John Milton, born in London on 9 December 1608 and dead there on 8 November 1674, lived through one of the most violent and intellectually fertile passages in English history. He was a poet, polemicist, scholar, civil servant, religious controversialist, educator, translator, and theorist of political liberty. To many readers he is above all the author of Paradise Lost, the English epic that retells the rebellion of…
“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Dramatic Poets, Hymn Writers, Metaphysical Poets, Political Poets, Restoration Poets
Emotional landscape: Peace, Spirituality, Wonder
In the vast and glittering tapestry of Renaissance music, where names like Palestrina, Byrd, and Dowland shimmer with canonical brilliance, there strides a figure less polished by posterity, yet no less compelling — Tobias Hume. Born in 1579, likely in the shadowed alleys of London or perhaps the rolling countryside of northern England, Hume emerges not as a cloistered churchman or courtly favorite, but as a man of t…
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers
Emotional landscape: Irony, Joy, Sensuality