John Milton

John Milton

Biography:

• Born:
• December 9, 1608
• Bread Street, Cheapside, London, England
• Died:
• November 8, 1674 (aged 65)
• Bunhill, London, England
• Occupation:
• Poet, Prose Polemicist, Civil Servant for the English Commonwealth
• Influences:
• Dante Alighieri, Ludovico Ariosto, The Bible, Homer, Ovid, William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Virgil
• Influenced:
• William Blake, John Keats, Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth

• The family's financial prosperity afforded Milton to be taught classical languages, first by private tutors at home, followed by entrance to St. Paul's School at age twelve, in 1620
• Milton's father was also a composer of church music, and Milton himself experienced a lifelong delight in music.
• In 1625, Milton was admitted to Christ's College, Cambridge.

Cambridge years

• John Milton matriculated Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1625
• in preparation for becoming an Anglican priest, stayed on to obtain his Master of Arts degree on 3 July 1632
• due to his hair, which he wore long, and his general delicacy of manner, was known as the "Lady of Christ's“

• began to write poetry in Latin, Italian, and English
• one of Milton‘s earliest works, 'On the Death of a Fair Infant' (1626), was written after his sister Anne Phillips has suffered from a miscarriage.
• While at Cambridge he wrote a number of his well-known shorter English poems, among them Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, his Epitaph on the admirable Dramatick Poet, W. Shakespeare, his first poem to appear in print, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso.

Study, poetry, and travel

• Upon receiving his MA in 1632, Milton retired to his father’s country homes at Hammersmith and Horton and undertook six years of self-directed private study by reading both ancient and modern works of theology, philosophy, history, politics, literature and science, in preparation for his prospective poetical career.
• Milton continued to write poetry during this period of study: his masques Arcades and Comus were composed for noble patrons, and he contributed his pastoral elegy Lycidas to a memorial collection for one of his Cambridge classmates in 1638. Drafts of these poems are preserved in Milton’s poetry notebook, known as the Trinity Manuscript because it is now kept at Trinity College, Cambridge.
• He embarked upon a tour of France, Italy and Switzerland