- Paperback: 480 pages
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (17 Nov 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 074759628X
- ISBN-13: 978-0747596288
- Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.2 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 407,750 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot
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Product Description
Review
PRAISE FOR BESS: THE LIFE OF LADY RALEGH 'This is an entertaining and atmospheric historical work.' The Good Book Guide 'This rare and wonderful book opens up a new world.' Oxford Times
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Review
'Will keep Milton scholars happy, and serve as a reliable guide to non-specialists ... It's a crucial part of the biographer's job to lead readers back through the life to the work. Beer does this very steadily and very well, and thereby gives Milton the anniversary present he deserves' Andrew Motion, Guardian 'A beautifully clear account of a richly complex life, an account which is also fascinatingly vivid on the political and social background of the time. It's the best narrative I've read of the life of our greatest public poet' Philip Pullman 'It succeeds magnificently in three key respects: it illuminates Milton's life, his tumultuous times and the dazzling richness of his literary output ... Beer vividly evokes Milton's worlds ... Perhaps the greatest compliment that one can pay this book is that, having finished it, one is immediately inspired to return to Milton's works' ***** John Adamson, Mail on Sunday 'This is a noble project, and Beer's biography is a worthy first step towards it: scholarly, serious and endlessly fascinating ... a splendidly patient and careful biography' Diane Purkiss, Telegraph
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
As a Masters student who has written extensively on Milton, Beer's biography contained nothing of much interest. While there is some good literary discussion of the poems, no serious effort has been made to move beyond the most basic caricature of the man, nor to situate him within his appropriate intellectual context. Too much effort is painting portraits of the environment in which Milton grew up, without any care taken to separate conjecture from cause. For example, she draws a portrait of Sara, JM's mother, from evidence that exists about women in London at the start of the seventeenth century, not from any records of the woman herself. This allows her to spend pages and pages devoted to London family life, a topic unrelated in any meaningful way to John Milton.
One particularly crude example is her tedious insistence that Milton was gay (see of numerous examples, the specific endearment of this claim at p. 110 and passim). While there is undoubtably evidence to support the conclusion that Milton had a particularly strong relationship with his friend Charles Diodati, the suggestion that this meant that he was a homosexual imposes on Milton an understanding of sexuality which is nineteenth century in origin and not particularly helpful with regard to the seventeenth century, when sexuality was a whole different beast. Anyone with an understanding of puritan divorce writings will scoff at the highly suggestive Freudian argument that 'the venom with which John Milton denigrated the sexual act perhaps says more about the author [he hated sex with women?] than [it does about] his argument' in his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (p. 145). Such an argument is partly understandable in the context of twentieth-century Milton criticism (Curr's "The Consolation of Otherness: The Male Love Elegy in Milton, Gray and Tennyson" seems to be Beer's main source), but it strikes a reader as odd given Milton's reliance on Puritan commonplaces about marriage to be found in Milton's work. Are all Puritans really closet homosexuals? I think not. Given Milton's reliance on Platonic tropes (on which see again, p. 145), can't we abandon Freud and queer theory for the Symposium, and leave it at that? In any case, no-one that has read her book can fail to gain the impression that Beer's insistence that her protagonist is gay verges on the psychopathic.
This will undoubtably be an interesting - and on the whole, factually accurate - account of Milton's career for general readers who come to Milton for the first time. Everything is grounded is grounded in the most recent scholarship. However, if one is coming hoping to find a sophisticated, nuanced and historically grounded argument, or indeed a book whichh sheds new light on the greatest of English poets, one will be sadly disappointed. For that, one will have to turn to the hugely important new biography of Milton by Gordon Campbell and Tom Corns: John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought, similarly published to coincide the 400th centenary of his birth in 2008.
One particularly crude example is her tedious insistence that Milton was gay (see of numerous examples, the specific endearment of this claim at p. 110 and passim). While there is undoubtably evidence to support the conclusion that Milton had a particularly strong relationship with his friend Charles Diodati, the suggestion that this meant that he was a homosexual imposes on Milton an understanding of sexuality which is nineteenth century in origin and not particularly helpful with regard to the seventeenth century, when sexuality was a whole different beast. Anyone with an understanding of puritan divorce writings will scoff at the highly suggestive Freudian argument that 'the venom with which John Milton denigrated the sexual act perhaps says more about the author [he hated sex with women?] than [it does about] his argument' in his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (p. 145). Such an argument is partly understandable in the context of twentieth-century Milton criticism (Curr's "The Consolation of Otherness: The Male Love Elegy in Milton, Gray and Tennyson" seems to be Beer's main source), but it strikes a reader as odd given Milton's reliance on Puritan commonplaces about marriage to be found in Milton's work. Are all Puritans really closet homosexuals? I think not. Given Milton's reliance on Platonic tropes (on which see again, p. 145), can't we abandon Freud and queer theory for the Symposium, and leave it at that? In any case, no-one that has read her book can fail to gain the impression that Beer's insistence that her protagonist is gay verges on the psychopathic.
This will undoubtably be an interesting - and on the whole, factually accurate - account of Milton's career for general readers who come to Milton for the first time. Everything is grounded is grounded in the most recent scholarship. However, if one is coming hoping to find a sophisticated, nuanced and historically grounded argument, or indeed a book whichh sheds new light on the greatest of English poets, one will be sadly disappointed. For that, one will have to turn to the hugely important new biography of Milton by Gordon Campbell and Tom Corns: John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought, similarly published to coincide the 400th centenary of his birth in 2008.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a very well written and excellently researched book, full of historical context and vivid narrative. My only major problem with the work is that, the mix of doubts by the author in regard to the man and his ideas coupled with an academic background has (in my view) created a work that lacks the magic that is found in biographies where the author is obviously inspired by the subject and wants to share the message of their life and work. I never got that sense from that book, except in some exploration of the poetry. Theres little sense of myth, legend or pathos here, which is a shame in light of the fact that the subject is one of our greatest poets.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I studied Milton in college for his poetry, but this book showed me the man.
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