The Philosophical Optimist

Another essay on Milton for my students:  Charles Brent Oliver Dr. Borges ENGL 1020 SA1 5 March 2015   “On His Blindness”: Milton’s Punctuation             A careful examination of Milton’s sonnet “On His Blindness” reveals it to involve a masterful usage of English syntax and punctuation.   The poem of fourteen lines actually consists—in at least one of its multiple editions—of two main sentences, each of which contains within quotation marks at least one other sentence.   A close examination of how this was done, including a look at the punctuation, may reveal some of the art Milton used in making this, one of his most personal poems.             The poem, in the edition under consideration here (from the anthology Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense ), contains five marks of full punctuation: a question mark (line 7) and four pe...

Here we have another essay written for my students, but it’s free for anyone to enjoy. Brent Oliver Dr. Wells ENGL 1020 SA1 14 March 2016 The Agon of Art & Experience in a Sonnet by Milton             In the study of poetry, we are often cautioned by our teachers to recall that the speaker of a poem, like the narrator of a novel, is a voice invented by the poet and not the poet himself—or at least, not necessarily.   However, a poet is in no way forbidden from making the speaking voice of a poem a vehicle for his own thoughts and feelings.   The most obvious example of this may be prayers and hymns, whether they be ancient psalms, the poetry of John Donne, or the work of the latest contemporary Christian artist.             John Milton’s sonnet often referred to as “On His Blindness” is one example of a poet’s use of his poetry to express his own...