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Product Summary
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Aegypan
ISBN-10: 159818167X
ISBN-13: 9781598181678
Buy.com Sku: 203834727
Publish Date: 4/10/2007
Dimensions:
(in Inches) 6.5H x 9.25L x 0.5T
Pages:
108
Age Range:
NA
See more in Literary Collections
| In purely poetic value, "Paradise Regained" is little inferior to its predecessor. There may be nothing in the poem that can quite touch the first two books of "Paradise Lost" for magnificence; but there are several things that may fairly be set beside almost anything in the last ten. The splendid "stand at bay" of the discovered tempter -- "'Tis true I am that spirit unfortunate" -- in the first book; his rebuke of Belial in the second, and the picture of the magic banquet (it must be remembered that, though it is customary to extol Milton's asceticism, the story of his remark to his third wife, and the Lawrence and Skinner sonnets, go the other way); above all, the panoramas from the mountaintop in the third and fourth; the terrors of the night of storm; the crisis on the pinnacle of the temple -- are quite of the best Milton, which is equivalent to saying that they are of the best of one kind of poetry. -- The Cambridge History of English and American Literature |
Author Bio
John Milton
John Milton was born in the Cheapside district of London in a house called "The Spreadeagle" that would later be destroyed in the Great Fire of London. His father was a real-estate agent and liturgical composer. Milton was educated at St. Paul's and Christ's College, Cambridge. After the age of twelve, young Milton, an avid student, "rarely retired to bed from my studies until midnight." He received his master's degree in 1632. Milton continued to study independently at his father's house for several years after he was graduated from Cambridge. He toured France and Italy from 1638 to 1639, returning by way of Geneva. He probably visited Galileo, then under house arrest by the Inquisition in Florence. Milton returned to England on hearing news of the outbreak of the Civil War. He worked for the republican, anti-royalist cause for several years. He became embroiled in many political controversies, however, including the question of "divorce at pleasure" on the grounds of incompatibility, of which he became a passionate advocate after his wife, Mary Powell, fled home to her parents after six weeks of marriage. She returned to him years later, and they had three daughters before she died, in 1652. His second wife died in childbirth, and he married for the third time late in life, in 1663. His defense of the execution of Charles I (at which Milton was present) earned him a post in Cromwell's government. The Stuart Restoration ended Milton's political career, but allowed him the time to return to the composition of poetry. His early poetry, beginning in the late 1620s, was often written in Latin and Greek. In his later years, however, Milton wrote only in English. His eyesight, which had been declining for a long time, failed completely due to glaucoma in 1652; he composed "Paradise Lost" in his head every night, and dictated it to a secretary the next morning. Its publication in 1667 secured a place for him in the pantheon of literature. He continued writing until his death in 1674 from the complications of gout, and in that year, a revised edition of "Paradise Lost" was published.
