Home › Books › Making Darkness Light: A Life of John Milton
Making Darkness Light: A Life of John Milton
by
76/99
Critics
8/99
Readers
n/a
Scholars
75/99
Rating
77/99
Volume
9/99
Rating
6/99
Volume
—
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
About This Book
An innovative and elegant new biography of John Milton from an acclaimed Oxford professor John Milton was once essential reading for visionaries and revolutionaries, from William Blake to Ben Franklin. Now, however, he has become a literary institution—intimidating rather than inspiring. In Making Darkness Light , Oxford professor Joe Moshenska rediscovers a poet whose rich contradictions confound his monumental image. Immersing ourselves in the rhythms and textures of Milton's world, we move from the music of his childhood home to his encounter with Galileo in Florence into his idiosyncratic belief system and his strange, electrifying imagination. Making Darkness Light will change the way we think about Milton, the place of his writings in his life, and his life in history. It is also a book about Milton's place in our about our relationship with the Western canon, about why and how we read, and about what happens when we let someone else's ideas inflect our own.
Preview
Reviews
"The author has the focused scholarly expertise to root this story in 17th-century detail, although he inevitably telescopes some controversial academic debates — the nature of humanist education, the definition of Puritanism — for the benefit of the general reader."
"It's less a by-the-books account of Milton's life, and more like a poetic tour of 17th-century England as revealed by the manuscripts left behind by one of its most prominent writers."
"Moshenska takes a fresh perspective on John Milton (1608-1674), the art of biography, and the experience of reading to create a lyrical, meditative narrative about a poet who has seemed to generations of biographers and readers to be 'perennially contemporary' ..."
"unlike any book about Milton I have read."
"Just as the many languages the poet mastered bubble underneath the rhythms of his verse, so too does Moshenska's method float freely between different literary genres, and ranges widely over disparate periods of literary history."
"Moshenska makes light of Milton and his works as he traverses 11 crucial days in his life."
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!