John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought

by Gordon Campbell, Thomas N. Corns

This book re-examines scrupulously the writings and the life records of John Milton, in the context of a proper understanding of the recent developments in seventeenth-century historiography. Milton's thought has often been too simply described. The approach here is to interrogate more sceptically notions like puritanism, republicanism, radicalism, and dissent. A more complex story emerges, of Milton's culturally rich but ideologically conformist early decades, andof his radicalisation during the later years of Laudianism. We track the internal dynamics of English puritanism in the 1640s and the impact that has on his own convictions. In the 1650s Milton's thought and beliefs were reconciled to the role as public servant. In the 1660s a renewed confidencecarried him towards the completion of his greatest project, Paradise Lost, and his final years were ones of creative fulfilment and renewed political engagement. Amid the discontinuities occasioned by shifting political circumstance, by the exigencies of polemical context, and the diversity of genres in which he wrote, Milton emerged as a major political thinker and significant systematic theologian, as well as the most eloquent prose writer and most accomplished poet of the age. Amore human Milton appears in these pages, flawed, self-contractory, self-serving, arrogant, passionate, ruthless, ambitious, and cunning, as well as the literary genius who achieved so much.

Genres: Biography, History, British Literature, 21st Century, Renaissance, Poetry

505 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 15, 2007

About the author

Gordon Campbell is a professor, a Renaissance and seventeenth-century specialist with a particular interest in John Milton, and well known for his expertise regarding the King James Bible. His broader interests in cultural history include art, architecture, Biblical studies, classical antiquity, garden history, legal history, historical theology and the Islamic world.

Reviews

[John]

I suppose such a biography as this should be written. Its authors are the first in over a century to review all archival materials and all known life records in preparing this book. It focuses almost entirely on events and dates, and resembles nothing so much as an extended encyclopedia article. I would never have picked it up except that Milton is among the very few writers who fascinate me entirely. The authors attempt in a very limited manner to describe the 'trajectory' of Milton's life, which is helpful, but not very informative, because they've added nothing new that I can discern so far. The attempt not at all to convey a sense of what the experience of 'being Milton' might have been.

[Heidi Smith]

Some useful info, but overall rather boring, and I didn’t have enough context to understand the tangential stuff

[Sophia Roberts]

An informative and erudite book that explains much about the forces that shaped Milton's thinking.

[Patricia]

"This is a hero's life, though his heroism is of a rare kind. . . What he achieved in the face of crippling adversity, blindness, bereavement, political eclipse, remains wondrous." In its best passage, this book was a passionate work of scholarship. But sometimes a little peculiar in its conclusions. Why, for instance, insist that circumstances made Milton emphasize spiritual rather than physical aspects of companionship in the divorce tracts?