Edited Individual Post 1: Historical Information

I've found my original post and had accidentally replaced it with this early in the semester. I've corrected my mistake, so here is the link to the original post, of which this is the revision of:
http://paradisetranslation1011.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html

Challenging life experiences, in many ways, help shape our thoughts and ideas and how we act around society today. Be it in the tumultuous and bitter parts of an ugly past or from the small traces of happiness from overcoming our obstacles, our experiences contribute to the very mind and soul that represents the best of us.
Great minds seem to be interconnected very strongly with these harsh encounters. To name a few, Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickinson, and John Milton seem to be just a some of the many whose works show a very strong correlation, not from what they learned and knew, but with what they went through.

John Milton, more specifically what this blog is all about, endured turbulent times, many which spanned over the course of his lifetime. Milton went through a difficult period of instability in his country, (among a few of the details mentioned in class today). He's endured the turbulent times of politics, war, and religion during the English civil war and the likes of the tyranny of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, and Charles II's reign, not to mention the deaths of two wives as well as two of his five children. He's found himself blind at the age of 44 with three children to raise, including trying to avoid being captured from Parliament for some time before his name could be cleared. He's lived through the financial distresses of England's economy and the Great Fire of London. (1)

Despite all these challenging experiences, Milton was able to produce such astounding literary works. More specifically, Paradise Lost, perhaps his greatest work of all and written in 1667, was written after the rebellion when Milton worked for Oliver Cromwell. (2) Could it be possible that the failed rebellion caused him to write about Paradise Lost? Could he have seen himself in Satan's shoes when his cause was lost? Perhaps he could have seen his and Cromwell's vision for the future, as some sort of Paradise, that had gone awry?

This connection shows a strong correlation with Milton's mind and his works. This leads me to believe in theory that perhaps matters of a dark substance, be it in life events, force minds to reach deeply into one's soul and procure the very thing of which great ideas may have originated from.

Citations:

(1) Biography was summarized from: Lewalski’, Barbara K., “The Life of John Milton”. London 2000, which can be found in the first few introductory pages from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, A Norton Critical Edition, and edited by Gordon Teskey

(2) Campbell, Gordon, ed. A Milton Chronology. New York: Macmillan, 1997

- Marjorie D.