“John Milton” ( )

Study Questions 1.Mention meaningful events in Milton’s life: He was born in a well-to-do family in London He went to St Paul’s School, the birthplace of English Humanism; After Cambridge, where he took his Master of Arts degree in 1632, he wrote some poetry, travelled to Italy and came back during the Civil War. He was appointed Latin Secretary of Cromwell’s Council of State in 1649, an important position in Cromwell’s government equivalent to a modern Foreign Secretary of State. The astonishing quantity of prose works (pamphlets, foreign correspondence and papers of state) he wrote during the years of the Commonwealth cost him the loss of his eyesight. 2.In what ways did he support the Puritan cause? For almost twenty years he almost completely gave up writing poetry to devote himself to the composition of political and religious prose pamphlets in support of the Puritan government.

Study Questions 3.Give examples of the type of publications Milton devoted himself to in the years of the Civil War and the Commonwealth. Some of his prose writing had a relation to his own life as “The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce” (1643), an apology for divorce influenced by the failure of his first marriage; others came from contemporary political events like “Aeropagitica” (1644), in opposition to preventive book censorship or “Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio” (1649) written in Latin to ensure the widest diffusion to his defence of the execution of Charles I. 4.Consider the Sonnets : when were they written? How many did he write? What is their subject matter? They were written between 1637 and 1657; He wrote 24 sonnets of which five in Italian; They deal with both personal and political subjects 5.When did Milton begin writing “Paradise Lost”? After the fall of the Commonwealth he retired to private life and composed his great Christian epic poem “Paradise Lost”.