John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, essayist, and civil servant, with a career that stretched from acting as a mouthpiece for the Commonwealth of England to writing one of the greatest epic poems ever, Paradise Lost. Milton grew up in an extremely volatile time period in England – he watched a Civil War ensue, a monarch beheaded, the push for republicanism through the Commonwealth, and eventually, the restoration of the monarchy only a decade later. For most of his youth, Milton made a point to educate himself to such a degree that he was more accomplished and well-read than most college professors, and it was believed that he could speak roughly ten languages. And while most of us have read or at least have heard of Paradise Lost, what Milton was best known during his life was his masterpiece Areopagitica, which fiercely advocates freedom of speech and of the press…two concepts that were quite dangerous for the political turbulence of the 17th century. On top of that, Milton was quite the ladies man, churning through three wives before his death at age 65, and though he died somewhat impoverished and on the margins of intellectual life, he was famous throughout Europe for his unrelenting support of republicanism. So let’s get started and dig into the crazy, exciting, and pretty fucked up life of one of my favorite writers of all time, John Milton.