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    The Poetry of John Milton: Sparkling poems from the famed man behind Paradise Lost
    The Poetry of John Milton: Sparkling poems from the famed man behind Paradise Lost
    The Poetry of John Milton: Sparkling poems from the famed man behind Paradise Lost
    Audiobook1 hour

    The Poetry of John Milton: Sparkling poems from the famed man behind Paradise Lost

    Written by John Milton

    Narrated by Richard Mitchley, Ghizela Rowe and Gideon Wagner

    ()

    About this audiobook

    John Milton was born in Bread Street, London, on December 9th, 1608. His early years were privately tutored before gaining a place at St Paul’s School and in 1625 he matriculated at Christ's College, Cambridge, earning a BA in 1629 and an MA in 1632. At Cambridge he had developed a reputation for poetic skill but also experienced alienation from his peers and university life as a whole.

    The next 6 years were spent in private study. He read both ancient and modern works of theology, philosophy, history, politics, literature and science, in preparation for a poetical career. Milton mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Italian. To these he would add Old English (whilst researching his History of Britain) and also acquired more than a passing acquaintance in Dutch.

    Although he was studying, some of his poetry from this time is remarkable; L’Allegro and Il Penseroso in 1631 and Lycidias in 1638.

    In May 1638, Milton embarked upon a 15 month tour of France and Italy. These travels added a new and direct experience of artistic and religious traditions, especially Roman Catholicism. He cut the journey short to return home during the summer of 1639 because of what he claimed were "sad tidings of civil war in England."

    Once home, Milton wrote prose tracts against episcopacy, in the service of the Puritan and Parliamentary cause.

    He married 16-year-old Mary Powell in June 1643 but she left him after only a few months during which he wrote and published several writings on divorce. Mary did return after 3 years and their life thereafter seemed harmonious. Milton received a hostile response to the divorce tracts and drove him to write Areopagitica, his celebrated attack on pre-printing censorship.

    With the parliamentary victory in the Civil War, Milton wrote The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649) which defended popular government and implicitly sanctioned the regicide which led to his appointment as Secretary for Foreign Tongues by the Council of State.

    On 24 February 1652 Milton published his Latin defense of the English People, Defensio Pro Populo Anglicano, also known as the First Defense. Milton's Latin prose and intellectual sweep, quickly gained him a European reputation.

    Tragically his first wife, Mary, died on May 5th, 1652 following the birth of their fourth child. The following year Milton had become totally blind, probably due to glaucoma. He then had to dictate his verse and prose to helpers, one of whom was the poet Andrew Marvell.

    He married again to Katherine Woodcock but she died in February 1658, less than four months after giving birth to a daughter, who also tragically died.

    Though Cromwell’s death in 1658 caused the English Republic to collapse Milton stubbornly clung to his beliefs and in 1659 he published A Treatise of Civil Power, attacking the concept of a state-dominated church. Upon the Restoration in May 1660, Milton went into hiding for his life. An arrest warrant was issued and his writings burnt. He re-emerged after a general pardon was issued, but was nevertheless arrested and briefly imprisoned before influential friends, such as Marvell, now an MP, intervened

    His third marriage was to Elizabeth Mynshull. Despite a 31-year age gap, the marriage seemed happy and Milton spent the remaining decade of his life living quietly in London, apart from a short spell in Chalfont St. Giles, during the Great Plague of London.

    Milton was to now publish his greatest works, which had been gestating for many years.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Copyright Group
    Release dateJan 1, 2023
    ISBN9781787809123
    The Poetry of John Milton: Sparkling poems from the famed man behind Paradise Lost
    Author

    John Milton

    John Milton was a seventeenth-century English poet, polemicist, and civil servant in the government of Oliver Cromwell. Among Milton’s best-known works are the classic epic Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, considered one of the greatest accomplishments in English blank verse, and Samson Agonistes. Writing during a period of tremendous religious and political change, Milton’s theology and politics were considered radical under King Charles I, found acceptance during the Commonwealth period, and were again out of fashion after the Restoration, when his literary reputation became a subject for debate due to his unrepentant republicanism. T.S. Eliot remarked that Milton’s poetry was the hardest to reflect upon without one’s own political and theological beliefs intruding.

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