Milton

by Mark Pattison

Overview

This life of John Milton was first published in the English Men of Letters series in 1879. Its author, Mark Pattison (1813–84) spent most of his adult life in Oxford, as a student, a tutor, and eventually, from 1861, Rector of Lincoln College. Pattison's scholarly interest in religious thought in England, and in the history of classical learning after the Renaissance, made him the ideal biographer for the poet whose writing life was spent in justifying God's ways to man, and whose knowledge of Greek and Latin literature was almost unmatched. Pattison sees the life as divided into three periods: he provides a narrative of events and an analysis of Milton's literary output (both verse and prose) for each. The final chapter is a discussion of the major poems: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes, concluding with the assertion of Milton's supremacy over all English writers except Shakespeare.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789359320038
Publisher:	Double 9 Books
Publication date:	12/01/2023
Pages:	148
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.34(d)

About the Author

Mark Pattison was an English author and Church of England priest who died on July 30, 1884. He was the Rector of Lincoln College in Oxford. He was the rector's son at Hauxwell, North Riding of Yorkshire, and was educated privately by his father, Mark James Pattison. Dorothy Wyndlow Pattison ("Sister Dora") was his sister. He enrolled in Oriel College, Oxford, in 1832, and graduated with second-class honors in 1836. After several unsuccessful applications, he was elected to a Yorkshire fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford, an anti-Puseyite college, in 1839. Pattison was a Puseyite during the period, and was heavily influenced by John Henry Newman, for whom he worked, contributing to the translation of Thomas Aquinas' Catena Aurea and writing for the British Critic and Christian Remembrancer. He was ordained a priest in 1843, and the following year he was appointed instructor at Lincoln College, where he quickly established a reputation as a clear and exciting teacher, as well as a sympathetic friend of youth. The college's administration was practically in his hands, and his reputation as a scholar grew throughout the university.

Table of Contents

First Period. 1608–39: 1. Family - school - college; 2. Residence at Horton - l'Allegro - Il Penseroso - Arcades - Comus - Lycidas; 3. Journey to Italy; Second Period. 1640–60: 4. Education theory - teaching; 5. Marriage and pamphlet on divorce; 6. Pamphlets; 7. Biographical. 1640–9; 8. The Latin secretaryship; 9. Milton and Salmasius - blindness; 10. Milton and Morus - the second defence – the defence for himself; 11. Latin secretaryship comes to an end - Milton's friends; Third Period. 1660–74: 12. Biographical - literary occupation - religious opinions; 13. Paradise Lost - Paradise Regained - Samson Agonistes.