John Milton summary

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John Milton, (born Dec. 9, 1608, London, Eng.—died Nov. 8?, 1674, London?), English poet and pamphleteer. Milton attended the University of Cambridge (1625–32), where he wrote poems in Latin, Italian, and English; these include the companion poems “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso,” both written c. 1631. In 1632–39 he engaged in private study—writing the masque Comus (first performed 1634) and the elegy “Lycidas” (1638)—and toured Europe, spending most of his time in Italy. Concerned with the republican cause in England, he spent much of 1641–60 pamphleteering for civil and religious liberty and serving in Oliver Cromwell’s government. His best-known prose is in the pamphlets Areopagitica, on freedom of the press, and Of Education (both 1644). He also wrote tracts on divorce and against the monarchy and the Church of England. He lost his sight c. 1651 and thereafter dictated his works. After the Restoration he was arrested as a prominent defender of the Commonwealth but was soon released. Paradise Lost (1667, 1674), considered the greatest epic poem in English, uses blank verse and reworks Classical epic conventions to recount the Fall of Man; Milton’s characterization of Satan has been widely admired. Paradise Regained (1671) is a shorter epic in which Christ overcomes Satan the tempter, and Samson Agonistes (1671) is a dramatic poem in which the Old Testament figure conquers self-pity and despair to become God’s champion. History of Britain was incomplete when published in 1670, and an unfinished work on theology was discovered in 1823. Milton is generally considered the greatest English poet after William Shakespeare.

Puritanism Summary

Puritanism, a religious reform movement in the late 16th and 17th centuries that sought to “purify” the Church of England of remnants of the Roman Catholic “popery” that the Puritans claimed had been retained after the religious settlement reached early in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Puritans

pamphlet Summary

Pamphlet, brief booklet; in the UNESCO definition, it is an unbound publication that is not a periodical and contains no fewer than 5 and no more than 48 pages, exclusive of any cover. After the invention of printing, short unbound or loosely bound booklets were called pamphlets. Since polemical

poetry Summary

Poetry, literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience or a specific emotional response through language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. (Read Britannica’s biography of this author, Howard Nemerov.) Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and

epic Summary

Epic, long narrative poem recounting heroic deeds, although the term has also been loosely used to describe novels, such as Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and motion pictures, such as Sergey Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible. In literary usage, the term encompasses both oral and written compositions.