English Literature And Theory This blog contains the explanation of various critical theories that provide a new insight to view literature and interpretation of various literary texts.

John Milton is ranked very high in the history of English literature. He was man of having pure life. He is the second great poet after Shakespeare. He was a great learned man. He was also a heavy reader. Due to his heavy study, he his eye sight completely. To prove this, one of his note books contains pieces of writing taken from 80 famous writers- Greek, Latin, English, French, Italian, etc. At the same time, he was studying music.

Milton's work are basically divided into three parts. Firstly, he wrote his short poems such as L'Allegro (the happy man), IL Penseroso (the thoughtful man) . They are his political autobiography and other beautiful poems are Comus, Arcades, Lycidas(long pastoral elegy on death of a college friend). Secondly, he wrote mainly prose. Milton's prose works are bascically concerned with church's affairs, divorce and freedom. So they are not so interesting. Areopagitica is one such prose works of Milton. It is a speech for liberty of unlicensed printing (page 55). It deals with Milton's sincere belief in the importance of freedom of writing and the speech.

Lastly he wrote great poems: Paradise Lost, an epic in 12 books on the fall of man. It is great book of his life. It can be compared with almost all great epics of the classical and post classical. It contains hundreds of remarkable thoughts put into musical verse. Paradise Lost covers the whole universe including heaven and hell.

His another poem is Paradise Regained. It is a miniature epic in four books on the redemption(freedom) through Christ and his Samson Agonistes is a tragedy on the Greek model on the biblical episode. It describes Sampson's soul. In this way John Milton contributed too much in the field of literature. He is unique and great literary figure. He completely dedicated his life to encrich English literature by producing great works.