John Milton: A Hero of Our Time

(Paperback)

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John Milton--poet, polemicist, public servant, and author of one of the greatest masterpieces in English literature, Paradise Lost--is revered today as a great writer and a proponent of free speech. In his time, however, his ideas far exceeded the orthodoxy of English life; spurred by his conscience and an iron grip on logic, Milton was uncompromising in his beliefs at a time of great religious and political flux in England. In John Milton, David Hawkes expertly interweaves details from Milton's public and private life, providing new insight into the man and his prophetic stance on politics and the social order. By including a broad range of Milton's iconoclastic views on issues as diverse as politics, economics, and sex, Hawkes suggests that Milton's approach to market capitalism, political violence, and religious terrorism continues to be applicable even in the twenty-first century. This insightful biography closely examines Milton's participation in the English civil war and his startlingly modern ideas about capitalism, love, and marriage, reminding us that human liberty and autonomy should never be taken for granted.

Reviews

Praise for John Milton "Popular biographies commemorating Milton's four-hundredth birthday have been scarce, but Hawkes makes up for that paucity and then some in a splendid argument that Milton was so prophetic of modern political and religious predicaments that he should be regarded as our contemporary." --Booklist (starred review) "Hawkes writes with little academic jargon, and his style is lively and entertaining. Political and religious history enthusiasts will find this excellent and challenging." --Library Journal

Author Bio

David Hawkes was born in Cardiff, Wales and educated at Stanwell Comprehensive School. He has a B.A. from Oxford University and a MA, M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. His work has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, The New Criterion, In These Times, and many other popular and scholarly journals. He is a Professor of English Literature at Arizona State University, and has held visiting appointments in Turkey, Japan, India and China, as well as a long-term fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He lives in Phoenix and Istanbul.