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Poet of Revolution: The Making of John Milton
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.
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.
512 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 28, 2020
Very impressed indeed. I have studied a few of Milton's sonnets and read 'Paradise Lost' twice, but I am certainly no Milton scholar. Was a bit worried that I would be out of my league with this biography written by an esteemed academic, But gained a lot from reading this book and feel more confident about exploring Milton's work . Delighted to be introduced to Milton's poem 'Lycidas' .
This biography is very much about Milton's life, his evolution as a poet, his time as a student at Cambridge , and finally his travels to France and Italy, and finishes just at the British Civil Wars are breaking. Obviously the questions are raised concerning what turned Milton into a defender of the deposing of the king? And what inspired him to write 'Paradise Lost'? Hopefully they will be answered in a second part.
Also found helpful that the author looks at the whole range of Milton's influences, and tries to get beyond the polarity of Laudian/Royalist/ High Anglican v. Puritanism . Classical Paganism and the thought of Plato are shown to have impacted on Milton's work besides the religious tensions of the time. Highly Recommended.
This biography is very much about Milton's life, his evolution as a poet, his time as a student at Cambridge , and finally his travels to France and Italy, and finishes just at the British Civil Wars are breaking. Obviously the questions are raised concerning what turned Milton into a defender of the deposing of the king? And what inspired him to write 'Paradise Lost'? Hopefully they will be answered in a second part.
Also found helpful that the author looks at the whole range of Milton's influences, and tries to get beyond the polarity of Laudian/Royalist/ High Anglican v. Puritanism . Classical Paganism and the thought of Plato are shown to have impacted on Milton's work besides the religious tensions of the time. Highly Recommended.
June 9, 2021
This is an excellent introduction to Milton’s intellectual, political, religious and literary milieux.
August 24, 2021
A very thorough intellectual biography of Milton's early life, through the lens of his poetical production. Especially exemplary is McDowell's ability to depict young Milton's school and early university years within the pedagogical context.
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January 29, 2021Review here.
January 23, 2021
Thinking I would listen to a full-on bio of the life of Milton--about whom I knew not much beyond Paradise Lost, I was surprised from the get-go that this literary biography covered only about the first third of his life. I am sure that within academic and Miltonian circles, this is a spectacular work, covering as it does his own academic influences and scholarly life. But with most of it about his work, I was sometimes lost in the language of literary criticism. What I found most interesting was the realization that those in Milton, Shakespeare's, etc. time were so influenced by the early Greeks, and even the classical mythology, in a way that students in my generation grew up with Milton, Shakespeare as the classics in the canon. Admittedly, this book drove me to pull out my old Oxford Book of of Poetry to read some of his more well known poems and sonnets, and once I did, then the listening became more enjoyable. Finally, the one fun fact I will never forget is that as a young man, Milton set out to write the most famous prose poetry ever in the English language. While this volume didn't get as far as Paradise Lost, I imagine many would agree that he succeeded in that goal, a lofty goal he was not shy to declare.
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December 5, 2021"Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
O raise us up, return to us again,
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power."
William Wordsworth-London, 1802[1]
Let us never forget Milton, the first defender of regicide.[2]
-Frederick Engels, The Northern Star December 18, 1847.
"Innocence, Once Lost, Can Never Be Regained. Darkness, Once Gazed Upon, Can Never Be Lost."
John Milton
"We develop new principles for the world out of the world's own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to".
Karl Marx, Letter from the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher to Ruge (1843)
It would be perhaps an understatement to say that the poet John Milton (1608–1674) has a unique position in England's literary and intellectual history. It could also be argued that Paradise Lost and other great works could place Milton in the realm of one of the world's greatest narrative poets.
Nicholas McDowell's new book provides the reader with a competent introduction to the life of John Milton. While I do not normally pay too much attention to the title of a book, it is worth mentioning on this occasion. While Mcdowell concedes that Milton was a "poet of Revolution", he does not say that Milton was the poet of the English bourgeois revolution. McDowell deliberately downplays Milton's radicalism and his theoretical connection to groups like the Levellers, Diggers and other radical groups that appeared during the English bourgeois revolution.
A second significant omission from Mcdowell's book is his failure to show Milton's significant contemporary importance. The Poet Christopher Kempf recently issued a collection of Poems entitled What Though The Field Be Lost.[3] Kempf is a huge fan of Milton. According to Erik Schreiber, "The book takes its title from a line in Poet John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), which describes Satan's rebellion against God, his defeat and his temptation of Adam and Eve. Critics have likened the angels' uprising to a civil war, and Milton's initial attempt to write the epic was indeed interrupted by the English Civil War. It is legitimate that Kempf turned to Milton after being inspired to focus on the American Civil War".[4]
Kempf, to his eternal credit, quotes for an ordinary soldier who, even during the most bloody conflict in American history, had the outstanding ability to compare his struggle with that of Milton's, writing, "An eagle in the very midst of the thunderstorm might have experienced such confusion. Milton's account of the great battle between the forces of good and evil, which originated in this same question of secession, gives some faint idea of this artillery duel."[5]-
The biggest weakness of McDowell's book is its deliberate failure to draw any connection Milton had to radical groups such as the Levellers and Diggers. His oversight is perhaps driven more by ideological considerations than an unintended omission on McDowell's part. One such omission is Mcdowell's non-use of David William's, Milton's Leveller God.
According to John Rees, Williams has "done a considerable service in bringing out this interpretation of Paradise Lost as an account of self-determining democratic revolution. It is a powerful and closely argued reading that will repay careful consideration by all those who wish to understand Milton's purpose. But there are more difficulties in seeing this as a direct reflection of specifically Leveller politics. First, there are some circumstantial difficulties. Things said in the revolutionary 1640s do not have the same meaning when said in the late 1660s. And they are not the same said in poetry rather than pamphlet prose. A revolutionary program advanced in the heat of debate and a poetic reflection two decades later may be related, but not in simple or straightforward ways. Second, and more importantly, in concentrating on the Leveller strand of thought informing Milton's politics, Williams excludes other threads in a more varied tapestry. There are, to be sure, continuities between Milton and the Levellers, but there are also important differences. Williams has certainly done us all a service in highlighting the former, but the latter need some consideration as well.[6]
Milton was a genius for all to see, but his Dissent and radicalism did not fall from the sky. He was part of the intellectual flowering of Dissent, a complex religious and intellectual development shared by other radical elements of the English Civil War, such as the Levellers, who wanted greater equality although not for everyone in society.
Milton and the other radical groups were also part of the merchant and manufacturing classes in their struggle against the aristocracy. Milton put this struggle by the merchant and manufacturing classes into a literary form and was joined by other major figures like John Bunyan's and his world-famous Pilgrim's Progress (1678). According to Paul Mitchell, Bunyan's use of imagery" reflected deep objective changes in society that also expressed the subjective strivings for a better future".
Milton's defence of the English Revolution and his agreement with the execution of Charles I meant his work would go on to influence a whole number of French and American revolutionaries. Milton's work was also followed by major figures in the 1917 Russian Revolution. The people's commissar for the Enlightenment, Anatole Lunarcharsky, compared the Russian Revolution to Milton's. Milton is also an attractive figure for revolutionaries of today. His revolutionary fervour, unfailing attachment to the 'good old cause', commitment to human freedom, and hatred of all forms of tyranny are good examples for all revolutionaries to follow. But you would not get that from McDowell's book.
McDowell's book is not without merit. It is a groundbreaking work in many ways and contains recent archival discoveries that, on a limited basis, further our understanding of the connection between Milton and the revolution he fought for. Mcdowell, unfortunately, is not a radical. His biography is very conservative and challenges biographers such as the Marxist Christopher Hill[7] , who, unlike Mcdowell, believed Milton was radical at a very early age and became more radical during the English revolution. Also, unlike McDowell, Hill believed that Milton's prose was heavily influenced by the English bourgeois revolution and groups such as the Levellers and Diggers. McDowell mentions the Levellers only twice in the book.
McDowell believes that Milton was a great history man but does not subscribe to any materialist or Marxist view of such men. Although the great Russian Marxist G.V Plekhanov was writing about a different period of history and different historical characters, his perceptive understanding of the role great figures play in history could be applied quite easily to Milton.
Plekhanov writes, "In the history of the development of human intellect, the success of some individual hinders the success of another individual very much more rarely. But even here, we are not free from the above-mentioned optical illusion. When a given state of society sets certain problems before its intellectual representatives, the attention of prominent minds is concentrated upon them until these problems are solved. As soon as they have succeeded in solving them, their attention is transferred to another object. By solving a problem, a given talent-A diverts the attention of talent B from the problem already solved to another problem. And when we are asked: What would have happened if A had died before he had solved problem X? – we imagine that the thread of development of the human intellect would have been broken. We forget that had A died, B, or C, or D might have tackled the problem, and the thread of intellectual development would have remained intact in spite of A's premature demise.
In order that a man who possesses a particular kind of talent may, by means of it, greatly influence the course of events, two conditions are needed. First, this talent must make him more conformable to the social needs of the given epoch than anyone else: if Napoleon had possessed the musical gifts of Beethoven instead of his own military genius, he would not, of course, have become an emperor. Second, the existing social order must not bar the road to the person possessing the talent which is needed and useful precisely at the given time. This very Napoleon would have died as the barely known General, or Colonel, Bonaparte, had the old order in France existed another seventy-five years. [8]
Christopher Hill
As was said earlier, Mcdowell does not subscribe to a materialist view of historical development. The last person to place Milton within the context of the great English bourgeois revolution was the Marxist Christopher Hill. Even with a cursory look at his biography of Milton,[9] it is easy to see that it contains more insight and gives the reader a far more multifaceted view of the poet than any other biography of Milton, including McDowell's. It could be argued that this was Hill's greatest book.
Hill correctly places Milton alongside other "Bourgois radicals" of the English Revolution. While Milton was influenced by ancient writers such as Plato, Aquinas, and Homer, Hill, believed Milton's connection with radical groups such as the Levellers and Diggers and others had a far more profound impact on his thinking and actions than has been given credit.
As this quote shows, Hill did not think Milton was a Leveller but said, "Lest I be misunderstood, I repeat that I do not think Milton was a Leveller, a Ranter, a Muggletonian or a Behemist. Rather I suggest that we should see him living in a state of permanent dialogue with radical views which he could not wholly accept, yet some of which greatly attracted him. (Milton and the English Revolution [1977], 113-14)
As Andrew Milner perceptively writes, "By the standards of previous Milton criticism, Hill's Milton is boldly adventurous. It restores the poet to that social context from which he has been wrenched by the ahistorical idealism of mainstream literary criticism. Its emphasis on the radicalism both of that context and of the poet himself serves as a valuable corrective to those who have sought to subsume Milton under the mantle of conservative orthodoxy. Milton the dour Puritan is superseded by Milton, the libertarian revolutionary, and much that has previously appeared obscure becomes clarified".[10]
Conclusion
McDowell's Poet of Revolution is not a bad book and contains much that is worthwhile. However, it does not give the reader any great new insight into the English bourgeois revolution or Milton' place within that revolution. Milton was a major player in that revolution. Marxists like Hill saw the English Revolution of 1640-1660 as a bourgeois revolution. Hill also believed that paved the way for the future development of capitalism.
Figures like Milton and Oliver Cromwell were bourgeois revolutionaries who were convinced that they had divine support for their revolution. But they were not alone. Other radicals formed the left wing of this revolution. It was these groups that had an important impact on Milton's thinking as a poet and revolutionary. The next biography of Milton needs to explore this connection in greater depth.
[1] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...
[2] https://wikirouge.net/texts/en/Louis_...
[3] What Though the Field Be Lost-Poems-by Christopher Kempf- LSU Press
[4] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021...
[5] Pvt. John C. West, 4th Texas, July 27, 1863-http://atlengthmag.com/poetry/the-uni...
[6] Williams, David. Milton's Leveller God. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens UP, 2017. xviii + 494pp. ISBN 13: 9780773550339. $120.00 (cloth). Review by John Rees. https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.lonli...
[7] Milton and the English Revolution Paperback – 18 Aug. 1997
by Christopher Hill
[8] G.V. Plekhanov-On the Role of the Individual in History(1898) https://www.marxists.org/archive/plek...
[9] Milton and the English Revolution-Christopher Hill-https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...
[10] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10....
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
O raise us up, return to us again,
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power."
William Wordsworth-London, 1802[1]
Let us never forget Milton, the first defender of regicide.[2]
-Frederick Engels, The Northern Star December 18, 1847.
"Innocence, Once Lost, Can Never Be Regained. Darkness, Once Gazed Upon, Can Never Be Lost."
John Milton
"We develop new principles for the world out of the world's own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to".
Karl Marx, Letter from the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher to Ruge (1843)
It would be perhaps an understatement to say that the poet John Milton (1608–1674) has a unique position in England's literary and intellectual history. It could also be argued that Paradise Lost and other great works could place Milton in the realm of one of the world's greatest narrative poets.
Nicholas McDowell's new book provides the reader with a competent introduction to the life of John Milton. While I do not normally pay too much attention to the title of a book, it is worth mentioning on this occasion. While Mcdowell concedes that Milton was a "poet of Revolution", he does not say that Milton was the poet of the English bourgeois revolution. McDowell deliberately downplays Milton's radicalism and his theoretical connection to groups like the Levellers, Diggers and other radical groups that appeared during the English bourgeois revolution.
A second significant omission from Mcdowell's book is his failure to show Milton's significant contemporary importance. The Poet Christopher Kempf recently issued a collection of Poems entitled What Though The Field Be Lost.[3] Kempf is a huge fan of Milton. According to Erik Schreiber, "The book takes its title from a line in Poet John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), which describes Satan's rebellion against God, his defeat and his temptation of Adam and Eve. Critics have likened the angels' uprising to a civil war, and Milton's initial attempt to write the epic was indeed interrupted by the English Civil War. It is legitimate that Kempf turned to Milton after being inspired to focus on the American Civil War".[4]
Kempf, to his eternal credit, quotes for an ordinary soldier who, even during the most bloody conflict in American history, had the outstanding ability to compare his struggle with that of Milton's, writing, "An eagle in the very midst of the thunderstorm might have experienced such confusion. Milton's account of the great battle between the forces of good and evil, which originated in this same question of secession, gives some faint idea of this artillery duel."[5]-
The biggest weakness of McDowell's book is its deliberate failure to draw any connection Milton had to radical groups such as the Levellers and Diggers. His oversight is perhaps driven more by ideological considerations than an unintended omission on McDowell's part. One such omission is Mcdowell's non-use of David William's, Milton's Leveller God.
According to John Rees, Williams has "done a considerable service in bringing out this interpretation of Paradise Lost as an account of self-determining democratic revolution. It is a powerful and closely argued reading that will repay careful consideration by all those who wish to understand Milton's purpose. But there are more difficulties in seeing this as a direct reflection of specifically Leveller politics. First, there are some circumstantial difficulties. Things said in the revolutionary 1640s do not have the same meaning when said in the late 1660s. And they are not the same said in poetry rather than pamphlet prose. A revolutionary program advanced in the heat of debate and a poetic reflection two decades later may be related, but not in simple or straightforward ways. Second, and more importantly, in concentrating on the Leveller strand of thought informing Milton's politics, Williams excludes other threads in a more varied tapestry. There are, to be sure, continuities between Milton and the Levellers, but there are also important differences. Williams has certainly done us all a service in highlighting the former, but the latter need some consideration as well.[6]
Milton was a genius for all to see, but his Dissent and radicalism did not fall from the sky. He was part of the intellectual flowering of Dissent, a complex religious and intellectual development shared by other radical elements of the English Civil War, such as the Levellers, who wanted greater equality although not for everyone in society.
Milton and the other radical groups were also part of the merchant and manufacturing classes in their struggle against the aristocracy. Milton put this struggle by the merchant and manufacturing classes into a literary form and was joined by other major figures like John Bunyan's and his world-famous Pilgrim's Progress (1678). According to Paul Mitchell, Bunyan's use of imagery" reflected deep objective changes in society that also expressed the subjective strivings for a better future".
Milton's defence of the English Revolution and his agreement with the execution of Charles I meant his work would go on to influence a whole number of French and American revolutionaries. Milton's work was also followed by major figures in the 1917 Russian Revolution. The people's commissar for the Enlightenment, Anatole Lunarcharsky, compared the Russian Revolution to Milton's. Milton is also an attractive figure for revolutionaries of today. His revolutionary fervour, unfailing attachment to the 'good old cause', commitment to human freedom, and hatred of all forms of tyranny are good examples for all revolutionaries to follow. But you would not get that from McDowell's book.
McDowell's book is not without merit. It is a groundbreaking work in many ways and contains recent archival discoveries that, on a limited basis, further our understanding of the connection between Milton and the revolution he fought for. Mcdowell, unfortunately, is not a radical. His biography is very conservative and challenges biographers such as the Marxist Christopher Hill[7] , who, unlike Mcdowell, believed Milton was radical at a very early age and became more radical during the English revolution. Also, unlike McDowell, Hill believed that Milton's prose was heavily influenced by the English bourgeois revolution and groups such as the Levellers and Diggers. McDowell mentions the Levellers only twice in the book.
McDowell believes that Milton was a great history man but does not subscribe to any materialist or Marxist view of such men. Although the great Russian Marxist G.V Plekhanov was writing about a different period of history and different historical characters, his perceptive understanding of the role great figures play in history could be applied quite easily to Milton.
Plekhanov writes, "In the history of the development of human intellect, the success of some individual hinders the success of another individual very much more rarely. But even here, we are not free from the above-mentioned optical illusion. When a given state of society sets certain problems before its intellectual representatives, the attention of prominent minds is concentrated upon them until these problems are solved. As soon as they have succeeded in solving them, their attention is transferred to another object. By solving a problem, a given talent-A diverts the attention of talent B from the problem already solved to another problem. And when we are asked: What would have happened if A had died before he had solved problem X? – we imagine that the thread of development of the human intellect would have been broken. We forget that had A died, B, or C, or D might have tackled the problem, and the thread of intellectual development would have remained intact in spite of A's premature demise.
In order that a man who possesses a particular kind of talent may, by means of it, greatly influence the course of events, two conditions are needed. First, this talent must make him more conformable to the social needs of the given epoch than anyone else: if Napoleon had possessed the musical gifts of Beethoven instead of his own military genius, he would not, of course, have become an emperor. Second, the existing social order must not bar the road to the person possessing the talent which is needed and useful precisely at the given time. This very Napoleon would have died as the barely known General, or Colonel, Bonaparte, had the old order in France existed another seventy-five years. [8]
Christopher Hill
As was said earlier, Mcdowell does not subscribe to a materialist view of historical development. The last person to place Milton within the context of the great English bourgeois revolution was the Marxist Christopher Hill. Even with a cursory look at his biography of Milton,[9] it is easy to see that it contains more insight and gives the reader a far more multifaceted view of the poet than any other biography of Milton, including McDowell's. It could be argued that this was Hill's greatest book.
Hill correctly places Milton alongside other "Bourgois radicals" of the English Revolution. While Milton was influenced by ancient writers such as Plato, Aquinas, and Homer, Hill, believed Milton's connection with radical groups such as the Levellers and Diggers and others had a far more profound impact on his thinking and actions than has been given credit.
As this quote shows, Hill did not think Milton was a Leveller but said, "Lest I be misunderstood, I repeat that I do not think Milton was a Leveller, a Ranter, a Muggletonian or a Behemist. Rather I suggest that we should see him living in a state of permanent dialogue with radical views which he could not wholly accept, yet some of which greatly attracted him. (Milton and the English Revolution [1977], 113-14)
As Andrew Milner perceptively writes, "By the standards of previous Milton criticism, Hill's Milton is boldly adventurous. It restores the poet to that social context from which he has been wrenched by the ahistorical idealism of mainstream literary criticism. Its emphasis on the radicalism both of that context and of the poet himself serves as a valuable corrective to those who have sought to subsume Milton under the mantle of conservative orthodoxy. Milton the dour Puritan is superseded by Milton, the libertarian revolutionary, and much that has previously appeared obscure becomes clarified".[10]
Conclusion
McDowell's Poet of Revolution is not a bad book and contains much that is worthwhile. However, it does not give the reader any great new insight into the English bourgeois revolution or Milton' place within that revolution. Milton was a major player in that revolution. Marxists like Hill saw the English Revolution of 1640-1660 as a bourgeois revolution. Hill also believed that paved the way for the future development of capitalism.
Figures like Milton and Oliver Cromwell were bourgeois revolutionaries who were convinced that they had divine support for their revolution. But they were not alone. Other radicals formed the left wing of this revolution. It was these groups that had an important impact on Milton's thinking as a poet and revolutionary. The next biography of Milton needs to explore this connection in greater depth.
[1] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...
[2] https://wikirouge.net/texts/en/Louis_...
[3] What Though the Field Be Lost-Poems-by Christopher Kempf- LSU Press
[4] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021...
[5] Pvt. John C. West, 4th Texas, July 27, 1863-http://atlengthmag.com/poetry/the-uni...
[6] Williams, David. Milton's Leveller God. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens UP, 2017. xviii + 494pp. ISBN 13: 9780773550339. $120.00 (cloth). Review by John Rees. https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.lonli...
[7] Milton and the English Revolution Paperback – 18 Aug. 1997
by Christopher Hill
[8] G.V. Plekhanov-On the Role of the Individual in History(1898) https://www.marxists.org/archive/plek...
[9] Milton and the English Revolution-Christopher Hill-https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...
[10] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10....
July 20, 2024
As biography, this is a tome par excellence.
And there’s no overstating the fact that ‘Sublimity’ is the only word that can truly characterize Milton’s life and poetry. Even in his initial poems, such as the ‘Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’, there is a unique touch of the sublime.
The portrayal of the appalling night of the ‘Nativity’, the solemn hush of the winds, the silent stars awaiting eagerly in the steadfast blue, the advent of the ‘Divine Infant’, the flinging open of the gates of ‘Heaven’ and singing to the angels in a chorus to welcome the ‘Redeemer of mankind’, are simply sublime.
The constitutional sublimity of ‘Paradise Lost’ is the grandest feature of the poem. Here immensity communes with Infinity. It overwhelms us by the vastness of its conception. It transcends our imagination and experience. The subject-matter of this superhuman drama is the fate of Man.
The time is Eternity, the place is Infinity, and the actors are God, the Angels and the primitive parents of mankind. The poetry of Milton has the roaring Voice of the ocean in it. Other poets have given us more beauty, more philosophy, and more romance, but none has given such sublime things as Milton.
However, neither was the man’s life perfect, nor was his poetry. I’d just like to add a few points, I found missing in this book as regards the poetic art of Milton.
At the outset, the most exposed imperfection which strikes even a thoughtless reader of Milton’s poetry is its want of human interest.
Even a below par learned and loosely-trained reader such as yours truly, does not find in his poetry any sweet and homely picture of our real work-a-day world, where we live and move, love and hate, quarrel and struggle, enjoy or suffer. The magnitude of art lies in its immediacy to human life; but in this respect Milton’s poetry is despairingly deficient. Milton does fill us with admiration, or overpower us with marvel, but can never make us smile in joy or weep in sympathy.
What runs in you when you peruse Shakespeare or Dickens, Trollope, Austen, Tagore, Scott or Fielding? Do you not lose yourselves in their men and women, in their events and contraptions?
However, when you read Milton, do you not feel oppressed by a feeling of intense solitude and awe? Ever wondered why it is so? It is partly due to his choice of subjects which are far removed from our world of thought and experience.
His Cherubs and Seraphs, God and Messiah, have seldom anything common with us -- the wretched creatures of a fallen world!!
Milton’s Heaven and Hell, Chaos and Paradise, are places which transcend our common experience. This aloofness of Milton’s poetry from the world of humanity makes it unpopular with readers like us – ones with average intelligence and education.
Second critique – the man’s want of ‘humour’.. You have to agree that this is a conspicuous defect in Milton’s poetry. The intense seriousness of his mind does not allow him to indulge in humour of any kind. Moreover, the breadth of views of sympathy for man, which are essential conditions of true humour, he sadly lacks. His intensely moral nature never ripples over with genial laughter.
Half the world of man escapes the author who has no sense of humour. Intent upon the sacred meaning of life, Milton has no eye to note the forms of the grotesque hieroglyphics of human existence. He talks of God and Satan, Heaven and Hell, predestination and Freedom of Will; but he does not see human life widely and wisely enough to laugh heartily.
He horrifies us with an uninviting picture of hell-fire, dazzles us with the awful picture of the sapphire throne of God, bewilders us with the vision of wild Chaos, but hardly lives on this earth of ours in its oceanic amplitude and variety. When we read his poetry, we are tired with a monotony of seriousness, a heavy reading.
Thirdly, he is completely and absolutely devoid of LOVE. His puritanism is largely at the root of it. Though there has been scarcely any son of Adam who has not been at some time or other tempted by a daughter of Eve, their parents in Milton’s poem do not indulge in love-making. Though they are solitary under the leafy shades of Paradise, their lips do not touch, their tongues do not indulge in amorous pleasaxitries.
Fourth, the man is almost over-involved in diction and multifaceted construction. Milton’s love of digressions, ellipses, inversions, Latinisms, involutions, etc., make his sentences often contorted in structure and his meaning often obscure. His long-drawn similes, profusion of allusions, propensity to needless amplification sometimes torture his reader and make the reading his poetry a laborious, intellectual exercise.
However, once you are able to superintend the aforesaid ‘digressions’, the man is bloody dazzling.
Milton the man, Milton the poet also is a meeting point of self-contradictory elements. He is a Puritan, but has the refinement and gallantry of a Cavalier. He is a great hater of oppression, but has all the decorative qualities of a Royalist. His opinions are democratic but his tastes are those of an aristocrat.
Similarly, in his poetry we find the simplicity and romantic richness of modern art. His Adam, Eve and Satan are simple and majestic epic characters, but the dress, style and illustrations have the splendour, complexity and subtlety of modern art. Sometimes his poetry has the Holy charm of a Biblical narrative but sometimes Spenser, Tasso, Ariosto lend their rich and complex colouring in order to make his poetry a finished illustration of subtle modern art.
His poetry, in brief, is ancient art in modern disguise.
Confused? So am I. Read him to know more.
And there’s no overstating the fact that ‘Sublimity’ is the only word that can truly characterize Milton’s life and poetry. Even in his initial poems, such as the ‘Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’, there is a unique touch of the sublime.
The portrayal of the appalling night of the ‘Nativity’, the solemn hush of the winds, the silent stars awaiting eagerly in the steadfast blue, the advent of the ‘Divine Infant’, the flinging open of the gates of ‘Heaven’ and singing to the angels in a chorus to welcome the ‘Redeemer of mankind’, are simply sublime.
The constitutional sublimity of ‘Paradise Lost’ is the grandest feature of the poem. Here immensity communes with Infinity. It overwhelms us by the vastness of its conception. It transcends our imagination and experience. The subject-matter of this superhuman drama is the fate of Man.
The time is Eternity, the place is Infinity, and the actors are God, the Angels and the primitive parents of mankind. The poetry of Milton has the roaring Voice of the ocean in it. Other poets have given us more beauty, more philosophy, and more romance, but none has given such sublime things as Milton.
However, neither was the man’s life perfect, nor was his poetry. I’d just like to add a few points, I found missing in this book as regards the poetic art of Milton.
At the outset, the most exposed imperfection which strikes even a thoughtless reader of Milton’s poetry is its want of human interest.
Even a below par learned and loosely-trained reader such as yours truly, does not find in his poetry any sweet and homely picture of our real work-a-day world, where we live and move, love and hate, quarrel and struggle, enjoy or suffer. The magnitude of art lies in its immediacy to human life; but in this respect Milton’s poetry is despairingly deficient. Milton does fill us with admiration, or overpower us with marvel, but can never make us smile in joy or weep in sympathy.
What runs in you when you peruse Shakespeare or Dickens, Trollope, Austen, Tagore, Scott or Fielding? Do you not lose yourselves in their men and women, in their events and contraptions?
However, when you read Milton, do you not feel oppressed by a feeling of intense solitude and awe? Ever wondered why it is so? It is partly due to his choice of subjects which are far removed from our world of thought and experience.
His Cherubs and Seraphs, God and Messiah, have seldom anything common with us -- the wretched creatures of a fallen world!!
Milton’s Heaven and Hell, Chaos and Paradise, are places which transcend our common experience. This aloofness of Milton’s poetry from the world of humanity makes it unpopular with readers like us – ones with average intelligence and education.
Second critique – the man’s want of ‘humour’.. You have to agree that this is a conspicuous defect in Milton’s poetry. The intense seriousness of his mind does not allow him to indulge in humour of any kind. Moreover, the breadth of views of sympathy for man, which are essential conditions of true humour, he sadly lacks. His intensely moral nature never ripples over with genial laughter.
Half the world of man escapes the author who has no sense of humour. Intent upon the sacred meaning of life, Milton has no eye to note the forms of the grotesque hieroglyphics of human existence. He talks of God and Satan, Heaven and Hell, predestination and Freedom of Will; but he does not see human life widely and wisely enough to laugh heartily.
He horrifies us with an uninviting picture of hell-fire, dazzles us with the awful picture of the sapphire throne of God, bewilders us with the vision of wild Chaos, but hardly lives on this earth of ours in its oceanic amplitude and variety. When we read his poetry, we are tired with a monotony of seriousness, a heavy reading.
Thirdly, he is completely and absolutely devoid of LOVE. His puritanism is largely at the root of it. Though there has been scarcely any son of Adam who has not been at some time or other tempted by a daughter of Eve, their parents in Milton’s poem do not indulge in love-making. Though they are solitary under the leafy shades of Paradise, their lips do not touch, their tongues do not indulge in amorous pleasaxitries.
Fourth, the man is almost over-involved in diction and multifaceted construction. Milton’s love of digressions, ellipses, inversions, Latinisms, involutions, etc., make his sentences often contorted in structure and his meaning often obscure. His long-drawn similes, profusion of allusions, propensity to needless amplification sometimes torture his reader and make the reading his poetry a laborious, intellectual exercise.
However, once you are able to superintend the aforesaid ‘digressions’, the man is bloody dazzling.
Milton the man, Milton the poet also is a meeting point of self-contradictory elements. He is a Puritan, but has the refinement and gallantry of a Cavalier. He is a great hater of oppression, but has all the decorative qualities of a Royalist. His opinions are democratic but his tastes are those of an aristocrat.
Similarly, in his poetry we find the simplicity and romantic richness of modern art. His Adam, Eve and Satan are simple and majestic epic characters, but the dress, style and illustrations have the splendour, complexity and subtlety of modern art. Sometimes his poetry has the Holy charm of a Biblical narrative but sometimes Spenser, Tasso, Ariosto lend their rich and complex colouring in order to make his poetry a finished illustration of subtle modern art.
His poetry, in brief, is ancient art in modern disguise.
Confused? So am I. Read him to know more.
June 6, 2021
The first of a projected two volume intellectual biography of Milton that persuasively argues that his move away from early conformity with the Church of England and monarchical rule can be understood through an examination of his entirely conventional study of the standard grammar school curriculum, his equally conventional study of Latin and Greek classics at Cambridge and his independent post-graduate study pursued from his parental home. For McDowell, central to Milton’s intellectual progress is his dedication to applying himself to a humanist project of ‘universal’ learning which, combined with chastity and according with the Neoplatonist influences that Milton absorbed from his school and university learning, could help transform him into a ‘daemon’, a spiritually developed being above the run of humanity and approaching the angelic. By locating Milton in the advanced learning of his day, McDowell is able to offer exciting new readings of Milton’s early poetical and prose works. More broadly McDowell offers, to those - like me - who lack the language skills to enter the multi-lingual environment of elite culture in the early modern period, an overview of the structure of knowledge and pedagogy that informed even vernacular literary production such as Paradise Lost.
An immensely exciting book that prompted me to look, in translation, at the classical studies that formed part of the standard curriculum prior to the early modern period and has me, now, ploughing through the magnificent “Medieval Grammar & Rhetoric: language arts and literary theory, AD 300-1475” by Rita Copeland and Ineke Sluiter while awaiting the second volume from McDowell.
Btw - anyone who comes across this note before 16 June 2021 - there is a free online round-table book launch for ‘Poet of Revolution’ on 16 June 2021 via Eventbrite (16.30 to 18.00 BST) titled: Milton: the State of the Field. Link - here: Milton: the State of the Field Tickets, Wed, Jun 16, 2021 at 4:30 PM | Eventbrite
An immensely exciting book that prompted me to look, in translation, at the classical studies that formed part of the standard curriculum prior to the early modern period and has me, now, ploughing through the magnificent “Medieval Grammar & Rhetoric: language arts and literary theory, AD 300-1475” by Rita Copeland and Ineke Sluiter while awaiting the second volume from McDowell.
Btw - anyone who comes across this note before 16 June 2021 - there is a free online round-table book launch for ‘Poet of Revolution’ on 16 June 2021 via Eventbrite (16.30 to 18.00 BST) titled: Milton: the State of the Field. Link - here: Milton: the State of the Field Tickets, Wed, Jun 16, 2021 at 4:30 PM | Eventbrite
February 11, 2024
McDowell does something truly amazing here. He takes one of the most luminescent English poets, and dries him up so completely there is nothing left in your parched mouth but dust. Under the guise of an "intellectual biography", McDowell gives us an exhausting (not exhaustive) dissection of aspects of Milton's earlier poetry. He does this under the guise of displaying what made Milton the man he would later become. I said dissection because in the process he kills any life/spirit Milton's work has. This is not literary criticism; it is academic crucifixion.
I love Milton and want to learn about him. So I finished the book. I think I ought to get an award or something. Uffda. What a bad book.
I love Milton and want to learn about him. So I finished the book. I think I ought to get an award or something. Uffda. What a bad book.
March 27, 2022
I'm impressed by the detail of this book, extremely so, but this is closer to a 3-star on a level of pure enjoyment because it positively drowns in literary criticism that is beyond my depth. Not being intimately familiar with Milton's work beyond Paradise Lost, I'm looking forward to the second volume.
November 25, 2024
soooooooo much detail about Milton, his contemporaries, literary analysis, political subtleties. I listened to it as an audio book. Might try to come back to it after I learn more about the historical and literary context. The lively writing style kept me interested, even though a lot of it was beyond me.
October 24, 2021
If I'd read more (any) early Milton, I suspect I would have appreciated this more.
October 10, 2023
The best book on Milton I've read in some time. It's an intellectual biography with a tightly argued revisionist thesis about when and how Milton was politically radicalised. The biographical material is interspersed with some brilliant and memorable close readings of Milton's early works. I hope the author writes a second volume on Milton's later years, I would love to read more.
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