In the following excerpt, Kahn discusses Milton's Samson Agonistes in the context of Renaissance ideas of state authority, focusing on the tragic nature of the choices individuals had to make when ethical and political demands were at odds.

In the following essay, Lowenstein examines tension in Milton's later revolutionary writings. The critic suggests that, in serving both historiographic and mythopoeic functions, Milton understood the need for a poet to be true to historical fact while also fulfilling artistic and creative criteria.

Below, Stavely compares Milton's syntax and style with those of several contemporaneous political polemicists and demonstrates that his selective use of the Ciceronian model of rhetoric—unfashionable at the time—aptly facilitated his millennial message.

Below, Bennett discusses Milton's response to the Eikon Basi like, the fraudulent prison reflections of Charles I, and Milton's use of Satan to represent Charles I in his writings.

In the following essay Lewalski examines Milton's political pamphlets in the tumultuous years of 1659-60. She argues that his seeming inconsistencies and reversals are not evidence of fickleness or hypocrisy, but rather reveal a practical flexibility that allowed him to remain constant to his principles.

In the following essay, Fish offers a performative reading of "L'AUegro" and "Il Penseroso."

In the following essay, Abrams surveys interpretations of "Lycidas."

In the following essay, Shawcross examines Milton's Calvinist beliefs and the role his father's and grandfather's experiences with the Church may have influenced his theological ideas. He adds that although Milton was hostile to the Roman Catholic Church and a fierce advocate of the separation of church and state, he—despite the common perception—was not an anti-Trinitarian.

Martin explores the role of desire in Milton's depictions of Paradise.

In the following essay, Bush analyzes the influence of Christian humanism on Milton's poetry.

Wilding argues that Milton's democratic radicalism was present in his early work as well as his later writings.

In the following essay, Kermode examines the depiction of Christ in Paradise Regained, establishing Christian heroic virtue as distinct from pagan.

In the following essay. Leavis dismisses Milton's poetry as puritanical and pedantic

In the following excerpt, Hazlitt provides an overview of Milton's religious sensibilities, his political commitments, and his literary influences from Biblical and Classical writings.

Below, Hardin examines Milton's rejection of patriarchalism as a justification for kingship, discounting both the notions of fatherhood as the basis and origin for authority and the idea of the king as the father of the state.

In the essay below, Helgerson discusses Milton's role as laureate, a position which traditionally inhibited poetic creativity. Helgerson posits that Milton escaped this pitfall once he became less heedful of any obligations to the state, found his own voice, and fashioned a new self-presentation, as evidenced in Samson Agonites, Paradise Lost, and Paradise Regained.

In the essay below, Fink explores seventeenth-century political understandings of the notion of dictatorship. He maintains that the depiction of Satan as a dictator in Paradise Regained underscores Milton's rejection of the need for a dictator in a healthy commonwealth.

In the following excerpt, Graves assesses Milton as "a minor poet with a remarkable ear for music, before diabolic ambition impelled him to renounce the true Muse and bloat himself up … into a towering rugged poet."

In the following excerpt, Arnold describes Milton as the supreme English poet.

In the following excerpt, Chesterton sees Milton as a seventeenth-century individualist, standing apart from the Classical tradition on which he drew.

In the following excerpt, originally published in his Lives of the English Poets in 1780, Johnson critcizes what he thinks are the faults of John Milton's poem Lycidas, whose pastoral form he finds vulgar and disgusting.