A reader's guide to John Milton

the long version

Marjorie Hope Nicolson - one of the world's foremost authorities on Milton - examines Milton's work beginning with the juvenalia, the famous Minor Poems, "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," "Comus" (and "Arcades"), and "Lycidas." She explores Milton's middle years, when he was diverted from poetry to become Latin Secretary under Oliver Cromwell. Examining the sonnets he composed during this time, she also scrutinizes the many prose-pamphlets and tracts that Milton said he "wrote with his left hand." Finally, Nicolson looks at the great poems, including a book-by-book analysis of Paradise Lost and a careful reading of Samson Agonistes, Milton's poetic "closet drama."