Lycidas: Poetry and Death Essay -- Milton Lycidas Essays

Lycidas Poetry and Death Living in a period of important religious and cultural flux, flush toilet Miltons poetry reflects the many influences he found two in history and in the contemporary world. With a vast knowledge of literature from the classical world of Greek and papist culture, Milton often looked back to more ancient times as a means of en exuberanting his works. At other times, however, he relies on his strong Christian beliefs for creating spiritually compelling themes and deeply religious imagery. Despite the seemingly inappropriate nature of these two polarized sources of inspiration, Milton somehow found a way of bridging the bed c everyplace between a pagan and a Christian world, often distort them together into one overpowering story. The pastoral elegy Lycidas, written aft(prenominal) the death of a fellow student at Cambridge, exemplifies this mastery over ancient and contemporary traditions in its transition from a pagan to a Christian context. Opening the poem in a setting rich with mythological figures and scenery, then deliberately moving into a distinctly Christian setting, Milton touches upon two personally relevant issues poetry and Christian redemption. In this way, Lycidas both addresses the subject of being a poet in a life infernal by death and at the same time shows the triumphant rejoice of a Christian life, one in which even the demise of the poet himself holds brighter promises of unceasing heavenly joy. Confronted with the drowning of contemporary Cambridge student and fellow poet Edward King in 1637, John Milton faced the daunting subject of making sense of an existence that needfully culminates in the ultimate destruction of human life. As M. H. Abrams states in his basic notes to Lycidas, Milton took part... ...hes, David. A Study of Literature. Miltons Lycidas The tradition and the Poem. Ed. C. A. Patrides. Columbia, Missouri University of Missouri Press, 1983. 92-110. Hanford, James H. The rural Elegy a nd Miltons Lycidas. Miltons Lycidas The Tradition and the Poem. Ed. C. A. Patrides. Columbia, Missouri University of Missouri Press, 1983. 31-59. MacCaffrey, Isabel G. Lycidas The Poet in a Landscape. Miltons Lycidas The Tradition and the Poem. Ed. C. A. Patrides. Columbia, Missouri University of Missouri Press, 1983. 246-66. Milton, John. Lycidas. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M. H. Abrams. 6th ed. New York W. W. Norton & Company, 1996. 646-51. Tayler, Edward W. Lycidas in Christian Time. Miltons Lycidas The Tradition and the Poem. Ed. C. A. Patrides. Columbia, Missouri University of Missouri Press, 1983. 303-18.