Overview

“Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.”

~ John Milton

John Milton was the perfect model of the engaged citizen who is necessary for the success of a democracy--despite the struggles of the Protector, Oliver Cromwell and the restoration of the Stuart line with the ascension of Charles II in 1660--and despite Milton's near execution after the Restoration.  He was extremely erudite and considered the last person to have read everything: his densely allusive works provide some of the most difficult and most rewarding reading in English. Additionally, he was multilingual; he wrote in English, Latin, Greek, and Italian and knew French, Spanish, Dutch, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac.

Like the democratic citizen, he was deeply intellectually engaged in the religious, political, and social issues of his time.  His sometimes untimely support of Oliver Cromwell and Parliament caused his imprisonment and, but for the assistance of his Cavalier friend Andrew Marvell, would have also caused his untimely death.  He was a strong Puritan. He had very strong opinions on virginity--for women and for men--and strong and unusual opinions about divorce for this time.  In fact, he was known to be a radical thinker, a regicide, and a propagandist in his own day.

While the literary canon creates many legitimate controversies, if there is one author besides Shakespeare who has a permanent position among Western classics, it is John Milton.  His works will make you love the ability of language to deepen our lives, make you savor his masterful syntax, and will make you embrace more of what it means to be human--our opportunities to be perfect and the very humanity that makes us fall.  To read Milton is to savor our very humanity.