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Milton, John (1608–1674) 
 
English poet and prose writer. His epic Paradise Lost (1667) is one of the landmarks of English 
literature. Early poems, including Comus (a masque performed in 1634) and Lycidas (an elegy, 
1638), showed Milton's outstanding lyric gift. He also wrote many pamphlets and prose works, 
including Areopagitica (1644), which opposed press censorship. 
Born in Cheapside, London, and educated at St Paul's School and Christ's College,
Cambridge, Milton was a scholarly poet, ambitious to match the classical epics, and with strong 
theological views. He published prose works on republicanism and
church government. His middle years were devoted to the Puritan cause and writing pamphlets, 
including The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643), which may have been based on his 
own experience of marital unhappiness. In 1643 Milton married Mary Powell, the 17-year-old 
daughter of an Oxfordshire cavalier. After an attempt to seek a divorce, she returned to Milton 
and three daughters were born of the marriage; they later became his somewhat unwilling 
scribes. In 1649 Milton's reputation as a Latinist led to his appointment as Latin secretary to the 
Council of State. During his time as secretary to the lord protector, Oliver Cromwell and the 
Council of State, Milton's assistants, as his sight failed, included English poet Andrew Marvell. 
In 1652 his wife died and four years later he married Katherine Woodcock; both she and their 
baby daughter died in childbirth in 1658. At the Restoration he was deprived of his office, and 
had to go into hiding; but on the intercession of Marvell, and perhaps English poet and dramatist 
William Davenant, his name was included in the amnesty. In 1663 he married his third wife, 
Elizabeth Minshull, aged 25, who appears to have given him domestic happiness in his last 
years. Paradise Lost and the less successful sequel Paradise Regained (1671) were written when 
he was blind and in some political danger (after the restoration of Charles II), as was the 
dramatic poem Samson Agonistes (1671). In addition to his blindness, Milton suffered from 
gout; his strength gradually declined. He died in 1674 and was buried in the chancel of St Giles, 
Cripplegate, London. 
 Questions: 
1.
What works written by John Milton do you know? 
2.
Will you comment on the titles of his works?
3.
What influence did John Bunyan make upon the English literature? 
4.
What is the main idea of the “Paradise Lost”? 
5.
What do you know about John Dryden ?