John Milton Life, Work, and Thought

by Campbell, Gordon; Corns, Thomas N.

• ISBN13: 9780199591039
• ISBN10: 0199591032
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-12-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Written by two of the world's leading Milton scholars, widely praised as "illuminating" ( Times Literary Supplement ), "seamlessly written ( Publishers Weekly ), and "a book of permanent value" ( Literary Review ), and winner of the Milton Society's James Holly Hanford Award, this magnificent biography sheds fresh new light on the writings, the thought, and the life of poet John Milton. A more human Milton appears in these pages, a Milton who is flawed, self-contradictory, self-serving, arrogant, passionate, ruthless, ambitious, and cunning. He is also among the most accomplished writers of the period, the most eloquent polemicist of the mid-century, and the author of the finest and most influential narrative poem in English, Paradise Lost , which the book examines in detail. What Milton achieved in the face of crippling adversity, blindness, bereavement, and political eclipse, remains wondrous. Here is a fascinating biography of this towering literary figure--the first new serious study in forty years--one that profoundly challenges the received wisdom about one of England's leading poets and thinkers.

Author Biography

Gordon Campbell is Professor of Renaissance Studies at University of Leicester. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. He is a former chairman of the English Association and of the Society for Renaissance Studies He has published widely on Milton and on art and architecture, mostly for OUP.

Thomas N. Corns is Professor of English at Bangor University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the English Association. He has published six books on Milton and other books on seventeenth-century literature.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
A Note on Gates	p. xii
Maps	p. xiv-xv
Introduction	p. 1
1608-1632
Childhood	p. 7
St Paul's School	p. 19
Cambridge: The Undergraduate Years	p. 26
Cambridge: The Postgraduate Years	p. 48
1632-1639
Hammersmith	p. 67
Horton	p. 88
Italy	p. 103
1639-1649
The Crisis of Government	p. 131
The First Civil War	p. 152
The Road to Regicide	p. 186
1649-l660
The Purged Parliament	p. 203
The Protectorate	p. 250
From the Death of Oliver Cromwell to the Restoration	p. 277
1660-1674
Milton in 1660	p. 305
Surviving the Restoration	p. 307
Plague, Fire, and Paradise Lost	p. 321
The Sunlit Uplands	p. 347
1674 and after
Posthumous Life and Nachlass	p. 379
Abbreviations Used in Notes and Bibliography	p. 384
Notes	p. 386
Bibliography	p. 446
Acknowledgements	p. 473
Index	p. 477
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