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Making Darkness Light: A Life of John Milton
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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.
Reviews
"He spends long passages recounting details from his research trips and his own experience with Milton's poetry, both as a teacher and reader."
"Moshenska makes light of Milton and his works as he traverses 11 crucial days in his life."
"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' ..."
"Moshenska takes as his chapter headings significant dates in the poet's life, along with titles of his poems and phrases from his verse."
"Moshenska, an Englishman who obtained his PhD at Princeton, allows himself 'impossible questionings and wild imaginings' on his subject, and the incessant intrusions of Moshenska's own presence into this text often feel deeply American ..."
"It is often densely erudite, but also richly inventive, and for quite long stretches it is, in effect,a historical novel."
"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."
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