MILTON, JOHN. - English poet, b. in London on 9 Dec. 1608, d. there on 8 Nov. 1674. Even before going to the University of Cambridge, the studies he had pursued as a boy had already given him a knowledge of various languages and of philosophy.
At Cambridge he distinguished himself by several Latin compositions, both in prose and in verse, and wrote his first lyric of broad scope: On the Morning of Christ's Nativity. After a stay of some years in his father's house at Horton, where he continued to study and to compose verses (to this period are to be assigned L'Allegro, Il Penseroso and Lycidas, the latter an elegy on the occasion of the death of Edward King, his companion at Cambridge), he made, in 1638-39, a journey to Italy, where he received compliments from the men of letters of our Academies (some of his poems in Italian had perhaps been written before the journey), and whence he returned to take part in the Cromwellian revolution. Having enlisted in the party of the Protector, he became secretary for the Latin letters to princes, and having abandoned, though not entirely, poetry and the realization of the projects for dramas with which he had returned from Italy, he published a considerable series of prose works of a political, religious and pedagogical character. The poem for which M. is best known, Paradise Lost, of which it is not well known in what year the poet began the drafting, came out in its first edition, in 10 books, in 1667, and in its second, in 12 books, in 1674. Paradise Regained, in 4 books, appeared in 1671, together with the tragedy Samson Agonistes.
This tragedy, which narrates, under the classical form with long monologues, lively dialogues and the comments of the chorus, the story of the biblical hero, was written at a distance of about 40 years from the other dramatic work of M., the Comus, which dates back to 1634, and which develops plastically, under the form of the masque, that is, of the musical work, the carnal temptation, violent but easily overcome. The Comus is, in a certain respect, the continuation of the medieval moralities, with the typical characters of the virtues and the vices, struggling for the possession and for the liberation of a maiden, abducted by the son of Circe, Comus.
The theme of temptation was particularly dear to M., who developed it in the two Paradises. The first, in fact, narrates, in blank verse, the expulsion of the spirits from the heavenly Paradise and that of men from the earthly Paradise. It is the archangel Raphael who recounts the first to the progenitors, while of the second the narrator is directly the poet. The description of Hell, that is, of those who have lost the eternal Paradise, opens the poem, which closes with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the earthly Paradise. They depart, "hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow," not without a hope of the future redeemer, pointed out in the prophetic vision of history made to them by the archangel Michael.
The history of the world is taken up again in Paradise Regained, which has as its theme once again a temptation, that of Christ, the New Adam. Satan causes the great ancient civilizations to pass before his spirit, in a representation that is interwoven with the temptations of which the Gospel relates.
Almost all of M.'s prose works deal with polemical subjects: on the reform of the institution of marriage, on the reform of the church, on the freedom of the press, on the defense of the republicans in their struggle against the monarchy.
At several points M.'s thought departs both from dogma and from orthodox morality.