English · 1608–1674
Milton achieved English literature's most ambitious poem while blind, dictating Paradise Lost to his daughters each morning. A fierce republican who served as Latin Secretary under Oliver Cromwell, he defended the execution of Charles I and nearly faced execution himself at the Restoration. His epic recounts Satan's rebellion, humanity's fall, and the promise of redemption in blank verse of extraordinary complexity and power. Satan's defiance and Eve's temptation have provoked centuries of interpretation, with Blake famously declaring Milton "of the Devil's party without knowing it." His prose championed press freedom, divorce reform, and republican government; his poetry matched Homer and Virgil in ambition.