ABSTRACT
This chapter, in discussing the great English poet, attempts a sympathetic study as the author acknowledges Milton’s unique effort to give an epic to the English language.
Milton is chiefly discussed as the poet who plays a part in bringing Christianity, with its later divisions, into the poetic sphere. In addition to marking the evolution of a secular-pagan heritage encompassing religion-based sects, the chapter also points to how the successful building of such a heritage might have perhaps provided the backdrop for the emergence of Darwin’s theory of evolution. The chapter goes into the question of how India – another civilisation and culture with a comparable epic tradition – missed such an opportunity.
Though there are ample reasons to believe that as a poet he was largely ignored or misunderstood or adequately not recognised by well-known critics, the chapter analyses the historic role or rather the difficulties he faced as a poet in continuing the epic tradition under the changed circumstances in the real sense of the term.
