新编英语教程 6 Unit 6 背景知识之John Milton

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John Milton
Seventeenth-century writer John Milton ranks as one of the greatest poets in the history of English literature. Milton’s masterpiece, the epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), dramatizes the Biblical account of humanity’s banishment from Paradise. M ilton also wrote a sequel to Paradise Lost, called Paradise Regained (1671), in which Jesus triumphantly resists Satan and regains the Paradise lost by Adam and Eve.
Milton was born in London on December 9, 1608, and educated at Saint Paul's School and Christ's College, University of Cambridge. In his writings, Milton supported the parliamentary cause in the civil war between Parliamentarians and Royalists, and in 1649 he was appointed foreign secretary by the government of the Commonwealth. He became totally blind about 1652 and thereafter carried on his literary work helped by an assistant; with the aid also of the poet Andrew Marvell, he fulfilled his government duties until the restoration of Charles II in 1660. In 1656 he married a second wife, who died two years later shortly after giving birth to a daughter who lived only a few months. With the Restoration, Milton was punished for his support of Parliament by a fine and a short term of imprisonment. He married a third time in 1663, and until his death on November 8, 1674, he lived in seclusion.。