Poems
- An Epitaph On The Admirable Dramatic Poet W. Shakespeare
- An Epitaph On The Marchioness Of Winchester
- Another On The Same
- Arcades
- At A Solemn Music
- At A Vacation Exercise In The Colledge, Part Latin, Part English. The Latin Speeches Ended, The English Thus Began
- At A Vatican Exercise (Excerpt)
- Comus (Excerpts)
- Cyriack, Whose Grandsire
- From 'Arcades'
Analysis of poems
- An Epitaph On The Admirable Dramatic Poet W. Shakespeare
- An Epitaph On The Marchioness Of Winchester
- Another On The Same
- Arcades
- At A Solemn Music
- At A Vacation Exercise In The Colledge, Part Latin, Part English. The Latin Speeches Ended, The English Thus Began
- At A Vatican Exercise (Excerpt)
- Comus (Excerpts)
- Cyriack, Whose Grandsire
- From 'Arcades'
Quotes
''A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy.''
All quotationsThe themes John Milton wrote about
Biography
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth (republic) 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", and he remains generally regarded "as one of the preeminent writers in the English language"; 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 Johnson (a Tory and recipient of royal patronage) described his politics as those of an "acrimonious and surly republican".
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.).
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