Milton

by Pattison, Mark

• ISBN13: 9781108034753
• ISBN10: 1108034756
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-11-24
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

This life of John Milton was first published in the English Men of Letters series in 1879. Its author, Mark Pattison (1813-84) spent most of his adult life in Oxford, as a student, a tutor, and eventually, from 1861, Rector of Lincoln College. Pattison's scholarly interest in religious thought in England, and in the history of classical learning after the Renaissance, made him the ideal biographer for the poet whose writing life was spent in justifying God's ways to man, and whose knowledge of Greek and Latin literature was almost unmatched. Pattison sees the life as divided into three periods: he provides a narrative of events and an analysis of Milton's literary output (both verse and prose) for each. The final chapter is a discussion of the major poems: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, concluding with the assertion of Milton's supremacy over all English writers except Shakespeare.

Table of Contents

First Period. 1608âÇô39

Family - school - college

Residence at Horton - l'Allegro - Il Penseroso - Arcades - Comus - Lycidas

Journey to Italy

Second Period. 1640âÇô60

Education theory - teaching

Marriage and pamphlet on divorce

Pamphlets

Biographical. 1640âÇô9

The Latin secretaryship

Milton and Salmasius - blindness

Milton and Morus - the second defence âÇô the defence for himself

Latin secretaryship comes to an end - Milton's friends

Third Period. 1660âÇô74

Biographical - literary occupation - religious opinions

Paradise Lost - Paradise Regained - Samson Agonistes

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