biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1608–74)
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| biography:
| Poet, born in London, UK. He studied at Cambridge, and spent six years of studious leisure at Horton, which he regarded as preparation for his life's work as a poet. There he wrote L'Allegro and Il Penseroso (1632), the masque, Comus (1633), and Lycidas (1637). He concluded his formal education with a visit to Italy (1638–9). The fame of his Latin poems had preceded him, and he was received in the academies with distinction. His revolutionary ardour during the Civil War silenced his poetic outpourings for 20 years, except for occasional sonnets, most of which were published in a volume of Poems in 1645. On his return to London in 1639 he emerged as the polemical champion of the revolution in a series of pamphlets against episcopacy (1642), on divorce (1643), in defence of the liberty of the press, Areopagitica (1644), and in support of the regicides (1649), and became official apologist for the Commonwealth. Blind from 1652, he dictated his poems to his daughters, nephews, and disciples, among them Andrew Marvell. After the Restoration he went into hiding for a short period, then devoted himself wholly to poetry, becoming widely esteemed as a poet second only to Shakespeare. The theme of his epic sacred masterpiece, Paradise Lost, on the biblical story of a man's fall from grace, had been in his mind since 1641. The first three books reflect the triumph of the godly; the last of the 12, written in 1663, are tinged with despair - as if to acknowledge that God's kingdom is not of this world. It was followed by Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes (both 1671). Milton's influence on the 18th-c poets was immense. |
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