Product Description

John Milton is, next to William Shakespeare, the most influential English poet, a writer whose work spans an incredible breadth of forms and subject matter. The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton celebrates this author’s genius in a thoughtfully assembled book that provides new modern-spelling versions of Milton’s texts, expert commentary, and a wealth of other features that will please even the most dedicated students of Milton’s canon. Edited by a trio of esteemed scholars, this volume is the definitive Milton for our time.

In these pages you will find all of Milton’s verse, from masterpieces such as Paradise Lost–widely viewed as the finest epic poem in the English language–to shorter works such as the Nativity Ode, Lycidas,, A Masque and Samson Agonistes. Milton’s non-English language sonnets, verses, and elegies are accompanied by fresh translations by Gordon Braden. Among the newly edited and authoritatively annotated prose selections are letters, pamphlets, political tracts, essays such as Of Education and Areopagitica, and a generous portion of his heretical Christian Doctrine. These works reveal Milton’s passionate advocacy of controversial positions during the English Civil War and the Commonwealth and Restoration periods.

With his deep learning and the sensual immediacy of his language, Milton creates for us a unique bridge to the cultures of classical antiquity and medieval and Renaissance Christianity. With this in mind, the editors give careful attention to preserving the vibrant energy of Milton’s verse and prose, while making the relatively unfamiliar aspects of his writing accessible to modern readers. Notes identify the old meanings and roots of English words, illuminate historical contexts–including classical and biblical allusions–and offer concise accounts of the author’s philosophical and political assumptions. This edition is a consummate work of modern literary scholarship.

Praise
“Over the coming months, [John Milton’s] 400th anniversary will be celebrated in many different ways, but it is highly unlikely that any of the tributes he receives will do as much for him as the appearance of the Modern Library edition of his collected poetry and selected prose. The edition is a model of its kind, well designed and attractively produced. There are scholarly but unintimidating footnotes and helpful introductions to the major works. Spelling and punctuation have been modernized -- a difficult decision but the right one….A great deal has been packed in, but Milton has still been left room to breathe. The whole enterprise is meant to be reader-friendly, and it succeeds.” — The Wall Street Journal

“This magnificent edition gives us everything we need to read Milton intelligently and with fresh perception. You could take it to a desert island, or just stay home and further your education in a great writer.”
–William H. Pritchard, Amherst College

“For generations of readers Milton has been the measure of both eloquence and nobility of mind. For the next generation this new Modern Library volume will be the standard: it is meticulously edited, full of tactful annotations that set the stage for his work and his times, and it brings Milton, as a poet and a thinker, vividly alive before us.”
–Robert Hass

“Years ago I began a series of poems about Milton and his daughters. Ever since, I have been combing through Milton’s poems and prose for those moments when the poet would turn and speak to the poet in me. It is in the new Kerrigan-Rumrich-Fallon edition that I now find prompt rejoinders to questions, ready clarifications of problems, and a more intimate dimension of that formidable adjective Miltonic.”
–Richard Howard

“A superb edition of the great poet, with modernized spelling, lucid introductions to each work, illuminating footnotes, and fresh prose translations of poems in Latin, Greek, and Italian. This will surely be the edition of choice for teachers, students, and general readers too.”
–Leo Damrosch, Harvard University

“The introductions alone constitute a fine new book on Milton, beautifully written, challenging and balanced, with equal care and insight given to textual, biographical, historical, literary-historical and literary-critical concerns. It is a book to last a lifetime.”
–James Earl, University of Oregon

“In this landmark edition, teachers will discover a powerful ally in bringing the excitement of Milton’s poetry and prose to new generations of students. In the clarity of its overall conception, its thoroughness, and its never-faltering attention to literary and historical detail, the Modern Library Milton serves almost as another teacher–patient, thoughtful, endlessly concerned with genuine comprehension.”
–William C. Dowling, Rutgers University

“The editors display a remarkable combination of scholarly rigor and sensitivity to literary values, expressed in prose of exemplary clarity and extraordinary grace; even the notes, concise as well as precise, approach a kind of epigrammatic brilliance. A superb edition.”
–Edward W. Tayler, Columbia University

“The editors succeed gloriously, meeting the needs of the whole spectrum, from general readers to advanced students. A modernized text, one sensitive to Milton’ s poetic rhythm, illuminates both the author’s meaning and artistry. It’s a beautiful edition–a home worthy of its subject.”
–Marina Favila, James Madison University

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #272055 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-13
• Released on: 2007-11-13
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 9.49" h x 2.68" w x 6.36" l, 4.06 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1408 pages

About the Author
John Milton (1608-74), the great English poet, is best known for his epic masterpiece, Paradise Lost. In addition to writing brilliant verse and overtly political works, Milton was also a private tutor and, during the Commonwealth period, served as Secretary for Foreign Tongues, a position mostly involving the composition of the English Republic’s foreign correspondence in Latin.

About the Editors
William Kerrigan is the author of many books, including The Sacred Complex: On the Psychogenesis of Paradise Lost, for which he won the James Holly Hanford Award of the Milton Society of America. A former president of the Milton Society, he has also earned numerous honors and distinctions from that group, including its award for lifetime achievement. He is professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts.

John Rumrich is the author of Matter of Glory: A New Preface to Paradise Lost and Milton Unbound: Controversy and Reinterpretation. An award-winning editor and writer, he is Thaman Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches early modern British literature.

Stephen M. Fallon is the author of Milton’s Peculiar Grace: Self-Representation and Authority and Milton Among the Philosophers: Poetry and Materialism in Seventeenth-Century England, winner of the Milton Society’s Hanford Award. He is professor of liberal studies and English at the University of Notre Dame.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
English Poems



“He had auburn hair. His complexion exceeding fair—he was so fair that they called him the Lady of Christ’s College” (see Aubrey, p. xxvii). psalm 114

The 1645 Poems informed its readers that “this and the following Psalm were done by the author at fifteen years old.” They could well have been school exercises, as is usually assumed, but Milton’s father’s combination of faith and musical skill expressed itself in a keen appreciation for the Psalter. Milton Sr. in fact contributed six settings to Thomas Ravenscroft’s The Whole Book of Psalms (1621). These translations are his son’s earliest surviving English compositions.

sG4

When the blest seed of Terah’s faithful son,

After long toil their liberty had won,

And passed from Pharian fields to Canaan land,

Led by the strength of the Almighty’s hand,

5Jehovah’s wonders were in Israel shown,

His praise and glory was in Israel known.

That saw the troubled sea, and shivering fled,

And sought to hide his froth-becurlèd head

Low in the earth; Jordan’s clear streams recoil,

10As a faint host that hath received the foil.

The high, huge-bellied mountains skip like rams

Amongst their ewes, the little hills like lambs.

Why fled the ocean? And why skipped the mountains?

Why turnèd Jordan toward his crystal fountains?

15Shake earth, and at the presence be aghast

Of him that ever was, and ay shall last,

That glassy floods from rugged rocks can crush,

And make soft rills from fiery flint-stones gush.

1. faithful son: Abraham.

3. Pharian: Egyptian.

10. foil: defeat.

psalm 136

Let us with a gladsome mind

Praise the Lord, for he is kind,

For his mercies ay endure,

Ever faithful, ever sure.



5Let us blaze his name abroad,

For of gods he is the God;

For, &c.



O let us his praises tell,

10Who doth the wrathful tyrants quell.

For, &c.



Who with his miracles doth make

Amazèd heav’n and earth to shake.

15For, &c.



Who by his wisdom did create

The painted heav’ns so full of state.

For, &c.

20

Who did the solid earth ordain

To rise above the wat’ry plain.

For, &c.



25Who by his all-commanding might,

Did fill the new-made world with light.

For, &c.



And caused the golden-tressèd sun,

30All the day long his course to run.

For, &c.



The hornèd moon to shine by night,

Amongst her spangled sisters bright.

35For, &c.



10. Who: 1673. 1645 has that here and in lines 13, 17, 21, and 25. In each case we follow 1673. He with his thunder-clasping hand,

Smote the first-born of Egypt land.

For, &c.

40

And in despite of Pharaoh fell,

He brought from thence his Israel.

For, &c.



45The ruddy waves he cleft in twain,

Of the Erythraean main.

For, &c.



The floods stood still like walls of glass,

50While the Hebrew bands did pass.

For, &c.



But full soon they did devour

The tawny king with all his power.

55For, &c.



His chosen people he did bless

In the wasteful wilderness.

For, &c.

60

In bloody battle he brought down

Kings of prowess and renown.

For, &c.



65He foiled bold Seon and his host,

That ruled the Amorean coast.

For, &c.



And large-limbed Og he did subdue,

70With all his over-hardy crew.

For, &c.



And to his servant Israel

He gave their land therein to dwell.

75For, &c.



46. Erythraean: adjective from the Greek for “red,” applied by Herodotus 1.180; 2.8, 158 to the Red Sea.

65. Seon: Sihon, King of the Amorites (Num. 21.21–32).



66. Amorean: Amorite.

69. Og: giant King of Bashan, slain by Moses (Num. 21.33–35).

73. his servant Israel: Jacob.

He hath with a piteous eye

Beheld us in our misery.

For, &c.

80

And freed us from the slavery

Of the invading enemy.

For, &c.



85All living creatures he doth feed,

And with full hand supplies their need.

For, &c.



Let us therefore warble forth

90His mighty majesty and worth.

For, &c.



That his mansion hath on high

Above the reach of mortal eye.

95For his mercies ay endure,

Ever faithful, ever sure.

on the death of a fair infant dying of a cough

This work belongs to a group of English lyrics that first appeared in the 1673 Poems. Based on the testimony of Milton’s nephew Edward Phillips (Darbishire 1932, 62), the subject of the poem has generally been thought to have been Anne Phillips (b. January 1626 and d. January 1628), Milton’s niece, and the mother addressed in the last stanza his sister Anne Phillips. Carey argues against these identifications, primarily on the grounds that Milton was nineteen and could not have written the elegy, as he claims to have, Anno aetatis 17 (at the age of seventeen). The alternative is that Milton, whether unconsciously or not, backdated the poem (LeComte 7–8). Others of Carey’s arguments seem tendentious. He takes “Summer’s chief honor if thou hadst outlasted/Bleak Winter’s force that made thy blossom dry” to assert that the child did not outlive a single winter (and therefore could not have been little Anne Phillips, who lived two years), whereas in fact the lines declare that the child did not outlive the winter in which she contracted the cough “that made thy blossom dry,” and are therefore consistent with the Anne Phillips hypothesis.

In Stanza 5 the poem erupts with questions that always haunt tragic deaths. Why did God permit this infant to die? “Could Heav’n for pity thee so strictly doom?” These painful questions open up the large subject of theodicy, the justification of God’s ways to men, that will occupy the argumentative center of Paradise Lost. In this early lyric, perhaps his first original poem in English, Milton tries to lay doubts to rest by finding a providential scheme within which the infant’s death can be seen as a divine attempt to bring Earth and Heaven closer together or improve the lot of mankind.

The poem ends with a prophecy that we take literally: “This if thou do he will an offspring give,/That till the world’s last end shall make thy name to live.” Hoping to make “offspring” metaphorical, modern editors often cite God’s promise to the eunuchs in Isaiah 56.5: “Even unto them will I give . . . a name better than of sons and daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.” So Milton’s “offspring” becomes salvation and eternal bliss, matters that render trivial all parental concern with earthly offspring. But Milton does not say that the fame of the offspring is eternal. Quite the opposite, he says that it will last until the end of the world. Recourse to Isaiah in interpreting “Fair Infant” probably does not occur before 1921 (Hughes et al. 2:135). Proponents clearly hope that the biblical passage can fend off the apparent sense of Milton’s lines, which in turn is thought to suppose a Milton so fame-crazed that he would console a patient sister with the promise of another child with a glorious future. But that is precisely what he has done. Milton’s sister was indeed pregnant at the time of the fair infant’s death, and she gave birth to Elizabeth Phillips in April 1628.

sG4

anno aetatis 17

i

O fairest flower no sooner blown but blasted,

Soft silken primrose fading timelessly,

Summer’s chief honor if thou hadst outlasted

Bleak Winter’s force that made thy blossom dry;

5For he being amorous on that lovely dye

That did thy cheek envermeil, thought to kiss

But killed alas, and then bewailed his fatal bliss.

1–2. O fairest . . . fading: The opening echoes The Passionate Pilgrim 10.1–2: “Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely plucked, soon faded,/Plucked in the bud and faded in the spring!” This work was ascribed to Shakespeare in 1599 and 1640, but we now believe that Shakespeare wrote only five of its twenty sonnets. The author of the one echoed by Milton is unknown.

1. blown: bloomed.

2. timelessly: unseasonably, not in due time.

3. chief honor: that for which Summer would be honored.

5. amorous on: in love with.

6. envermeil: tinge with vermilion.

6–7. thought to kiss/But killed: Shakespeare also conjoins kiss and kill in VEN 1110 and OTH 5.2.356–57.

ii

For since grim Aquilo his charioteer

By boist’rous rape th’ Athenian damsel got,

10He thought it touched his deity full near,

If likewise he some fair one wedded not,

Thereby to wipe away th’ infamous blot

Of long-uncoupled bed, and childless eld,

Which ’mongst the wanton gods a foul reproach was held.

iii

15So mounting up in icy-pearlèd car,

Through middle empire of the freezing air

He wandered long, till thee he spied from far;

There ended was his quest, there ceased his care.

Down he descended from his snow-soft chair,

20But all unwares with his cold-kind embrace

Unhoused thy virgin soul from her fair biding place.

iv

Yet art thou not inglorious in thy fate;

For so Apollo, with unweeting hand
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