| 約翰·彌爾頓 | |||||
| 彌爾頓 | |||||
| 出生地： | 倫敦 | ||||
閱讀米爾頓 John Milton在诗海的作品!!! | |||||
約翰·彌爾頓（John Milton,1608～1674）英國詩人、政論傢。1608年12月9日出生於倫敦一個富裕的清教徒家庭。父親愛好文學，受其影響，彌爾頓從小喜愛讀書，尤其喜愛文學。1625年16歲時入劍橋大學，並開始寫詩，1632年取得碩士學位。因目睹當時國教日趨反動，他放棄了當教會牧師的念頭，閉門攻讀文學6年，一心想寫出能傳世的偉大詩篇。
1638年彌爾頓為增長見聞到當時歐洲文化中心意大利旅行，拜會了當地的文人志士，其中有被天主教會囚禁的伽利略。彌爾頓深為伽利略在逆境中堅持真理的精神所感動。翌年聽說英國革命即將爆發，便中止旅行，倉促回國，投身革命運動。
1641年，彌爾頓站在革命的清教徒一邊，開始參加宗教論戰，反對封建王朝的支柱國教。他在一年多的時間裏發表了5本有關宗教自由的小册子，1644年又為爭取言論自由而寫了《論出版自由》。
1649年，革命陣營中的獨立派將國王推上斷頭臺，成立共和國。彌爾頓為提高革命人民的信心和鞏固革命政權，發表《論國王與官吏的職權》等文，並參加了革命政府工作，擔任拉丁文秘書職務。1652年因勞累過度，雙目失明。
1660年，王朝復闢，彌爾頓被捕入獄，不久又被釋放。從此他專心寫詩，為實現偉大的文學抱負而艱苦努力，在親友的協助下，共寫出3首長詩：《失樂園》(1667)，《復樂園》(1671)和《力士參孫》(1671)。1674年11月8日卒於倫敦。
名人傑作
約翰·彌爾頓(1608-1674)生於倫敦一個富裕的清教徒家庭，在劍橋大學求學時和畢業後一個時期，鑽研古代和文藝復興時期文學，深受人文主義思想熏陶。1638年他旅行意大利，訪問過被天主教會關在獄裏的伽利略，並和意大利的文人學者交往。1639年，英國革命形勢緊張，他回國參加反對國王和國教的鬥爭，在1641-1645年間發表過許多政論小册子，1649年共和國成立後，新政府任命他為拉丁文秘書。他寫了不少文章捍衛共和國，因積勞過度，雙目失明，但仍堅持鬥爭。王朝復闢後，他受到迫害，著作被焚毀，生活貧睏。這一時期，他完成了三部傑作：《失樂園》、《復樂園》和《力士參孫》。
彌爾頓早年的創作主要是短詩，其中較為著名的有《快樂的人》和《幽思的人》(1632)。這兩首詩描寫詩人的輕鬆愉快心情和沉思的樂趣，體現了人文主義者對生活享受的追求。他的十四行詩歌頌自由，斥責教會，或抒寫個人的情懷，藝術上有較高的成就。
彌爾頓在擔任政府職務前後寫過不少政論文，參加宗教和政治論戰。他站在清教徒立場，主張取消國教的主教制度，並在政治問題上給王黨以有力打擊。他的《論出版自由》(1644)主張言論自由，反對當權的長老派的跋扈。《論國王與官吏的職權》(1649)從《聖經》和古希臘、羅馬的政治學說中找出論據，說明人民有權廢除和殺死暴君，以堅定人民的革命信心。《為英國人民聲辯》(1651)駁斥反動派所謂英國人民犯了弒君之罪的讕言。
《失樂園》(1667)長約一萬行，分十二捲，故事取自《舊約》。夏娃和亞當因受撒旦引誘，偷吃知識樹上的禁果，違背了上帝旨令，被逐出樂園。撒旦原是大天使，但他驕矜自滿，糾合一部分天使，和上帝作戰(5、6)，於是被打到地獄裏遭受苦難(1、2)。他這時已無力反攻天堂，纔想出間接報復的辦法，企圖毀滅上帝創造的人類。上帝知道撒旦的陰謀，但為考驗人類對他的信仰，便不阻撓撒旦。撒旦衝過混沌，潛入人世，來到亞當居住的樂園(3、4)。上帝派遣拉法爾天使告訴亞當面臨的危險，同時把上帝創造世界和人類的經過告訴他(7、8)。但是亞當和夏娃意志不堅，受了撒旦的引誘，吃了禁果(9)。上帝决定懲罰他們(10)，命邁剋爾天使把他們逐出樂園，在放逐前，邁剋爾把人類將要遭遇的災難告訴了他們(11、12)。
詩人寫這首詩的目的在於說明人類不幸的根源。他認為人類由於理性不強，意志薄弱，經不起外界的影響和引誘，因而感情衝動，走錯道路，喪失了樂園。夏娃的墮落是由於盲目求知，妄想成神。亞當的墮落是由於溺愛妻子，感情用事。撒旦的墮落是由於野心勃勃，驕傲自滿。詩人通過他們的遭遇，暗示英國資産階級革命也由於道德墮落、驕奢淫逸而慘遭失敗。
彌爾頓繼承了十六世紀的人文主義思想，接受了十七世紀新科學的成就，同時對它們采取批判的態度。他肯定人生，但否定無限製的享樂。他肯定人的進取心、自豪感，但否定由此演變出來的野心和驕傲。他肯定科學，但認為科學並不是一切，有科學而沒有正義和理想，人類不會得到和平與幸福。彌爾頓的這種思想也就是革命的清教思想的反映。
彌爾頓在思想上要批判驕矜的撒旦，感情上卻同情他所處的地位，因為撒旦受上帝懲罰，很像資産階級受封建貴族的壓迫。在描繪地獄一場時，彌爾頓雖然口口聲聲說撒旦驕傲、野心勃勃，但在對話裏，在形象上，撒旦又完全是一個受迫害的革命者。這個形象十分雄偉，在兇險的地獄背景襯托下，他的戰鬥决心表現得更鮮明。撒旦說：
戰場上雖然失利，怕什麽?
這不可徵服的意志，報復的决心，
切齒的仇恨，和一種永不屈膝，
永不投降的意志——卻都未喪失。
同時通過和撒旦一起被貶入地獄的天使們的形象，詩人描繪了當年憤怒的革命戰士：
對最高的掌權者，
他們發出了怒吼，並用手中的槍，
在他們盾牌上，敲出猛烈的聲響，
憤憤然嚮頭上的天穹挑戰。
這是英國資産階級革命的不可磨滅的記錄，是卓越的藝術成就。而詩中的上帝卻顯得冷酷無情，缺乏生氣。
彌爾頓在這首詩裏對於封建貴族的放蕩生活也給予尖銳的批評。
在《失樂園》裏，彌爾頓顯示了高超的藝術。詩人的革命熱情和高遠的想象使他雕塑出十分雄偉的人物形象，如撒旦、罪惡、死亡等，描繪了壯闊的背景，如地獄、混沌、人間等。他的詩歌風格是高昂的。詩中運用了璀璨瑰麗、富有抒情氣氛的比喻，獨特的拉丁語的句法，和雄渾洪亮的音調等。在結構上，《失樂園》承繼着古希臘、羅馬史詩的傳統，成為英國文學中一部傑出的史詩。
《復樂園》(1671)四捲，根據《新約·路加福音》描述耶穌被誘惑的故事。耶穌在約旦河畔由聖徒約翰施洗後，準備公開布道，這時聖靈引他到荒郊，先要給他一次考驗。這考驗就是撒旦對他的引誘。撒旦第一天以筵席，第二天以城市的繁華和古希臘、羅馬的文學藝術引誘耶穌，都遭到拒絶。第三天撒旦使用暴力，把耶穌放在耶路撒冷的廟宇的頂上，他也毫不畏懼。後來天使們把他接下來，認為他勝利地經受了考驗，於是他開始面道，替人類恢復樂園。
《復樂園》和《失樂園》都說明了生活的引誘問題，但《失樂園》所強調的是理性控製情欲，是人文主義對生活的肯定和清教的道德觀之間的相互協調；而《復樂園》則強調信仰消除情欲，體現宗教思想的勝利，這首詩反映了革命挫敗後，詩人厭棄和抗拒復闢王朝的道德墮落和反動王朝對古代文化的歪，以鍛煉自己的性格，繼續和封建勢力作鬥爭。詩裏的耶穌念念不忘羅馬奴役下的以色列，他認為以色列的解放一時還不能實現，但是它說：“一旦那一天來臨，你不要想象我會坐失良機。”這說明了詩人對英國革命的始終不渝的態度。
《力士參孫》(1671)是一出悲劇，取材於《舊約·士師記》。參孫是以色列民族英雄，被妻子大利拉出賣給非利士敵人，眼珠被挖掉，每日給敵人推磨。一個節日，非利士人慶祝對參孫的勝利；參孫痛苦萬分，這時他父親勸他和解，大利拉的懺悔更給他以刺激，敵人赫拉發對他威脅和侮辱，這些都激發了他的戰鬥精神。在敵人威逼他表演武藝之後，他撼倒了演武大廈的支柱，整個大廈壩塌，他和敵人同歸於盡。
這出悲劇表現了堅強的革命精神。它反映了王朝闢後資産階級革命者內心的痛苦和身受的迫害。歌隊這樣責難神：
你甚至叫他們
色在邪門異教的刀劍之下，
把他們屍體丟給野狗、猛禽；
或使他們作俘虜，
或朝代改了，在暗無天日的法庭裏
受負義群氓的審判處刑。
從這裏可以看出復闢王朝如何殘酷地對待革命者，如何殺的殺，放逐的放逐，就連剋倫威爾的屍體也被梟首示衆。他們痛苦異常，憤怒無比，一定要繼續革命：
有一天神會把不可戰勝的力量
放在人民救星的手裏，
來鎮壓世間的暴力、人民的迫害者
和野獸一般狂暴的惡人。
詩人也指出深自懺悔，剋製驕矜，控製情欲，恢復信心，是資産階級革命的道路。
《力士參孫》采用了崇高嚴肅的題材，具有洶涌澎湃的感情，質樸有力的語言，活潑有節的音律。這一悲劇是彌爾頓藝術的新發展。它運用希臘悲劇形式，實際上是一部宏偉的劇詩。
彌爾頓也是英國又一位現實主義教育的重要人物。他生活於17世紀，是當時資産階級革命的出色辯護人和在文學界具有重要地位的傑出詩人。其教育觀點主要體現在1644年《論教育》這篇著名的論文之中。
彌爾頓在《論教育》一文中嚴厲批評了當時英國學校的教育。指出學校“違反常規地強迫頭腦中空無所有的孩子去寫作文、寫詩、寫演說詞”，還用很長的時間學習日常少用的希臘語和拉丁語等，浪費了青少年的寶貴青春。到了大學，經院主義的邏輯學和形而上學又成為學生的主課，無法獲得有用的知識，學生極易成為愚昧無知、唯利是圖或野心勃勃的小人。因此，這樣的教育已經到了非改革不可的程度，這是關係到民族存亡的大事。
人物簡評
英國文學中的古典主義因素早在文藝復興時期已經存在，從彌爾頓的作品中也可以看到古代文學的影響。但古典主義作為一個流派則是隨復闢王朝從法國回來之後纔形成的。英國古典主義流派依附反動封建王朝，從一開始就具有保守傾嚮。他的創始者是約翰·德萊頓(1631-1700)。他是復闢王朝的桂冠詩人，信仰天主教，他站在保守立場寫了一些政治諷刺詩、宗教論爭詩和劇本。他的文學評論如《論劇詩》(1668)和許多作品的序言，強調理性和規律，指出悲劇中三一律的重要性，主張形式完美。他推崇古希臘、羅馬作傢，但也肯定喬叟、斯賓塞、莎士比亞的成就。他觀察敏銳，對作傢的評論時有灼見，超出前人和同時代的評論傢。他的大量古典主義創作，係統的古典主義理論，他的諷刺詩的技巧，他的翻譯，他的準確平易的散文，都對18世紀英國古典主義文學有很大影響。
Very soon after his death—and continuing to the present day—Milton became the subject of partisan biographies, confirming T. S. Eliot’s belief that “of no other poet is it so difficult to consider the poetry simply as poetry, without our theological and political dispositions…making unlawful entry.” Milton’s radical, republican politics and heretical religious views, coupled with the perceived artificiality of his complicated Latinate verse, alienated Eliot and other readers; yet by dint of the overriding influence of his poetry and personality on subsequent generations—particularly the Romantic movement—the man whom Samuel Johnson disparaged as “an acrimonious and surly republican” must be counted one of the most significant writers and thinkers of all time.
Biography
The phases of Milton's life closely parallel the major historical divisions of Stuart Britain – the Caroline ancien régime, the Commonwealth of England and the Restoration – and it is important to situate his poetry and politics historically in order to see how both spring from the philosophical and religious beliefs Milton developed during the English Revolution. At his death in 1674, blind, impoverished, and yet unrepentant for his political choices, Milton had attained Europe-wide notoriety for his radical political and religious beliefs. Especially after the Glorious Revolution, Paradise Lost and his political writings would bring him lasting fame as the greatest poet of the sublime, and an unalloyed champion of liberty.
Family life and childhood
John Milton’s father, also named John Milton (1562 – 1647), moved to London around 1583 after being disinherited by his devout Catholic father, Richard Milton, for embracing Protestantism. In London, Milton senior married Sarah Jeffrey (1572 – 1637), the poet’s mother, and found lasting financial success as a scrivener (a profession that combined the functions of solicitor, realtor, public notary, and moneylender), where he lived and worked out of a house on Bread Street in Cheapside. The elder Milton was noted for his skill as a musical composer, and this talent left Milton with a lifetime appreciation for music and friendship with musicians like Henry Lawes.
After Milton was born on 9 December 1608, his father’s prosperity provided his eldest son with private tutoring, and a place at St Paul's School in London, where he began the study of Latin and Greek that would leave such an imprint on his poetry. The fledgling poet, whose first datable compositions are two psalms done at age 15 at Long Bennington, was remarkable for his work ethic: "When he was young," recalled Christopher, his younger brother, "he studied very hard and sat up very late, commonly till twelve or one o'clock at night." Milton was born on Bread Street, the same road where The Mermaid Tavern was located, where legend has it that Ben Jonson and other poets often caroused.
Cambridge years
John Milton matriculated Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1625 and, in preparation for becoming an Anglican priest, stayed on to obtain his Master of Arts degree on 3 July 1632. At Cambridge Milton befriended Anglo-American dissident and theologian, Roger Williams. Milton tutored Williams in Hebrew in exchange for lessons in Dutch. Though at Cambridge he developed a reputation for poetic skill and general erudition, Milton experienced alienation from his peers and university life as a whole. Watching his fellow students attempting comedy upon the college stage, he later observed that 'they thought themselves gallant men, and I thought them fools'. The feeling it seems was mutual; Milton, due to his hair, which he wore long, and his general delicacy of manner, was known as the "Lady of Christ's", an epithet probably applied with some degree of scorn. At some point Milton was probably rusticated for quarrelling with his tutor, which reflects the general disdain in which he held the university curriculum, consisting of stilted formal debates on abstruse topics conducted in Latin. Yet his corpus is not devoid of “quips, and cranks, and jollities,” notably his sixth prolusion and his jocular epitaphs on the death of Hobson, the driver of a coach between Cambridge and London. While at Cambridge he wrote a number of his well-known shorter English poems, among them Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, his Epitaph on the admirable Dramatick Poet, W. Shakespeare, his first poem to appear in print, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso.
Study, poetry, and travel
Upon receiving his MA in 1632, Milton retired to his father’s country homes at Hammersmith and Horton and undertook six years of self-directed private study by reading both ancient and modern works of theology, philosophy, history, politics, literature and science, in preparation for his prospective poetical career. Milton’s intellectual development can be charted via entries in his commonplace book, now in the British Library. As a result of such intensive study, Milton is considered to be among the most learned of all English poets; in addition to his six years of private study, Milton had command of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Italian from his school and undergraduate days; he also added Old English to his linguistic repertoire in the 1650s while researching his History of Britain, and probably acquired proficiency in Dutch soon after.
Milton continued to write poetry during this period of study: his masques Arcades and Comus were composed for noble patrons, and he contributed his pastoral elegy Lycidas to a memorial collection for one of his Cambridge classmates in 1638. Drafts of these poems are preserved in Milton’s poetry notebook, known as the Trinity Manuscript because it is now kept at Trinity College, Cambridge.
After completing his course of private study in early 1638, Milton embarked upon a tour of France and Italy in May of the same year that was cut short 13 months later by what he later termed ‘sad tidings of civil war in England.’ Moving quickly through France, where he met Hugo Grotius, Milton sailed to Genoa, and quickly took in Pisa before he arrived in Florence around June. Florence, Rome, Naples, and Venice were Milton’s primary stops on his lengthy Italian visit, during which his candor of manner and erudite neo-Latin poetry made him many friends in intellectual circles. Milton met a number of famous and influential people through these connections, ranging from the astronomer Galileo to the nobleman Giovanni Battista Manso, patron of Torquato Tasso, to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, nephew of Pope Urban VIII. After some time spent in Venice and other northern Italian cities, Milton returned to England in July via Switzerland and France.
Overall, in Italy Milton rejoiced in discovering the intellectual community he had missed at Cambridge—he even altered his handwriting and pronunciation of Latin to make them more Italian. At the same time, his firsthand observation of what he viewed as the superstitious tyranny of Catholicism increased his hatred for absolutist confessional states.
Civil war, prose tracts, and marriage
Upon returning to England, where the Bishops' Wars suggested that armed conflict between King Charles and his parliamentary opponents was imminent, Milton put poetry aside and began to write anti-episcopal prose tracts in the service of the Puritan and Parliamentary cause. Milton’s first foray into polemics was Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England (1641), followed by Of Prelatical Episcopacy, the two defences of Smectymnuus (an organization of Protestant divines named from their initials: the "TY" belonged to Milton's favorite teacher from St Paul's, Thomas Young), and The Reason of Church Government Urged against Prelaty. With frequent passages of real eloquence lighting up the rough controversial style of the period, and with a wide knowledge of ecclesiastical antiquity, he vigorously attacked the High-church party of the Church of England and their leader, William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Though supported by his father’s investments, at this time Milton also became a private schoolmaster, educating his nephews and other children of the well-to-do. This experience, and discussions with educational reformer Samuel Hartlib, led him to write in 1644 his short tract, Of Education, urging a reform of the national universities.
In June 1642, Milton took a mysterious trip into the countryside and returned with a 16-year-old bride, Mary Powell. A month later, finding life difficult with the severe 33-year-old schoolmaster and pamphleteer, Mary returned to her family. Because of the outbreak of the Civil War, she did not return until 1645; in the meantime her desertion prompted Milton, over the next three years, to publish a series of pamphlets arguing for the legality and morality of divorce. It was the hostile response accorded the divorce tracts that spurred Milton to write Areopagitica, his celebrated attack on censorship. In the midst of the excitement attending the possibility of establishing a new English government, Milton published his 1645 Poems—the only poetry of his to see print until Paradise Lost appeared in 1667.
Secretary of Foreign Tongues
With the parliamentary victory in the Civil War, Milton used his pen in defence of the republican principles represented by the Commonwealth. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649) defended popular government and implicitly sanctioned the regicide; Milton’s political reputation got him appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues by the Council of State in March 1649. Though Milton's main job description was to compose the English Republic's foreign correspondence in Latin, he also was called upon to produce propaganda for the regime and to serve as a censor. In October 1649 he published Eikonoklastes, an explicit defence of the regicide, in response to the Eikon Basilike, a phenomenal best-seller popularly attributed to Charles I that portrayed the King as an innocent Christian martyr.
A month after Milton had tried to break this powerful image of Charles I (the literal translation of Eikonklastes is 'the image breaker'), the exiled Charles II and his party published a defence of monarchy, Defensio Regia Pro Carolo Primo, written by one of Europe's most renowned orators and scholars, Claudius Salmasius. By January of the following year, Milton was ordered to write a defence of the English people by the Council of State. Given the European audience and the English Republic's desire to establish diplomatic and cultural legitimacy, Milton worked much slower than usual, as he drew upon the vast array of learning marshalled throughout his years of study to compose a suitably withering riposte. On 24 February 1652 Milton published his Latin defence of the English People, Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio, also known as the First Defence. Milton's pure Latin prose and evident learning, exemplified in the First Defence, quickly made him the toast of all Europe. In 1654, in response to a Royalist tract, Regii sanguinis clamor, that made many personal attacks on Milton, he completed a second defence of the English nation, Defensio secunda, which praised Oliver Cromwell, now Lord Protector, while exhorting him to remain true to the principles of the Revolution. Alexander More, to whom Milton wrongly attributed the Clamor, published an attack on Milton, in response to which Milton published the autobiographical Defensio pro se in 1655. In addition to these literary defences of the Commonwealth and his character, Milton continued to translate official correspondence into Latin. The probable onset of glaucoma finally resulted by 1654 in total blindness, forcing him to dictate his verse and prose to amanuenses, one of whom was the poet Andrew Marvell.
After bearing him four children—Anne, Mary, John, and Deborah—Milton’s wife, Mary, died on May 5, 1652 from complications following Deborah's birth on May 2. In June, John died at age 15 months; Milton’s daughters survived to adulthood, but he always had a strained relationship with them. On November 12, 1656, Milton remarried, this time to Katherine Woodcock. Her death on February 3, 1658, less than four months after giving birth to their daughter, Katherine, who also died, prompted one of Milton’s most moving sonnets.
Milton and the Restoration
Milton later in lifeThough Cromwell’s death in 1658 caused the English Republic to collapse into feuding military and political factions, Milton stubbornly clung to the beliefs which had originally inspired him to write for the Commonwealth. In 1659 he published A Treatise of Civil Power, attacking the concept of a state church (known as Erastianism), as well as Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove hirelings, denouncing corrupt practises in church governance. As the Republic disintegrated Milton wrote several proposals to retain parliamentary supremacy over the army: A Letter to a Friend, Concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth, written in October 1659 in response to General Lambert’s recent dissolution of the Rump Parliament; Proposals of certain expedients for the preventing of a civil war now feared in November; and finally, as General Monck marched toward London to restore the Stuart monarchy, two editions of The Ready and Easy Way to Establishing a Free Commonwealth, an impassioned, bitter, and futile jeremiad damning the English people for backsliding from the cause of liberty.
Upon the Restoration in May 1660, Milton went into hiding for his life as a warrant was issued for his arrest and his writings burnt. Re-emerging after a general pardon was issued, he was nevertheless arrested and briefly imprisoned before influential friends, such as Marvell, now an MP, intervened. On February 24, 1663 Milton remarried, for a third and final time, a Wistaston, Cheshire-born woman Elizabeth (Betty) Minshull, then aged 24, and spent the remaining decade of his life living quietly in London, with the exception of retiring to a cottage in Chalfont St. Giles (his only extant home) during the Great Plague. Milton died of kidney failure on 8 November 1674 and was buried in the church of St Giles Cripplegate; according to an early biographer, his funeral was attended by “his learned and great Friends in London, not without a friendly concourse of the Vulgar.”
Paradise Lost
Main article: Paradise Lost
Milton’s magnum opus, the blank-verse epic poem Paradise Lost, which appeared in a quarto edition in 1667, was composed by the blind Milton from 1658-1664. It reflects his personal despair at the failure of the Revolution, yet affirms an ultimate optimism in human potential. Milton encoded many references to his unyielding support for the “Good Old Cause.” Though Milton notoriously sold the copyright of this monumental work to his publisher for a seemingly trifling £10, this was not a particularly outlandish deal at the time. Milton followed up Paradise Lost with its sequel, Paradise Regained, published alongside the tragedy Samson Agonistes, in 1671. Both these works also resonate with Milton’s post-Restoration political situation. Just before his death in 1674, Milton supervised the release of a second edition of Paradise Lost, accompanied by an explanation of “why the poem rhymes not” and prefatory verses by Marvell. Milton republished his 1645 Poems in 1673, as well a collection of his letters and the Latin prolusions from his Cambridge days. A 1668 edition of Paradise Lost, reported to have been Milton's personal copy, is now housed in the archives of the University of Western Ontario.
During the Restoration Milton also published several minor prose works, such as a grammar textbook, his Art of Logic, and his History of Britain. His only explicitly political tracts were the 1672 Of True Religion, arguing for toleration (except for Catholics), and a translation of a Polish tract advocating an elective monarchy. Both these works participated in the Exclusion debate that would preoccupy politics in the 1670s and 80s and precipitate the formation of the Whig party and the Glorious Revolution. Milton's unfinished religious manifesto, De doctrina christiana, in which he laid out many of his heretical views, was not discovered and published until 1823.
Philosophical, political, and religious views
In all of his strongly held opinions, Milton can generally be called a "party of one" for going well beyond the orthodoxy of the time. Milton's idiosyncratic beliefs stemmed from the Puritan mandate emphasis on the centrality and inviolability of conscience.
Philosophy
By the late 1650s, Milton was a proponent of monism or animist materialism, the notion that a single material substance which is "animate, self-active, and free" composes everything in the universe: from stones and trees and bodies to minds, souls, angels, and God. Milton devised this position to avoid the mind-body dualism of Plato and Descartes as well as the mechanistic determinism of Hobbes. Milton's monism is most notably reflected in Paradise Lost when he has angels eat (5.433-39) and have sex (8.622-29).
Politics
Milton's fervent commitment to republicanism in an age of absolute monarchies was both unpopular and dangerous. In coming centuries, Milton would be claimed as an early apostle of liberalism.
Religion
Milton was writing at a time of religious and political flux in England. His poetry and prose reflect deep convictions, often reacting to contemporary circumstances, but it is not always easy to locate the writer in any obvious religious category. His views may be described as broadly Protestant. As an accomplished artist and an official in the government of Oliver Cromwell, it is not always easy to distinguish where artistic licence and polemical intent overshadow Milton's personal views.
Milton embraced many theological views that put him outside of contemporary Christianity. A prime example is Milton's rejection of the Trinity in the belief that the Son was subordinate to the Father, a position known as Arianism; and his probable sympathy with Socinianism (modern-day Unitarianism), which held that Jesus was not divine. Another controversial view Milton subscribed to, illustrated by Paradise Lost, is mortalism, the belief that the soul dies with the body. Milton abandoned his campaign to legitimize divorce after 1645, but he expressed support for polygamy in the De doctrina christiana, the unpublished theological treatise that provides evidence for his heretical views.
Like many Renaissance artists before him, Milton integrated Christian theology into classical modes. In his early poems, the poet narrator express a tension between vice and virtue, the latter invariably related to Protestantism. In Comus Milton may make ironic use of the Caroline court masque by elevating notions of purity and virtue over the conventions of court revelry and superstition. In his later poems, Milton's theological concerns become more explicit. In his 1641 treatise, Of Reformation, Milton expressed his dislike for Catholicism and episcopacy, presenting Rome as a modern Babylon, and bishops as Egyptian taskmasters. These analogies conform to Milton's puritanical preference for Old Testament imagery. Through the Interregnum, Milton often presents England, rescued from the trappings of a worldly monarchy, as an elect nation akin to the Old Testament Israel, and shows its leader, Oliver Cromwell, as a latter-day Moses. These views were bound up in Protestant views of the Millennium, which some sects, such as the Fifth Monarchists predicted would arrive in England. The Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 began a new phase in Milton's work. In Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes Milton mourns the end of the godly Commonwealth. The Garden of Eden allegory reflects Milton's view of England's recent Fall from Grace, while Samson's blindness and captivity – mirroring Milton's own failing sight – is a metaphor for England's blind acceptance of Charles II as king. However, despite the Restoration of the monarchy Milton did not lose his own faith; Samson shows how the loss of national salvation did not necessarily preclude the salvation of the individual, while Paradise Regained expresses Milton's continuing belief in the promise of Christian salvation through Jesus Christ.
Though he may have maintained his personal faith in spite of the defeats suffered by his cause, the Dictionary of National Biography recounts how he had been alienated from the Church of England by Archbishop William Laud, and then moved similarly from the Dissenters by their denunciation of religious tolerance in England. "Milton had come to stand apart from all sects, though apparently finding the Quakers most congenial. He never went to any religious services in his later years. When a servant brought back accounts of sermons from nonconformist meetings, Milton became so sarcastic that the man at last gave up his place".
Legacy and influence
Milton's literary career cast a formidable shadow over English poetry in the 18th and 19th centuries; he was often judged equal or superior to all other English poets, including Shakespeare. We can point to Lucy Hutchinson's epic poem about the fall of Humanity, Order and Disorder (1679), and John Dryden's The State of Innocence and the Fall of Man: an Opera (1677) as evidence of an immediate cultural influence.
The influence of Milton's poetry and personality on the literature of the Romantic era was profound: the relationship is a quintessential example of Harold Bloom's "anxiety of influence." William Wordsworth began his sonnet "London, 1802" with "Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour" and modeled The Prelude, his own blank verse epic, on Paradise Lost. John Keats found the yoke of Milton's style debilitating; he exclaimed that "Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful or rather artist's humour." Keats felt that Paradise Lost was a "beautiful and grand curiosity," but his own unfinished attempt at epic poetry, Hyperion, is said to have suffered from Keats's failed attempt to cultivate a distinct epic voice. Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein draws heavily on Paradise Lost. The novel begins with a quotation from Paradise Lost, and the relationship between the Creature and Frankenstein is often seen as a metaphor for the relationship between God and Adam in Paradise Lost.
The Victorian age witnessed a continuation of Milton's influence; George Eliot and Thomas Hardy being particularly inspired by Milton's poetry and biography. By contrast, the early 20th century, owing to the critical efforts of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, witnessed a reduction in Milton's stature.
Aside from his importance to literary history, Milton's career has influenced the modern world in other ways. Milton coined many words that are now familiar; in Paradise Lost readers were confronted by neologisms like dreary, pandæmonium, acclaim, rebuff, self-esteem, unaided, impassive, enslaved, jubilant, serried, solaced, and satanic.
In the political arena, Milton's Areopagitica and republican writings were consulted during the drafting of the Constitution of the United States of America. Also, the quotation from Areopagitica – "A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life" – is seen in many public libraries, including the New York Public Library.
The John Milton Society for the Blind was founded in 1928 by Helen Keller to develop an interdenominational ministry that would bring spiritual guidance and religious literature to deaf and blind persons.
See also
Robert Overton
Milton's Cottage
Poetic and dramatic works
L'Allegro (1631)
Il Penseroso (1633)
Comus (a masque)(1634)
Lycidas (1638)
Poems of Mr John Milton, Both English and Latin (1645)
Paradise Lost (1667)
Paradise Regained (1671)
Samson Agonistes (1671)
Poems, &c, Upon Several Occasions (1673)
Political, philosophical and religious prose
Of Reformation (1641)
Of Prelatical Episcopacy (1641)
Animadversions (1641)
The Reason of Church Government (1642)
Apology for Smectymnuus (1642)
Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643)
Judgement of Martin Bucer Concerning Divorce (1644)
Of Education (1644)
Areopagitica (1644)
Tetrachordon (1645)
Colasterion (1645)
The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649)
Eikonoklastes (1649)
Defensio pro Populo Anglicano [First Defense] (1651)
Defensio Secunda [Second Defense] (1654)
A treatise of Civil Power (1659)
The Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings from the Church (1659)
The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660)
Brief Notes Upon a Late Sermon (1660)
Accedence Commenced Grammar (1669)
History of Britain (1670)
Artis logicae plenior institutio [Art of Logic] (1672)
Of True Religion (1673)
Epistolae Familiaries (1674)
Prolusiones (1674)
A brief History of Moscovia, and other less known Countries lying Eastward of Russia as far as Cathay, gathered from the writings of several Eye-witnesses (1682)
De doctrina christiana (1823)
Trivia
Singer/Songwriter Tom Milton from the Punk Rock band Super Games is a direct descendant of John Milton.
Al Pacino's character in the movie The Devil's Advocate is named John Milton. In the movie Milton is Satan, in the guise of a lawyer.
References
^ “Annual Lecture on a Master Mind: Milton,” Proceedings of the British Academy 33 (1947): p. 63.
^ David Masson, The Life of John Milton and History of His Time, vol. 1 (Cambridge: 1859), pp. v-vi.
^ for map, see http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/6372.php
^ Barbara K. Lewalski,The Life of John Milton (Oxford: Blackwells Publishers, 2003), p.3.
^ Robert H. Pfeiffer, "The Teaching of Hebrew in Colonial America" The Jewish Quarterly Review, (April 1955), pp. 363-373, accessed through JSTOR
^ John Milton, Complete Prose Works, vol. I gen. Ed. Don M. Wolfe, 8 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), pp. 887-8.
^ Lewalski, Life of Milton, p. 103.
^ Milton, Complete Prose Works, vol. IV, ed.Wolfe, pp. 618-9.
^ John Toland, Life of Milton (1698), in Helen Darbishere, ed., The Early Lives of Milton (London: Constable, 1932), p. 193.
^ Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (New York: Viking 1977).
^ A.N. Wilson, The Life of John Milton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 241-42.
^ See, for instance, Barker, Arthur. Milton and the Puritan Dilemma, 1641-1660. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1942: 338 and passim; Wolfe, Don M. Milton in the Puritan Revolution. New York: T. Nelson and Sons, 1941: 19.
^ Stephen Fallon, Milton Among the Philosophers (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 81.
^ Milton and Republicanism, ed. David Armitage, Armand Himy, and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
^ John Rogers, The Matter of Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. xi.
^ John Milton, The Christian Doctrine in Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Hughes (Hackett: Indianapolis, 2003), pp. 994-1000; Leo Miller, John Milton among the Polygamophiles (New York: Loewenthal Press, 1974)
^ Nardo, Anna, K. George Eliot’s Dialogue with Milton