Description
Book SynopsisTHE LIFE OF THE AUTHOR
An expansive biography of John Milton, including an assessment of his poetry and prose and an account of the ways in which he has been presented over the past three and a half centurieswritten by a leading scholar in the field
It is hard to overstate the role that John Milton played in the historical, political and literary controversies of seventeenth century England; his writings and very life challenged the status quo. Living through one of the most tumultuous periods in British history, Milton was involved at every turn. Struggling to reconcile his private beliefs with his involvement with a radical political experiment, a republic which involved the killing of the monarch, his star rose and fell several times during his life. Married three times, struck blind at a cruelly early age, he was a famed pamphleteer and political activist whose revolutionary political credos placed him in mortal danger after the Restoration. Milton's varied life makes f
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
Part One Life 3
1 The City of London 5
2 Cambridge 15
3 Preparation 28
4 Travels 42
5 The Civil War 48
6 The Cromwellian Republic 69
7 The Restoration 98
8 Paradise Lost 104
9 Milton's Last Years and Paradise Regained 130
Part Two Lives After Death 139
10 The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 141
11 The Romantics and the Victorians 147
12 The Twentieth Century 157
13 Critical Theory 167
Abbreviations and Referencing 198
Bibliography 199
Index 206
