John Milton (1608-1674)

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John Milton (1608-1674)
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• I.General introduction
• John Miltonone of the greatest English poets
• his masterpiece Paradise Lost considered the
  greatest English epic,
• Miltonic style
• a grand style with long and powerful blank verse
  and the theme of universe

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• II. Paradise Lost
• 1.The themes
• 2.Image of Satan
• 3.His sympathy with Satan
• 4.blank verse
• 5.run-on lines (enjambment)
• 6.difficult sentence structure

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• 7.quotations
• 1 The mind is its own place, and in itself /Can
  make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven .(Book 1,
  254)
• 2 Better to reign in hell than serve in
  heaven.(Book 1, 263)
• 3 Long is the way/ And hard, that out of hell
  leads up to light.(Book 2, 432)
• 4 A dungeon horrible, on all sides round/As one
  great furnace flamedyet from those /No light,
  but rather darkness visible/Served only to
  discover sights of woe

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• III.Additional informationMiltonic(Italian)sonnet
  
• meter iambic pentameter
• rhyme scheme abba abba cde cde(cdcdcde)
• one octave(8-line stanza)one sestet(6-line
  stanza)
• octave problem sestet solution
• (cf English/Shakespearean sonnet 3 quatrainsone
  couplet)