John Milton (1608 - 1674) was a revolutionary, a republican, an iconoclast, a reformer, and a brilliant polemicist, who fearlessly took on both church and king. And he ranks among the greatest poets of all time, a peer of Shakespeare and Homer. Philip Pullman, the author who named his trilogy (His Dark Materials) after a Miltonic phrase, said, “No one, not even Shakespeare, surpasses him in his command of the sound, the music, the weight and taste and texture of English words.” In this episode of the History of Literature, we look at the life and works of one of the seventeenth-century's greatest individuals.

For more on Satan as a runaway character in Milton's masterpiece Paradise Lost, try Episode 132 - Top 10 Literary Villains.

We covered the OG blind bard Homer all the way back in Episode 3 - Homer.

For another seventeenth-century writer (who isn't Shakespeare), try Episode 91 In Which John Donne Decides to Write About a Flea.

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