Making Darkness Light: A Life of John Milton

by Joe Moshenska

Overview

An innovative and elegant new biography of John Milton from an acclaimed Oxford professor

John Milton was once essential reading for visionaries and revolutionaries, from William Blake to Ben Franklin. Now, however, he has become a literary institution—intimidating rather than inspiring.

In Making Darkness Light, Oxford professor Joe Moshenska rediscovers a poet whose rich contradictions confound his monumental image. Immersing ourselves in the rhythms and textures of Milton’s world, we move from the music of his childhood home to his encounter with Galileo in Florence into his idiosyncratic belief system and his strange, electrifying imagination.

Making Darkness Light  will change the way we think about Milton, the place of his writings in his life, and his life in history. It is also a book about Milton’s place in our times: about our relationship with the Western canon, about why and how we read, and about what happens when we let someone else’s ideas inflect our own.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541620681
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	12/07/2021
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Joe Moshenska is professor of English at Oxford, where he teaches early modern literature. He is a BBC New Generation Thinker and his essays and reviews have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, the White Review, the Financial Times, and the Observer. He received his PhD from Princeton and lives in Oxford, UK. 

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Two John Miltons 1

Part I

1 9 December 1608: 'On Time' 33

2 17 October 1614: 'At a Solemn Music' 54

3 8 April 1624: 'The Almighty's Hand' 80

4 24 December 1629: 'But Now Begins' 112

Part II

5 10 August 1637: 'Yet Once More' 143

6 19 May 1638: 'Your Thoughts Close, and your Countenance Loose' 183

7 20 July 1638: 'The Tuscan Artist' 214

8 14 February 1639: 'Majestic Show of Luxury' 242

Part III

9 10 August 1642: 'Knowing Good by Evil' 279

10 26 May 1658: 'A Universal Blank' 319

11 9 or 10 November 1674: 'Vain Monument of Strength' 357

Acknowledgements 393

Picture Credits 397

Notes 399

Trader 441

Editorial Reviews

‘Making Darkness Light’...comes alive in its alert close readings.”—New York Times

“Tantalisingly different and new…an extraordinary, seductive work of intellectual imagination.”—Financial Times

“Moshenska, in 11 chapters, gives us 11 ways of looking at Milton, from the brilliant son of a musician father to the traveling polyglot (he visits Galileo in Tuscany) to the theological crank to the ferocious propagandist pamphleteer to the blind man sitting in his house, reeling off the staves of his great poem.”—The Atlantic

“Making Darkness Light is a visceral, mesmerizing book that will likely send you rushing headlong to read (or reread) Paradise Lost.”—The New Criterion

“Moshenska knows his way around Milton’s world… Making Darkness Light privileges us with a peek inside its author’s mind in contemplation of such a life and makes a compelling case that it could be told in no other way.”—Boston Globe

“Oxford University professor Joe Moshenska traces the 17th-century English poet’s life but also reflects on the profound effect of Milton’s work on Moshenska’s own life as a reader and a scholar. This revelatory biography is inventive, erudite, and personal.”—Christian Science Monitor, "10 Best Books of December"

“Moshenska makes light of Milton and his works as he traverses 11 crucial days in his life.”—The Times (UK)

“Joe Moshenska’s Making Darkness Light is unlike any book about Milton…richly inventive.”—The Sunday Times

"Of course, anyone looking for a deeper understanding of the facts of Milton’s life and the context for his poetry will certainly find what they’re looking for here. Making Darkness Light includes not only moments in Milton’s life and the landscape of 17th century England as well as close readings of his work. But it’s the exploration of what the author describes as one of Milton’s deepest occupations, “the place of literature in a life,” that sets the book apart. Moshenka has no aspirations to separate the biographer from the biography, and Making Darkness Light is richer for his presence throughout the book." 

—Jessie Gaynor, Lit Hub Senior Editor

“[Moshenska’s] sympathetic yet challenging account will undoubtedly win Milton new readers — and for that a chorus of Hallelujahs.”—The Spectator

“Making Darkness Light is not a conventional biography…despite the ambitious and demanding nature of his project, Moshenska writes with humility and agility.”—Literary Review

“Moshenska (A Stain in the Blood), a Professor of English Literature at Oxford University, delivers a strikingly original biography of John Milton... a poetic tour of 17th-century England... Literature lovers of all sorts will find something to savor here.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Oxford literature professor Moshenska takes a fresh perspective on John Milton (1608-1674), the art of biography, and the experience of reading... An inspired biographical and autobiographical journey.”—Kirkus (starred review)

“Making Darkness Light is elegant, nuanced, and comprehensive. Moshenska gives us a fresh and vivid account of Milton as an individual and a poet while pushing beyond the boundaries of conventional biography. Blending the personal with the historical and the literary, the results are compelling.”—Bart van Es, author of The Cut Out Girl

“Moshenska has written a new kind of literary biography. At once glancingly a memoir, a rivetingly informative biography, and a fascinating reading of Milton as poet, scholar and ordinary man in his everyday life, Making Darkness Light is an illumination. Milton and everything and everybody around him are seen in a quite different, intriguing light.”—Adam Phillips, author of On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored and Becoming Freud

“Joe Moshenska's superb new biography of Milton is, like the poetry of his subject, a miracle of form, moving from moments of arresting detail to vast contemplations of time, history, and art, all set within an intimate narrative that is at once deeply embedded in its historical moment and aware of how that history connects through other moments to the present. The result is a stirring and compelling account of how great poetry gets written and gets read.”—Edward Wilson-Lee, author of The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books

From the Publisher

★ 2021-09-28
A prismatic portrait of the canonical poet.

Oxford literature professor Moshenska takes a fresh perspective on John Milton (1608-1674), the art of biography, and the experience of reading to create a lyrical, meditative narrative about a poet who has seemed to generations of biographers and readers to be “perennially contemporary.” It’s not possible, Moshenska writes, “to separate the place of Milton’s writings in his lifetime from the questionings and imaginings that they can provoke in ours.” The author has been haunted by Milton, entangled with him as a reader and teacher, and his captivating, perceptive study reveals a deeply felt connection. Dividing the biography into three parts, the author considers Milton’s birth and early life, marked by his growing up in “a house full of music” that, Moshenska believes, made him particularly sensitive to rhythm; his experiences in his late 20s and early 30s, including a “formative and fraught” trip to Italy and meeting with the aged Galileo; and the latter half of his life, when he married, became a father, and emerged as a controversial public figure. At this point, “he presented himself as a learned, urbane, and respectable poet” whose writings on divorce “could make women leave their husbands” and whose political views “threatened the bonds between monarchs and subjects.” Moshenska follows Milton’s footsteps from his birthplace on Bread Street in London to his travels through Italy; visits Milton’s several homes; offers meticulously close, sensitive readings of poems and essays; and reveals “granular details” of turbulent 17th-century English political and religious life. Throughout, the author shares his own intimate responses to Milton’s sometimes “alien and challenging” views. Milton, he writes, “was able to be absolutely himself while remaining in some sense foreign to himself, and this strange kind of self-relation I have found rich and useful in making sense of myself.” With no aspirations to produce a definitive biography, Moshenska has crafted, instead, an incisive portrayal.

An inspired biographical and autobiographical journey.

Kirkus Reviews

Joe Eyre's narration of this audiobook sounds erudite yet accessible. His approach effectively navigates the challenge of a scholarly deep dive into the life and works of John Milton. Moshenska, an Oxford professor of English literature, asserts that Milton's writing and legacy place him in a revered space in the Western literary canon, alongside Shakespeare and Wordsworth. However, his biography of Milton doesn't use the traditional template. Moshenska openly ponders the mystery of why he's compelled to focus on Milton at all. Yet his discussion is thoughtful; for example, starting with the relationship Milton had with music, he posits that the element of rhythm significantly informed Milton's writing. Eyre's voice is always engaging, hitting all the right inflections throughout. S.P.C. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2022 - AudioFile

Joe Eyre's narration of this audiobook sounds erudite yet accessible. His approach effectively navigates the challenge of a scholarly deep dive into the life and works of John Milton. Moshenska, an Oxford professor of English literature, asserts that Milton's writing and legacy place him in a revered space in the Western literary canon, alongside Shakespeare and Wordsworth. However, his biography of Milton doesn't use the traditional template. Moshenska openly ponders the mystery of why he's compelled to focus on Milton at all. Yet his discussion is thoughtful; for example, starting with the relationship Milton had with music, he posits that the element of rhythm significantly informed Milton's writing. Eyre's voice is always engaging, hitting all the right inflections throughout. S.P.C. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2022 - AudioFile