John Milton
1 book analyzed
Biography
John Milton (1608-1674) wrote Paradise Lost between approximately 1658 and 1663, publishing it in 1667. He was completely blind by 1652 and dictated the entire poem to amanuenses — scribes who wrote down his words as he spoke them. He had served as Latin Secretary to Oliver Cromwell's revolutionary Puritan government, which had executed King Charles I in 1649 and established a republic. When the monarchy was restored in 1660 under Charles II, Milton was arrested, briefly imprisoned, and narrowly escaped execution. He was politically disgraced, financially ruined, and physically blind. Paradise Lost was composed by a man who had devoted his life to a political revolution that failed, was blind, was living under a hostile government, and believed God had called him to write the greatest poem in the English language. The poem's obsessive engagement with defeat, defiance, free will, and the meaning of political failure is inseparable from Milton's biography.