Write an essay on Milton as a sonneteer. What are the main features

Write an essay on Milton as a sonneteer. What are the main features or characteristics of Miltonic sonnets?

Ans.

Milton as a Sonneteer

Milton is second only to Shakespeare as a sonnet-writer. His total output as a sonneteer is very small. He wrote in all 24 sonnets. Of these, five are in Latin, and one sonnet, speaking strictly, does not conform to the sonnet form. As such his fame as a sonneteer is based only on 18 English sonnets. Milton as a sonneteer occupies a higher place than any of the Romantic poets. This shows that there must be something really great and remarkable about Milton’s sonnets. Milton is a belated Elizabethan sonneteer, but he does not imitate the Surrey or Shakespeare model of sonnet. He discards the native verse faithful to the foreign muse. The Petrarchan verse provided him with considerable freedom to modify the old and follow the new metrical structures. His sonnets deal with different subjects personal, social, political and religious.

Milton’s Sonnets, the Poems of His Own Circumstances

Milton wrote sonnets at intervals throughout the period of his pamphleteering and his work for the Commonwealth. They were mostly occasional poems about his own circumstances, or some contemporary event or poems or complements to friends or public figures. The sonnets of friendship and praise are often described as Horatian. While in his sonnets the utterance is personal and even intimate, these are all formal poems, in which a deliberate dignity of tone is sought and achieved through the careful handling of devices, he had largely learned from the Italian sonneteers.

Theme of His Sonnets

In Milton’s hand, the scope of the sonnet is greatly enlarged. He does not follow the Elizabethan tradition of love sonnets. He composed sonnets different from those sonnets that he composed in the first period of his life. His sonnets include almost everything within the range of human feelings and experience. His sonnets like, To a Nightingale, On His Blindness and the sonnets addressed to his late wife, are personal and domestic in nature. When The Assault was intended to the City, is on political theme. On the Late Massacre in Piedmont is on religious theme.

Differing from Those of Elizabethans

Milton’s sonnets differ from those of the Elizabethans not being special about love. They have none of the light grace, their richness and ornate beauty. His sonnets are characterized by vigour, dignity and exaltation. They are also remarkable for their elegance, their stately grace and their Horation charm. According to Macaulay, Milton’s sonnets are almost without exception dignified by a sobriety and greatness of mind to which we know not where to look for a parallel.

Following the Petrarchan Rhyme-Scheme

The Italian sonnet is divided into two parts-the Octave, a stanza of eight lines, and the Sestet, a stanza of six lines. The rhyme-scheme is: abba, abba, cde, cde. The Sestet may also rhyme as cdc, dcd; or cde, dce. At the end of the Octave, there is a well-marked pause or Caesura, followed by a Volta or turn in the thought, which implies that the thought, though it has not been dropped, is given, a new application, or summarised, or possibly disputed, in the Sestet. Yet this break is not invariably found in the Italian sonnet, or in Milton, who revived the Italian form, for instance there is no division between the Octave, and the Sestet in his sonnet On His Blindness. The octave-sestet division is also overridden by the continuous flow of the verse in On the Late Massacre in Piedmont.

The Poetic Qualities of Miltonic Sonnets

1. Grand Imagination: Milton’s sonnets present high imagination. In his sonnet On His Blindness, he imagines that God will become angry with him. He imagines that God does not need any man’s work.

Sensuous Pictures: Milton’s sensuous art is expressed in his sonnets. He uses great pictorial art in his famous sonnet On His Blindness:

1. “In this dark world and wide.”

2. “Who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve Him best.”

His sensuous pictorial art is well expressed in the sonnet On the Massacre.

The Use of Figures: In his sonnets, Milton makes a great adornment of figures of speech. In his famous sonnet, On His Blindness, he makes the use of following figures of speech:

“But Patience, to prevent that murmur.”

(Personification)