John Milton

John Milton (December 9, 1608 – November 8, 1674) was an English poet, most famous for his blank verse epic Paradise Lost. He is also remembered for authoring the brief epic Paradise Regained, the closet drama Samson Agonistes, the monody Lycidas, and Areopagitica, a prose work that condemns pre-publishing censorship.

Milton and the Restoration

The probable onset of glaucoma, exacerbated by his incessant labours setting the typeface for numerous controversial pamphlets, eventuated in blindness, forcing him, from 1654, to dictate his verse and prose to an amanuensis. Nevertheless, he retained his office until the Restoration, after which those who collaborated with Cromwell were sought. Despite being Cromwell's Secretary for Foreign Tongues and official propagandist, Milton escaped retributive action. This seems surprising when we consider that Milton wasn't just a press secretary who wrote Latin letters to European heads of state on behalf of the English Republic; Milton had actually defended the regicide of Charles I (Charles II's father) in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1650), and Defensio pro Populo Anglicano (1651). Furthermore, Milton had also attempted to debunk the Charles I's self-portrayal as a relgious martyr in the phenomenally successful Eikon Basilike (which can be translated as 'image of the King') by his prose response, Eikonklastes (1650), a text, which as its title suggests, attempted to break the image of Charles I as a prince of peace and piety. In addition to Milton's propaganda for the English Republic in the early 1650s, vengeful royalists could also point to how Milton, in the months leading up to the Restoration Milton, had composed and published two versions of The Readie and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1659), a text that not only communicated Milton's Republican convictions, but also articulated his own personal despair and disappointment at the probable return of monarchy. However, when he was accidentally caught and was arrested in October 1659 he was not summarily executed; several influential people spoken on his behalf, including Andrew Marvell, a former assistant. Charles II decided to spare Milton, though this may have been because many royalists believed that his blindness was divine punishment for the crimes he had committed against the monarchy, and he was released from prison on December 15.

Related Topics:
Amanuensis - Restoration - Propagandist - The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates - Defensio pro Populo Anglicano - Eikon Basilike - Eikonklastes - The Readie and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth - Andrew Marvell - Charles II - December 15

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Milton then lived in retirement, devoting himself once more to poetical work, and publishing Paradise Lost in 1667, the epic by which he attained universal fame (blind and impoverished he sold the publishing rights to this work on April 27th that year for £10), to be followed by Paradise Regained, together with Samson Agonistes, a drama on the Greek model, in 1671.

Related Topics:
1667 - April 27 - 1671

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