John Milton was an English poet, essayist, and historian. Many people consider him the most notable English author after William Shakespeare.
For 15 months, around 1638, Milton travelled around Italy and France. While he was in Florence, Milton met Galileo. He is the only contemporary mentioned by name in Paradise Lost. Milton mentioned his meeting with Galileo in his 1644 pamphlet, Areopagitica. He wrote about themes like freedom of the press. Gradually, he started to lose his eyesight. By the time he wrote Paradise Lost, he’d completely lost his eyesight. But that didn’t stop him from writing. Paradise Lost is an epic, free-form English poem. The plot drew from Biblical Themes. It remains Milton’s greatest masterpiece in people’s memory. The epic narrates how Satan influenced Adam and Eve. Later in the story, God banishes Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. It is said the tone of his Magnum opus seemed to favor Satan rather than God for some critics. In his lifetime, he wrote treatises on the Church, monarchy, free press, freedom of religion, expression, and divorce.
