John Milton | Early Works and Influences
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John Milton was a mixed product of various ideas that we influential during his time. His grandfather was a Catholic but his father favored Protestantism. He chose to side with Puritan ideology. He had influences of John Donne and his tutor Thomas Young carved his political and religious thoughts. Despite being an ardent supporter of Puritanism, John Milton went against the puritan ideas about Divorce and wrote his four tracts on Divorce. So while for a Puritan, Bible is the ultimate truth, Milton wasn’t so sure of it. He was an ardent fan of science and met Galileo during his time in Italy. Galileo was the only contemporary living person that he mentioned in his magnum opus Paradise Lost. He was among the very few such puritans who accepted and supported the Heliocrantric view of Galileo without a fuss.
During his days in Italy, he associated himself with Humanism. The humanist ideal of the renaissance period was that God has made man in his own image and hence, there is something inherently valuable in man. Yet, he was a staunch puritan too. All his works are inspired by Bible. The basic story of Paradise Lost is taken from Bible. In other works of Milton too, he mentions Christ again and again.
At Horton, during the outbreak of plague, he invested six years only in reading Greek and Latin authors. He was inspired by Holmer, Ovid, and Vergil. Another important influence that is visible in his poetic works is that of Edmund Spenser. Many critics suggest that the writing style of Paradise Lost is akin to that of Faerie Queen by Spenser.
Another important literary aspect that influenced John Milton appeared from the Elizabethan dramatists such as Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Milton was particularly intrigued by William Shakespeare. His first published poem was titled ‘On Shakespeare’ which was anonymously included in the second folio of Shakespeare’s plays in 1632. Milton’s use of unrhymed lines in blank verse in his magnum opus Paradise Lost became the first instance of the use of blank verse in poetry. Before Milton, only dramatists used Blank Verse. Milton not only employed Blank Verse in Paradise Lost, but he used it in Samson Agonistes, and Paradise Regained too.
So, we can summarize the influences on Milton as a) Metaphysical Poets (He heard sermons of John Donne and Andrew Marvell was his close associate), b) Puritanism and Presbyterianism, c) Renaissance Humanism, d) Greek and Latin classics of Holmer Ovid, and Vergil, e) Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Tale, and f) William Shakespeare.
Influences of John Milton
John Milton is considered one of the best English poets of all time. John Dryden in 1677 described Milton as the poet of the sublime. Poets of the 18th century, including Alexander Pope, and Samuel Johnson revered and praised John Milton. Samuel Johnson wrote many essays on Paradise Lost and mentioned John Milton in his book Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets.
Voltaire was too impressed by Milton as he mentioned him in his work The Age of Louis XIV as ‘Milton remains the glory and wonder of England.’
William Blake was an ardent fan of John Milton and considered him the major English poet. According to Blake, Edmund Spenser was the pre-cursor of Milton while he considered himself as the poetical son of Milton.
During the Romantic age, Edmund Burke described Milton’s description of Hell in Paradise Lost as the best example of the sublime aesthetic concept. Burke believed that it was as difficult as to put ‘mountain tops, a storm at sea, and infinity’ alongside each other, and Milton did it easily in his own poetic manner. In his book, 'The Beautiful and Sublime', Burke mentions Milton as, "No person seems better to have understood the secret of heightening, or of setting terrible things, if I may use the expression, in their strongest light, by the force of a judicious obscurity than Milton."
Milton was the first to use strong Blank Verse in poems. Most of the romantic poets praised Milton’s use of blank verse though they had reservations about his religious thoughts. William Wordsworth praised Milton in his sonnet ‘London 1802.’ He begins the sonnet London 1802 as "Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour". He further addresses Milton and says, ‘Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart, Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea,” Wordsworth and Samuel T. Coleridge collaborated to produce a philosophical poem larger than Paradise Lost in Miltonian style using Blank Verse. Though the plan didn’t work, Wordsworth’s biographical poem 'The Prelude' was written in Blank Verse and was inspired by Paradise Lost. Similarly, John Keats described Paradise Lost as "beautiful and grand curiosity.” However, he couldn’t use Miltonian verse himself with elan when he tried to write his epic poem Hyperion that he never completed.
During the Victorian age, T.S. Eliot, Harold Bloom, and Ezra Pound criticized Milton. T.S Eliot said “Milton’s poetry could only be an influence for the worse upon any poet whatever,” and that the “bad influence may be traced much farther than upon bad poets “and we still have to struggle against it. According to T.S. Eliot, ‘Milton writes English like a dead language.’
Harold Bloom in his work The Anxiety of Influence wrote, "Milton is the central problem in any theory and history of poetic influence in English.”
Despite such critics, Milton continued to enjoy praise as other victorian authors like George Eliot and Thomas Hardy were inspired by him.
Milton’s Areropagitica influenced the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Initial Works of Milton
The very first work by Milton that we will discuss is ‘On Morning of Christ’s Nativity’ also known as the Nativity Ode. It is a poem about the birth of Christ and the birth of a poet. Milton wrote this poem for the celebrations of his 21st birthday. The poem is about his leap into the world and begins his career as a poet, author. It was not the first poem that Milton wrote, yet he considered it his beginning as a poet. In 1645, When Milton published his collection of Poems, he kept Nativity Ode at the beginning. The poets of the 17th century often wrote about Christ’s birth. Some of such very popular poems were written by Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, and others. While the central focus of poems by other poets used to be the miracle of Christ’s birth and Mother Mary’s love for her son, Milton’s ode focussed more on the history and development of Christianity and how the birth of Christ influenced it.
Milton’s poem is more about the capacity of an individual to bring noteworthy changes. He not only describes how Christ served humanity, but he also stresses his own duties towards England and humanity. It is a long 27 stanza poem that was longer than any other poem on Christ’s birth written before it. Milton was a student at Cambridge University when he wrote this poem in 1629. The poem is divided into two sections, the first section is a four stanza introduction and the other section is titled Hymn which is a 27 stanza poem. The poem describes how Christ took birth and overthrew the false gods and rulers, and how he was crucified. He brings upon the necessity of political change to end the reign of Charles I. He presents Christ’s birth as a model for revolutionaries against the tyrant monarch.
The next work by Milton that we will discuss is ‘On Shakespeare’. It was the very first published poem of Milton in English. Milton wrote ‘On Shakespeare’ in 1630 and it was published anonymously in 1632 in the second folio of Shakespeare’s collection of dramas. It is a 16-lines long epigram in which Milton praises Shakespeare and says that there is no need to make any monument as a tribute to Shakespeare as no man-made monument is a suitable tribute to Shakespeare’s achievement. According to Milton, Shakespeare himself created the most enduring monument to befit his genius: the readers of the plays, who, transfixed with awe and wonder, become living monuments, a process renewed at each generation through the panorama of time. Milton describes Shakespeare as ‘Son of Memory,’ and ‘Heir of Fame.’
The third work by Milton that we will discuss is his famous poem ‘On Arriving at the Age 23.’
Milton wrote this poem in 1632 just after he graduated from Cambridge University. It was for the celebration of his 23rd birthday. It is a sonnet of personal meditation. Milton talks about how he would like to use his talent to glorify God. Milton mentions a time in the beginning line as the thief of youth. Milton suggests that he has little time as he is now 23 years old, yet he hasn’t achieved any noteworthy milestone. It is as if someone at the age of 23 is looking back at his years and wondering that he hasn’t done anything noteworthy till now, he has just wasted his time. Milton here acknowledges that he may not seem as mature as some of his contemporaries but expresses a desire to use his talents well and his trust in God's will for him over time. He then uses the metaphor of the seasonal cycle to express different stages of life. He says that youth is like spring, summer symbolizes the prime time of life, autumn is middle age, and winter is like old age. He mentions that currently, he is in the late spring season.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss other important works of John Milton. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards.
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