John Milton's Sonnet XVI (16) - Essay Example

Milton and his family had no aristocratic background and hailed from Oxfordshire. He was the eldest and was his father’s favorite child. The proof of this is quite evident in the wonderful tribute he paid to his father in the Latin elegy of “Ad Patrem” (To My Father”) which he wrote in 1638. From a very early age, Milton’s father understood that his son was a phenomenon and provided him with many tutors for reading, writing and translating. Later he In many of his works, Milton defended various kinds of liberty – domestic liberty (family) ‘liberty to worship according to one’s conscience, and political liberty as expressed in what he called “liberty of speaking” (Yale 1.669) or the “honest liberty of free speech” (Yale 1.804) At the same time he also believed that the opposite of liberty was license which was chaotic and wild.

According to Milton, his idea of liberty is restricted because he feels that license should not be taken for liberty. Milton was both witty and charming besides being physically attractive and an intellectual phenomenon. Milton’s works are indispensable to the world of literature. One such work was his “Paradise Lost” where he makes use of such powerful characters to get his message across. Through most of these characters we could feel Milton’s own personality coming through. The character of Satan as portrayed in both ‘Paradise Lost’ and ‘Areopagitica’ seems to share many commonalities with Milton’s own character.

Both were charming, intelligent, smooth talkers and lovers of beauty, but yet Belial (Satan) poses a threat to Milton because he stands as a spectre of failure which always haunted Milton even though he was such a great intellectual. Sonnets were an intangible part of Milton’s literary and intellectual life. Unlike Phillip Sydney and Petrarch, Milton did not