John Milton was born in London to Sarah Jeffrey and John Milton, a scrivener and composer. His education followed a common route, with his first being tutored by Thomas Young, a Scottish Presbyterian cleric, then studying at Saint Paul’s School, before entering Christ’s College, Cambridge. He placed fourth out of 259 candidates for the bachelor’s degree, which he earned cum laude in 1629, followed by a master’s degree in 1632 (also cum laude).

After earning his degrees, Milton then spent time at his parents’ home in Hammersmith, where he focused on his vocation, writing sonnets, the masque Comus (1634), and “Lycidas” (1637), a pastoral elegy for his friend Edward King. In “Lycidas,” he declared his intention as a poet to follow in the steps of Virgil, deliberately moving from the pastoral to the epic. In this way, he consciously carried Spenser’s banner of the national Poet.

After his mother’s death, Milton traveled to the Continent, particularly France and Italy. But his meeting playwright and poet Hugo Grotius (1583- 1645); Giavanni Battisti Manso (1567-1645), the patron of Torquato Tasso (1544- 1595); and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) helped him develop his future plans. He thought to put all of his preparation to good service upon his return to England, which was on the verge of Civil War. He was determined to write an epic based on English history, a national epic that would define England just as Virgil’s Aeneid defined Rome.

Before doing so, Milton put his skills to more immediate use, writing pamphlets, tracts, and political addresses supporting the Commonwealth. These prose pieces include The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660); The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1644);  Areopagitica (1664), in which he argued against censorship; and Eikonoklastes (1649) and Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (1651), justifying the actions of the parliament concerning the execution of Charles I. He also served the Commonwealth as its Latin Secretary, a role in which he corresponded with rulers and diplomats throughout Europe. He devoted himself to the cause of republicanism to his own physical detriment; he lost his eyesight by 1642 from, as he believed, the eyestrain his work incurred.

Upon the Restoration, he temporarily lost his freedom, permanently lost most of his estate, and almost lost his life for being a rebel. After the intervention of friends like Marvell, Milton was released from prison and allowed to retire. He then composed his epic, Paradise Lost. At one point in time, he thought to write an Arthurian epic, as did Spenser. But he decided that a work on the Fall of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden would surpass that of all other epics due to its moral weight. With this intent, his Paradise Lost transformed the classic epic into an expression of Renaissance humanism and of the Reformation. His use of blank verse, rather than rhymed verse like Spenser’s, gave his epic immediate and dramatic voice.

Further, Milton imbues classical archetypes with individual (psychological) insight. Book 3’s Invocation to Light, for example, reverses the rise and fall of Icarus who flew too close to the sun; it moves down into despair and up to love, as Milton uses his own feelings on his loss of sight for the reader’s behalf. His personal underworld is that he cannot see: He is cut off from light and Nature’s book of knowledge. But that loss becomes the precondition for vision in a paradoxical fortunate fall, as celestial light shines inwardly and enables Milton to “see and tell/ Of things invisible to mortal sight” (Book 3, lines 54-55).

Indeed, Paradise Lost went beyond establishing national identity by being a theodicy. It vindicates the justice of God in ordaining or permitting natural and moral evil through insights such as this fortunate fall and of conversion. Milton’s Paradise Lost, though different from the epic history of England he envisioned while traveling, has become a cornerstone of his legacy and of the literature of his time.