John Milton, The making of a Christian poet (1641-1644)

Abstract John Milton (1608-74), the last great poet of the English Renaissance, was educated at St Paul’ s School (c.1620-4, under Alexander Gill), and at Christ’ s College Cambridge (1625-32). After six years spent at his father’ s house in the country, where he gave himself up ‘ with the most complete leisure to reading through the Greek and Latin writers’ -a period in which he published Comus. A masque (1637), and Lycidas (1638)-he spent most of 1638---g in Italy, being accepted into the Svogliati academy in Florence, and meeting many Italian writers and musicians (including Dati, Frescobaldi, and the imprisoned Galileo). In 1640 he began tutoring private pupils in London, and became involved in controversies on behalf of the Puritans against the Church of England, publishing a series of tracts, including Areopagitica (1644). In 1649 the Council of State appointed him Secretary for the Foreign Tongues, with the duty of writing official defences of Cromwell’ s policies. Imprisoned in 1659, after the defeat of the Parliamentarians, he was allowed to resume private life, publishing Paradise Lost in 1667, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes in 1671.