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Milton's purgatorio.(John Milton)

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From: Philological Quarterly
Date: 20010322
Author:DiPasquale, Theresa M.

Because Milton was preoccupied with the shape of his own poetic career, many of the works he wrote before Paradise Lost reflect his long-term plan to write a great epic and his anxiousness about when and how he would make himself ready to undertake such a monumental task. The poem most often linked to this concern is "Lycidas," the pastoral mode of which gives the work a clearly-defined place in the literary career of a poet determined to emulate Virgil. The principal speaker, "the uncouth swain," clearly reflects both Milton's ambition and his sense of his own limitations in ...

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