McDowell Poet of Revolution

The Making of John Milton
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-0-691-20912-8
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 504 Seiten

A groundbreaking biography of Milton’s formative years that provides a new account of the poet’s political radicalization

John Milton (1608–1674) has a unique claim on literary and intellectual history as the author of both Paradise Lost, the greatest narrative poem in English, and prose defences of the execution of Charles I that influenced the French and American revolutions. Tracing Milton’s literary, intellectual, and political development with unprecedented depth and understanding, Poet of Revolution is an unmatched biographical account of the formation of the mind that would go on to create Paradise Lost—but would first justify the killing of a king.

Biographers of Milton have always struggled to explain how the young poet became a notorious defender of regicide and other radical ideas such as freedom of the press, religious toleration, and republicanism. In this groundbreaking intellectual biography of Milton’s formative years, Nicholas McDowell draws on recent archival discoveries to reconcile at last the poet and polemicist. He charts Milton’s development from his earliest days as a London schoolboy, through his university life and travels in Italy, to his emergence as a public writer during the English Civil War. At the same time, McDowell presents fresh, richly contextual readings of Milton’s best-known works from this period, including the “Nativity Ode,” “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso,” Comus, and “Lycidas.”

Challenging biographers who claim that Milton was always a secret radical, Poet of Revolution shows how the events that provoked civil war in England combined with Milton’s astonishing programme of self-education to instil the beliefs that would shape not only his political prose but also his later epic masterpiece.

Autoren/Hrsg.

McDowell, Nicholas

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Biographien & Autobiographien: Historisch, Politisch, Militärisch
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politikerbiographien
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Lyrik und Dichter
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Geschichte

Über Autor(innen)

Nicholas McDowell is Professor of Early Modern Literature and Thought at the University of Exeter. He is the author of The English Radical Imagination and Poetry and Allegiance in the English Civil Wars and the coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Milton.