John Milton: A Short Introduction

John Milton: A Short Introduction

Using the still–evolving critical perspectives of the last fifty years, Flannagan puts the mercantile scrivener′s son and Cambridge–educated poet Milton under the microscope as a radical social theorist who believed that some monarchs deserved to be deposed or beheaded, if they became tyrants, and who believed in freedom to worship the god of one′s conscience, freedom to divorce in an unhappy marriage, and freedom from pre–publication censorship.

Flannagan examines Milton′s God as the original father figure, incorporating both genders into one as He gives birth first to Adam and then delivers Eve out of Adam′s side. Adam and Eve are the first happy couple and the first couple to argue over questions of authority, to the point where Adam considers divorce and Eve and Adam consider suicide. As the first ecologically fit couple, Adam and Eve begin life living easily within the natural world, but their fall skews Earth's axis and wrecks its delicate balance."

The book will be invaluable for undergraduate and graduate students coming to Milton for the first time and needing an introduction to the man and to his poetry and prose.

provides a readable and uncluttered critical account of a complicated and sophisticated author, and his poetry and prose.


1. Mercantile Milton.

2. Milton′s Private and Public Education.

3. Educated Milton: John Milton, Gentleman.

4. Milton and Shakespeare.

5. Milton the Omnivorous Reader.

6. Political Milton.

7. Place in History.

8.The Prodigy.

9. Milton the Friend.

10. Milton Abroad.

11. First–married Milton.

12. Milton the Divorcer.

13. Infamous Milton.

14. "The Great Milton".

15. Milton the Egoist.

16. The Myth of the Unattractive Milton.

17. Physical Appearance.

18. Class–consciousness.

19. Milton′s Sense of Humor.

20. Milton′s First Great Poem.

21. "L′Allegro".

22. "Lycidas".

23. Elegies in Latin and English.

24. Decorum, Genre, and Modes: the Nativity Ode.

25. Sonnets.

26. The Serious and Even the Puritan, Masque.

27. Arcades.

28. The Masque often known as Comus.

29. Musical Entertainment.

30. Fairy–tale Plot.

31. Politics.

32. Performance and Character.

33. The One Just Man, or Woman.

34. Against the Bishops.

35. The Reason of Church–Government.

36. Wonder Years.

37. Of Education.

38. Divorce as a Serious Subject.

39. Prose Masterpiece: Areopagitica.

40. The Blind Warrior.

41. Plans for Great Tragedies.

42. Milton′s Theological Niche.

43. The Baroque in Space and Time.

44. Blindness.

45. Narrator.

46. Solitude, Patience, etc.

47. The One Just Man.

48. Free Will, Disturbing.

49. A Creative God.

50. "Satan, He′s a Liar".

51. Satan, Sin, and Death.

52. Plot and Parallel Scenes.

53. Competitiveness.

54. Self–fashioning.

55. A Remarkable Memory.

56. Slow Reading, on Purpose.

57. Epic Similes.

58. Explication.

59. Etymology.

60. The Printing of Paradise Lost.

61. Imperialism.

62. Monarchy.

63. "Paradise Found".

64. The Plot of the Brief Epic.

65. Paradise Regain′d and the Problems of a Cold–seeming Son of God.

66. Problems of Presenting a Speaking Jesus.

67. The Son as Student.

68. Diminished Satan.

69. Epic Devices in Miniature.

70. Political Undertones.

71. Searches for Meaning in Epithets.

72. Socrates, the Biblical Job, etc.

73. Class Warfare.

74. Quiet Closure.

75. Unpretentious Poetic Style.

76. Samson Agonistes and the Problem of Dating.

77. The Plot of the Dramatic Poem.

78. The Agon or Struggle in Samson Agonistes.

79. Harapha, his Giantship.

80. The Temptations to Luxury or Idleness.

81. A Chorus You Can′t always Believe.

82. Quiet Closure of the Tragedy and the Short Epic.

83. In the End, "One′s country is where it is well with one.".

84. Aftermath: Milton′s Influence.

Works Cited.

Roy Flannagan

began what was to become the Milton Quarterly in 1967. He has been the President of the Milton Society of America, and he followed C. S. Lewis and Northrop Frye as Honored Scholar of the Society in 2001. Editor of the Riverside Milton, he is also President of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. After 32 years at Ohio University, he has taken the position of Scholar in Residence at the University of South Carolina at Beaufort.

"Flannagan is eminently qualified to explain the greatness of English poet John Milton – and he′s marvelously successful in achieving his goal[...]Fresh, fluent and witty, Flannagan′s treatment is thoroughly informed by the insights of current literary insights and is rendered without jargon." Library Journal <!––end––>

This is historically informed criticism delivered with a light and generally assured touch and, most successfully, Flannagan retains a clear focus on disclosing what is remarkable about Milton, what makes him worth the modern readers attention Flannagan has produced a helpful, lively – and intelligently illustrated – little book, to which students may with confidence be directed. Milton Quarterly