English 9227
Milton's Minor Poems and Selected Prose
Instructor: Professor John Leonard.
Fall Half Course.
John Milton’s lifelong ambition was to be an epic poet, and he achieved that goal late in life with the publication of Paradise Lost. But if he aspired to be the English Homer or Virgil, he also strove to be the English Demosthenes or Cicero, as well as “Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the three tragic poets unequalled yet by any” (Preface to Samson Agonistes). This course will fall into three parts: 1) a close reading of the early poems (especially “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso,” A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle [Comus], and “Lycidas”; 2) an examination of Milton’s middle years, when poetry yielded to prose pamphlets defending political causes, especially divorce, free speech, and freedom from tyranny; 3) Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. Emphasis throughout the course will be placed on Milton’s lasting relevance. Is he a timeless champion of liberty who should “be living at this hour” (Wordsworth) or an illiberal gatekeeper of repression and privilege, “a bad man of a very particular kind, who is a bad man because he is so sublimely certain of being a good one” (John Middleton Murry)? This course is intended to be a complement my half-course on Paradise Lost, though neither course is a prerequisite for the other and it does not matter in which order they are taken, should any students decide to take both.
