Coming of Age as a Poet

Coming of Age as a Poet

Author: Helen Vendler

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 9780674010246

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With characteristic precision, authority, and grace, Vendler helps readers to appreciate the conception and practice of poetry as she explores four poets and their first "perfect" works. 4 halftones.


Poet of Revolution

Poet of Revolution

Author: Nicholas McDowell

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2022-10-25

Total Pages: 512

ISBN-13: 0691241732

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A groundbreaking biography of Milton’s formative years that provides a new account of the poet’s political radicalization John Milton (1608–1674) has a unique claim on literary and intellectual history as the author of both Paradise Lost, the greatest narrative poem in English, and prose defences of the execution of Charles I that influenced the French and American revolutions. Tracing Milton’s literary, intellectual, and political development with unprecedented depth and understanding, Poet of Revolution is an unmatched biographical account of the formation of the mind that would go on to create Paradise Lost—but would first justify the killing of a king. Biographers of Milton have always struggled to explain how the young poet became a notorious defender of regicide and other radical ideas such as freedom of the press, religious toleration, and republicanism. In this groundbreaking intellectual biography of Milton’s formative years, Nicholas McDowell draws on recent archival discoveries to reconcile at last the poet and polemicist. He charts Milton’s development from his earliest days as a London schoolboy, through his university life and travels in Italy, to his emergence as a public writer during the English Civil War. At the same time, McDowell presents fresh, richly contextual readings of Milton’s best-known works from this period, including the “Nativity Ode,” “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso,” Comus, and “Lycidas.” Challenging biographers who claim that Milton was always a secret radical, Poet of Revolution shows how the events that provoked civil war in England combined with Milton’s astonishing programme of self-education to instil the beliefs that would shape not only his political prose but also his later epic masterpiece.


A Reader's Guide to John Milton

A Reader's Guide to John Milton

Author: Marjorie Hope Nicolson

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 1998-02-01

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 9780815604969

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Marjorie Nicolson—one of the foremost authorities on Milton—examines Milton's work, beginning with the famous Minor Poems, "L'Allegro," "II Penseroso," "Comus" (and "Arcades"), and "Lycides." She explores Milton's middle years, when he was diverted from poetry to become Latin Secretary under Oliver Cromwell. Finally, she looks at the great poems, including a book-by-book analysis of Paradise Lost and a careful reading of Milton's poetic "closet drama," Samson Agonistes.


John Milton

John Milton

Author: Harold Bloom

Publisher: Infobase Publishing

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 85

ISBN-13: 143811575X

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Provides insight into six of Milton's most influential works along with a short history of the poet.