Poemata: Latin, Greek and Italian Poems by John Milton

Milton, John, 1608-1674Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.7
Word count
126K words
Chapters
13

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature HumanismReligious SentimentSpiritual QuestPoetic SentimentMultilingual WritingLatin PoetryBeautiful EssaysLyric TraditionWestern ClassicMusical Rhythm

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Poemata : Latin, Greek and Italian Poems by John Milton by John MiltonAuthor: Milton, John, 1608-1674,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Nov 1, 2004

Editor's review

This is a collection of Milton's Latin, Greek and Italian poems, complementing his English masterworks such as Paradise Lost. For scholars, it displays the humanist training of Milton's youth: imitations of classical metre, occasional and dedicatory verse, religious and lyric themes interwoven, showing his mastery of Latin verse and his Petrarchan interest in Italian poetry. For general readers, the collection is a side door onto how a great English writer conversed in multiple languages with the European humanist tradition. As a public-domain electronic text, it suits use as source material for comparative reading, not as an introductory guide. Don't rush; choose short poems and read them closely to sense the layers of language and metre.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the contents first, group by language, and choose the shortest poems to set a rhythm.
  2. Read each poem against a reliable translation and note the trade-offs between original metre and translation.
  3. Prepare a short list of classical mythological and biblical allusions to check as you read.
  4. Read only one or two poems closely at a time, then write a few notes on theme and wording.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13

FAQ

Can I read this collection without knowing Latin and Greek? Yes, but with translations. Read comparatively: first the translation for the gist, then look back at the original's formal features, such as lineation, metre and repeated wording. If you have no interest in the original at all, the benefit will be limited; you might instead read a Milton poetry anthology that includes English translations.
What place do these foreign-language poems hold in Milton's work? Most belong to Milton's early and middle-period humanist practice, showing his absorption of classical languages and European literary tradition. Together with his English poems they form the whole of his work, but their themes and genres tend toward occasional, lyric and imitative verse; don't judge them by the epic standard of Paradise Lost.
The e-book has no notes; what do I do with allusions? Mark difficulties first, and after finishing a poem check classical myth, biblical and contemporary personal allusions together. You can also read alongside an annotated paper edition of Milton's poems. As a public-domain text, this book mainly offers the original; annotation is left to the reader.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Milton, John, 1608-1674 Author

John Milton (1608–1674) is a major poet and polemical writer in English literary history. Nine of his works are held here, including the long poems Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, the masque Comus, the elegy Lycidas, the shorter poems L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, the prose tract Areopagitica on freedom of the press, and the collections The Poetical Works of John Milton and Milton: Minor Poems. Learned in both classical and Christian traditions, he is known for grand religious themes, stately blank verse and an eloquent style. Paradise Lost, drawing on the biblical creation story, explores free will, obedience and fall, and has deeply influenced later English poetry; Areopagitica offers a classic argument for freedom of speech and publication. Comus and Lycidas display his early gifts in masque and elegy, while the shorter poems show his versatility. Public information on his life dates and nationality is limited and is not speculated upon here.