Preface

Summary

My love of Milton began when I first read Paradise Lost at the age of eighteen in my ‘year off’ between school and university. That was almost forty years ago and my love of Milton has not abated, though my opinions about this or that scholarly issue have often changed. This book is an attempt to share some of the reasons why I revere Milton and think he has enduring value. It is intended for as wide a readership as possible, so my emphasis is on Milton's own writings rather than on critical interpretations. I have no grand overarching thesis as to ‘why Milton matters’. Milton matters to different people for different reasons, some religious (or anti-religious), some political, and some purely literary. All of these approaches are valid and my emphasis in this book is on what can unite us as readers of Milton: the pleasures we can share rather than the political issues that sometimes divide us. Milton does have abiding relevance for political causes (especially free speech, divorce, and political liberty) and I have addressed these issues in my two chapters on the prose, but my primary concern is the joy of reading his poetry. Milton is nevertheless an unsettling author, both in poetry and prose, and I have tried to retain a sense of his nuisance value as well as his value.

I have incurred many debts over the years, as student, teacher, and colleague. As an undergraduate at Cambridge in the late 1970s, I studied for the Tragedy paper under Adrian Poole and Theodore Redpath, whose lectures and supervisions have remained an important influence. My fond memories of Professor Poole's lecture on ‘the terrible’ in tragedy have proved especially useful to me, even after four decades, when pondering the question of whether Milton's tragedy Samson Agonistes should be seen as ‘a work in praise of terrorism’. Also at Cambridge, I had the privilege of being supervised (both as undergraduate and doctoral candidate) by Christopher Ricks, whose 1963 book Milton's Grand Style I consider the single most valuable book of Milton criticism ever written. My other debts are legion. I am deeply and personally indebted to the many students, at every level, whom I have taught (and from whom I have often learned) at Western University in Canada since 1987.