John Milton Research Paper

For centuries, John Milton has been an influence to religion with his dramatic literary works that allude to the Bible. Phrases and images from the Bible are everywhere in both his poetry and his prose (Parry, 2008). One of his most well-known biblical works that remains alive in present day literature is Paradise Lost. As of today, he is known as one of the few “creative geniuses” whose greatest works have had a major impact on world literature.

Milton was born into a middle class family in London, England on December 9, 1608 and died on November 8, 1674 in Buckinghamshire, England. He received his education St. Paul’s School, one of the largest schools in London. He then continued on to study at Christ’s College in Cambridge where he became

He also had a familiarity with Old English and Dutch as well. In May of 1638, Milton began a 13-month tour in of France and Italy where he had the privilege of meeting many important intellectuals and influential people, including Galileo. Upon returning into the countryside, he brought back with him a 16-year-old bride by the name of Mary Powel. They had four children, three daughters and one son before dying at the age of 26 in 1652. Later, Milton went on to marry twice more; Katherine Woodcock in 1656, who died giving birth in 1658, and Elizabeth Minshull in 1662 (Academy of American Poets,

The poem is an autobiographical sonnet in which Milton meditates on his own loss of sight. For most of his life, he had perfect eye vision but it was due to his late-night reading and writing on behalf of the government of the short-lived English Republic that contributed in corrupting his eyesight. The sonnet was written in the “Petrarchan” rhyme scheme associated with the fourteenth-century Italian poet Francesco Petrarca. The “Petrarchan” sonnet is divides the poem’s 14 lines into two parts; the octave and the sestet which are two different rhyme schemes (Summary and Analysis, 2014). Although Paradise Lost was his major contribution, Milton’s sonnets continue to sustain his