Milton

Jhon Milton was born in 1608 and was from London, the son of a musician. Milton
graduated from Cambridge, where he wrote his first works (in Latin and Italian, as
well as in English).

His literary work is characterized by the deliberate distortion of the genres

connected to aristocratic culture, which he totally reworked in order to make them
completely different from the traditional ones.

The nature of this "subversion" of genres already emerges clearly in the pastoral
elegy Lycidas. Tirsi's lament for the premature death of Lycidas in a shipwreck does
merges in a meditation on the limits and vanity of every human activity, even the
most noble, and on the inconsistency of fame when it does not take root in the soil
of the spiritual world.

The pastor in this elegy strips himself of Arcadian trappings, or rather he exhibits and
denounces their conventionality, to take on his ecclesiastical meaning; in fact, there
are various criticisms of the corruption of the clergy.

The Miltonian pastor therefore becomes the bearer of a double identity, classical
and Christian, he becomes the poet-intellectual who must direct his flock of readers
towards righteousness and eternal salvation.

The two «twin poems> L' Allegro and II Penseroso also play a leading role
They are both composed of a sonnet followed by a longer poem, and describe what
according to the author are the two different but not antithetical attitudes through
which human beings in general and intellectuals specifically can face the world.

In these two poems we find images taken from classical mythology, from medieval
tradition and from English folklore. Here Milton contrasts the cheerful man with the
contemplative man and what emerges most clearly from the two poems is above all
the fact that Milton seems to identify with the contemplative man; that is, that type
of man who has a more meditative, introspective and thoughtful approach to life.

The contemplative man is the one who leads a life perhaps less cheerful and
carefree than the cheerful man, but he is also the one who, thanks to his strong
sensitivity, proves capable of experiencing sensations that are instead precluded to
the cheerful man.

Despite this, Milton does not condemn man within the poems cheerful, he simply
doesn't know what this feeling consists of, since he has never tried it. All Milton
knows is that those who are "merry" appear much more jovial because they often
manage to escape the melancholy that instead afflicts the contemplative man.

However, he appears convinced that it is precisely that melancholy from which the
contemplative man seems unable to escape that makes him a true intellectual.

His masque "Comus" shows us even more his contempt for the past aristocratic
culture. Usually the masque was an aristocratic genre that glorified the court by
showing through metaphors the power of the nobles to restore order when chaos
came, while Milton takes more of a practical approach.

Egerton's three sons, to whom the work was dedicated, were not only the
protagonists of the story themselves, but were even played by those same three
sons; they will have to walk through a forest full of temptations before reaching their
goal.

Comus, the most allegorical character of the play, becomes the embodiment of
failure, of the value system of the past. Born from Bacchus and Circe, his powers of
seduction and deception will prove useless against Lady, master of herself with her
educated and Christian speeches.

Paradise Lost
Through this work Milton proposes a new epic that could represent for England what
the Iliad and the Odyssey had represented for Greece. Paradise Lost is an epic poem
which narrates the episode of the temptation of Adam and Eve and their expulsion
from Eden. The work is composed in blank verse.

He chooses the epic form to give solemnity to the topic. The main characters of the
work are Satan and Adam and Eve. He takes the Bible as the primary source for his
work, but also authors such as Virgil.
The main plot point of Paradise Lost, as the title suggests, is the loss of all humanity,
when man sinned and lost the privileges of primordial happiness.

The poem opens with the expulsion of Satan from Heaven, hurled into Chaos with
his host of rebel angels.
Satan organizes his revenge against God with the demon Beelzebub. The devils are
organized like a real army, with one of the ancient deities at the head of each army.
Satan thus has his new stronghold built: a castle, which he will call Pandemonium,
on the slopes of a volcano.

And here he prepares his attack, to corrupt the new world just created by God,
namely the Earth. Satan sets out to find out if this new planet really exists. He
crosses the infernal depths, guarded by two terrible creatures he himself had placed:
Death and Guilt.

From Heaven, meanwhile, God observes his movements and already foresees the
fall of men, with whom he has populated the Earth and to whom he has assigned
that free will that will lead them to sin. It will then be up to his Son to make the
sacrifice on which the Christian religion will be based: to become mortal and die for
the salvation of men.

Once he arrives at the gates of the Earth, to access it Satan must travel Jacob's
Ladders to enter the Garden of Eden. Qul sees Adam and Eve for the first time, the
first man and woman created by God. The Archangel Uriel, in the meantime, has
realized the deception and alerts the Archangel Gabriel.
The angels enter the Earthly Paradise and find Satan, who, transformed into a toad,
tries to get closer to Eve, and they capture him. Gabriel and Satan are about to
engage in battle when God intervenes to interrupt the conflict. Satan uses the
opportunity to escape.

The gaze then shifts to Adam and Eve, Eve tells Adam that she dreamed that an
angel had offered her the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. After 7 days, transformed
into fog, Satan returns to Eden, where he takes the form of a serpent and convinces
Eve to pick the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.

Once the sin is discovered, Adam, who does not want to abandon the woman,
despite being aware, in turn feeds on the forbidden fruit. Following their sin, the
man and the woman discover for the first time the mutual attraction of their bodies
but at the same time feel embarrassed by their nakedness. Taken by great fear,
Adam and Eve corrupt the harmony that surrounds them by blaming each other for
what happened.

Figure of Satan
As for the figure of Satan, it is suspected that Milton was on his side. In the famous
speech given by Satan, along the banks of the fiery lake, we can see how Milton
presents him as an ambitious leader. It seems that Satan is the true hero of Paradise
Lost, since he brings together all the qualities that Milton appreciates such as
courage, pride and confidence in his own means, which do not abandon him even
after defeat.

Furthermore, he embodies the Puritan ideals of freedom and independence, since

he is seen as a rebel fighting against the absolute power of a tyrannical God, just as
Milton himself had waged his battle against the despotism of Charles I