milton has been the subject of centuries of British partisanship (a "nonconformist" biography by John Toland, a hostile account by Anthony à Wood etc.).

John Milton

Portrait of John Milton in National Portrait Gallery, London ca. 1629. Unknown artist (detail) Born 9 December 1608 (Old style) Bread Street, Cheapside, London, England 8 November 1674 (aged 65) Bunhill, London, England St Giles-without-Cripplegate

Died Resting place

Occupation Poet, prose polemicist, civil servant Language English, Latin, French, German, Greek, Hebrew,

References: Beer, Anna. Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008. Campbell, Gordon and Corns, Thomas. John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Chaney, Edward, The Grand Tour and the Great Rebellion: Richard Lassels and 'The Voyage of Italy ' in the Seventeenth Century (Geneva, CIRVI, 1985) and "Milton 's Visit to Vallombrosa: A literary tradition", The Evolution of the Grand Tour, 2nd ed (Routledge, London, 2000). Dexter, Raymond. The Influence of Milton on English Poetry. London: Kessinger Publishing. 1922 Dick, Oliver Lawson. Aubrey 's Brief Lives. Harmondsworth, Middl.: Penguin Books, 1962. Eliot, T. S. "Annual Lecture on a Master Mind: Milton", Proceedings of the British Academy 33 (1947). Fish, Stanley. Versions of Antihumanism: Milton and Others. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. ISBN 978-1-107-00305-7. Gray, Thomas. Observations on English Metre. "The Works of Thomas Gray". ed. Mitford. London: William Pickering, 1835. Hawkes, David, John Milton: A Hero of Our Time (Counterpoint Press: London and New York, 2009) ISBN 1582434379 Hill, Christopher. Milton and the English Revolution. London: Faber, 1977. Hobsbaum, Philip. "Meter, Rhythm and Verse Form". New York: Routledge, 1996. Hunter, William Bridges. A Milton Encyclopedia. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1980. Johnson, Samuel. "Rambler #86" 1751. Johnson, Samuel. Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets. London: Dove, 1826. Lewalski, Barbara K. The Life of John Milton. Oxford: Blackwells Publishers, 2003. A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 5: Bullingdon Hundred. 1957. pp. 122–134. Masson, David. The Life of John Milton and History of His Time, Vol. 1. Cambridge: 1859. McCalman, Iain. et al., An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture, 1776–1832. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Milner, Andrew. John Milton and the English Revolution: A Study in the Sociology of Literature. London: Macmillan, 1981. Milton, John. Complete Prose Works 8 Vols. gen. ed. Don M. Wolfe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959. Milton, John. The Verse, "Paradise Lost". London, 1668. Peck, Francis. "New Memoirs of Milton". London, 1740. Pfeiffer, Robert H. "The Teaching of Hebrew in Colonial America", The Jewish Quarterly Review (April 1955). Rosenfeld, Nancy. The Human Satan in Seventeenth-Century English Literature: From Milton to Rochester. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Saintsbury, George. "The Peace of the Augustans: A Survey of Eighteenth Century Literature as a Place of Rest and Refreshment". London: Oxford University Press. 1946. Saintsbury, George. "A History of English Prosody: From the Twelfth Century to the Present Day". London: Macmillan and Co., 1908. Scott, John. "Critical Essays". London, 1785. Stephen, Leslie (1902). "New Lights on Milton". Studies of a Biographer 4. London: Duckworth & Co. pp. 86–129. Sullivan, Ceri. Literature in the Public Service: Divine Bureaucracy (2013). Toland, John. Life of Milton in The Early Lives of Milton. Ed. Helen Darbishere. London: Constable, 1932. von Maltzahn, Nicholas. "Milton 's Readers" in The Cambridge Companion to Milton. ed. Dennis Richard Danielson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Watts, Isaac. "Miscellaneous Thoughts" No. lxxiii. Works 1810 Wedgwood, C. V. Thomas Wentworth, First Earl of Strafford 1593–1641. New York: Macmillan, 1961. Wilson, A. N. The Life of John Milton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. External links Many 17th century digitized facsimiles of Milton 's works (http://archive.org/search.php? query=john%20geraghty%20milton) by John Geraghty "The masque in Milton 's Arcades and Comus" (http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/arts/theatre/masque_gm.htm) by Gilbert McInnis Milton 's cottage (http://www.miltonscottage.org/) Works by John Milton (http://www.gutenberg.org/author/Milton+John+(1608–1674)) at Project Gutenberg Famous quotations (http://quotationpark.com/authors/MILTON,%20John.html) Site dedicated to Milton (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/milton/) Books on Milton 's life and works (http://www.luminarium.com/sevenlit/miltonbook.htm) Works by or about John Milton (http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n78-95532) in libraries (WorldCat catalog) Open Milton (http://www.openmilton.org/) – an open set of Milton 's works, together with ancillary information and tools, in a form designed for reuse, launched on Milton 's 400th Birthday by the Open Knowledge Foundation Milton Reading Room (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/index.html) – online, almost fully annotated, collection of all of Milton 's poetry and selections of his prose Milton-L Homepage (http://www.johnmilton.org/) – a scholarly website devoted to the life, literature and times of Milton. It hosts the webpage for the Milton Society of America, as well as the Milton listserv, an Internet discussion group for Milton. John Milton index entry at Poets ' Corner (http://theotherpages.org/poems/poem-mn.html#milton) Milton 400th Anniversary (http://www.christs.cam.ac.uk/milton400) – lots of Milton material and details of the Milton 400th Anniversary Celebrations, from Christ 's College, Cambridge, where Milton studied Thomas Ellwood 's Epitaph for John Milton (http://www.quaker.org.uk/upon-excellently-learned-john-milton-epitaphthomas-ellwood) A common-place book of John Milton, and a Latin essay and Latin verses presumed to be by Milton (http://dlxs2.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=cdl;idno=cdl369). Cornell University Library Historical Monographs Collection. {Reprinted by} Cornell University Library Digital Collections (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1429740701/) "John Milton-poet or politician?" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20020307.shtml) on BBC Radio 4 's In Our Time, featuring John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden Heroic Milton: Happy Birthday (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22357) - Frank Kermode in The New York Review of Books Audio: Robert Pinsky reads "Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint" (http://poemsoutloud.net/columns/archive/the_pause_an_underestimated_element/) by John Milton (via poemsoutloud.net (http://poemsoutloud.net/)) Timeline of the Life and Works of Milton (http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php? option=com_content&task=view&id=1180&Itemid=273) at The Online Library Of Liberty (http://oll.libertyfund.org/) Areopagitica (http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/103) (Jebb ed.) [1664]. See original text in The Online Library Of Liberty (http://oll.libertyfund.org/). The Poetical Works of John Milton (http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/556), edited after the Original Texts by the Rev. H.C. Beeching M.A. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900). See original text in The Online Library Of Liberty (http://oll.libertyfund.org/). The Prose Works of John Milton (http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/1874): With a Biographical Introduction by Rufus Wilmot Griswold. In Two Volumes (Philadelphia: John W. Moore, 1847). See original text in The Online Library Of Liberty (http://oll.libertyfund.org/). The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/272), edited with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary by Evert Mordecai Clark (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1915). See original text in The Online Library Of Liberty (http://oll.libertyfund.org/) Online exhibition at Christ 's College celebrating the 400th anniversary of Milton 's birth (http://www.christs.cam.ac.uk/current-students/library/milton400/) The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/103), edited with Introduction and Notes by William Talbot Allison (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1911). See original text in The Online Library Of Liberty (http://oll.libertyfund.org/). Australian radio interview, Stephen Fallon and Nigel Smith on Milton at 400 (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2008/2329236.htm) Australian radio feature on John Milton at 400 (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/encounter/stories/2009/2536875.htm) L 'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus and other John Milton 's works (http://themilton.interfree.it/index.html) in HTML format. Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Milton&oldid=573175632" Categories: 1608 births 1674 deaths 17th-century English writers 17th-century Latin-language writers 17th-century poets Alumni of Christ 's College, Cambridge Anti-Catholicism in England Blind people from England Blind writers British republicans Burials at St Giles-without-Cripplegate Christian philosophers Christian theologians Christian writers English Dissenters English essayists English poets Epic poets John Milton Neoclassical writers People educated at St Paul 's School, London People from the City of London Post-imperial Latin poets Sonneteers This page was last modified on 16 September 2013 at 16:26. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.