Reading John Milton
How to Persist in Troubled Times
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A captivating biography that celebrates the audacious, inspiring life and works of John Milton, revealing how he speaks to our times.
John Milton is unrivalled—for the music of his verse and the breadth of his learning. In this brisk, topical, and engaging biography, Stephen B. Dobranski brushes the scholarly dust from the portrait of the artist to reveal Milton's essential humanity and his unwavering commitment to ideals—freedom of religion and the right and responsibility of all persons to think for themselves—that are still relevant and necessary in our times.
Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost, is considered by many to be English poetry's masterpiece. Samuel Johnson, not one for effusive praise, claimed that from Milton's "books alone the Art of English Poetry might be learned." But Milton's renown rests on more than his artistic achievements. In a time of convulsive political turmoil, he justified the killing of a king, pioneered free speech, and publicly defended divorce. He was, in short, an iconoclast, an independent, even revolutionary, thinker. He was also an imperfect man—acrimonious, sometimes mean. Above all, he understood adversity. Afflicted by blindness, illness, and political imprisonment, Milton always sought to "bear up and steer right onward" through life's hardships.
Dobranski looks beyond Milton's academic standing, beyond his reputation as a dour and devout purist, to reveal the ongoing power of his works and the dauntless courage that he both wrote about and exemplified.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The work of John Milton is as relevant as ever, according to this dynamic study from Dobranski (Milton's Visual Imagination), a literature professor at Georgia State University. In Milton's early sonnets and elegies, the poet insisted that words had the power to challenge and defeat evil, while in his writings against Charles I, Milton argued that individuals must act of their own free will to redress tyranny. Paradise Lost, Dobranski suggests, teaches readers that "even when life is precarious...they can still triumph...if they resist temptation and stand fast," and the poem's depiction of Adam and Eve "ultimately transcends the ugly patriarchal assumption of ‘He for God only, she for God in him.' " Samson Agonistes, meanwhile, warns that doing the right thing is tough and that violence isn't always the way forward. Dobranski does a marvelous job of revealing just as much about Milton himself as he does about the man's work through close readings that create an illuminating portrait of an artist who "aspired to transcend his own limitations, defeats, and prejudices, continuing to work tirelessly and trying to... help his readers to live freely and righteously." This puts to rest the notion that Milton is just for academics.
