Death In Milton S Poetry

"From his earliest verses (the Latin verses written at Cambridge) to his first original English poem (the Infant ode), to his masterpiece (Lycidas) and its sad echo (Epitaphium Damonis), through his mature trilogy (Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes), Milton repeatedly seeks to explain why people die. Though Milton frequently changed his mind on important subjects, his fundamental view of death did not change. Milton throughout his life insists that death, both physical and spiritual, is caused by sin. In attempting to understand the significance of this belief, Death in Milton's Poetry will suggest some major re-evaluations of old assumptions." "This book is divided into two parts. The first part contains examples of death that support Milton's belief that death is caused by sin. The second part contains poems that focus on deaths that appear to violate this belief. Since Milton illustrates his belief in his mature works, Part 1 includes Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. As the pattern of death emerges in these poems, the reader is able to see that Paradise Regained is as much about the death of Satan as it is about the life of Jesus and that Milton's drama focuses on an unregenerate Samson whose tragedy is his inability ever to reconcile with God." "The poems examined in Part 2 explain deaths that appear to violate Milton's, belief. In vindicating Milton's view of death, the Latin funeral elegies and "On the Death of a Fair Infant Dying of a Cough" form a pattern that culminates in Lycidas. Recognizing this pattern in Lycidas is indispensible to understanding the radical statement of Epitaphium Damonis, a poem that records Milton's temporary disillusionment with Christianity." "In addition to new insights into the individual poems, two patterns are highlighted. In Milton's earlier poems, readers usually have seen classicism as complementing Christianity. When Milton turns to death, however, he opposes classicism to Christianity, contrasting (except in the case of Epitaphium Damonis) the limited pagan gods of classicism with the providence of an omnipotent God. This antagonism is reinforced by another pattern that emerges in the poems. Though all sins tend to death, some sins are more fatal than others. In much of Milton's poetry, perhaps the most consistently fatal of sins was lust; and Milton frequently represents this lust as a characteristic of classicism."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

All too often, childbirth in early modern England was associated with fear, suffering and death, and this melancholy preoccupation weighed heavily on the seventeenth-century mind. This landmark study examines John Milton's life and work, uncovering evidence of the poet's engagement with maternal mortality and the dilemmas it presented. Drawing on both literary scholarship and historical research, Louis Schwartz provides important readings of Milton's poetry, including Paradise Lost, as well as a wide-ranging survey of the medical practices and religious beliefs that surrounded the perils of childbirth. The reader is granted a richer understanding of how seventeenth-century society struggled to come to terms with its fears, and how one of its most important poets gave voice to that struggle.

John Milton’s epic story of cosmic rebellion and the beginning of human history has long been considered one of the greatest and most gripping narratives ever written in English. Yet its intensely poetic language, now-antiquated syntax and vocabulary, and dense allusions to mythical and Biblical figures make it inaccessible to many modern readers. This is, as the critic Harold Bloom wrote in 2000, “a great sorrow, and a true cultural loss.” Dennis Danielson aims to open up Milton’s epic for a twenty-first-century readership by providing a fluid, accessible rendition in contemporary prose alongside the original. The edition allows readers to experience the power of the original poem without barriers to understanding.

poetry & poets.

Imagining Death in Spenser and Milton assembles a collection of essays on the compelling topic of death in two monumental representatives of the early modern canon, Edmund Spenser and John Milton. The volume draws its impetus from the conviction that death is a central, yet curiously understudied, preoccupation for Spenser and Milton, contending that death - in all its early modern reformations and deformations - is an indispensable backdrop for any attempt to articulate the relationship between Spenser and Milton.