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William Shakespeare
John Milton (1608–1674) was an English poet and the author of Paradise Lost, a foundational work of English poetry. Milton is held out by Matthew Arnold as an example of an undisputed classic poet—a poet whose work exhibits high seriousness and can serve as a point of comparison in order to arrive at the real estimate of other poems.
John Milton Quotes in The Study of Poetry
The The Study of Poetry quotes below are all either spoken by John Milton or refer to John Milton . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Study of Poetry Quotes
Only one thing we may add to the substance and matter of poetry, guiding ourselves by Aristotle’s profound observation that the superiority of poetry over history consists in its possessing a higher truth and a higher seriousness… Let us add, therefore, to what we have said, this: that the substance and matter of the best poetry acquire their special character from possessing, in an eminent degree, truth and seriousness.
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John Milton Character Timeline in The Study of Poetry
The timeline below shows where the character John Milton appears in The Study of Poetry. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Study of Poetry
...lines he has in mind, including verses by Homer, Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, and John Milton. These examples, he insists, are enough in themselves to allow readers to produce “the real...
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...John Dryden. Arnold skips over the Elizabethan era, arguing that everyone agrees that Shakespeare and Milton are poets of the first rank. The case of Dryden is more difficult. For their...
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...of prose. Arnold compares Dryden’s prose to that of two other writers, Chapman and John Milton, and argues that Dryden’s is superior to them all. One of the reasons for the...
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...poetic application” that readers should expect from great poets. Arnold produces three lines from Shakespeare, Milton, and Chaucer as evidence that Dryden cannot match these classic poets. Dryden and Pope are...
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