English Minor Poems
by John Milton
Assigned by 2 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- 1629-1673
- Form
- Lyric poetry
- Language
- English
- Length
- Medium · 200 pp120 to 300 pages
- Difficulty
- Demanding3 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendComplete Poems and Major ProseHackett, 2003All the shorter poems with Hughes's notes, in the same volume as the epics.
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The shorter English poems Milton wrote before and around his epics, most first collected in 1645. They include the Nativity Ode, written at twenty-one; the paired L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, on the cheerful and the contemplative life; the masque Comus, on chastity tested in a dark wood; Lycidas, a pastoral elegy for a drowned college friend that turns into an attack on the corrupt clergy; and the sonnets, among them the ones on his blindness and on the massacre in Piedmont.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns English Minor Poems are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.
