Joe Moshenska

It’s been over forty years since I studied John Milton in an honors class at Temple University. While studying Milton, I bored people with all I was learning about him and his poetry. On the train ride home from Temple, I read his verse out loud; being a speed reader I had to slow myself down. I assure you, few people took the seat next to me!

I haven’t read his work since then, but for revisiting On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity every year. It was time to revisit Milton.

Joe Moshenska’s Making Darkness Light is more than a study of Milton’s life, time, and work. It is a personal exploration of the poet, the author’s struggle to understand why he has been obsessed with Milton for years. Moshenska traveled across London and Europe, following Milton’s trail, imagining how the places and people he met impacted his work. I have read several books like this recently, biographies that are personal, the authors writing about visiting where their subjects lived and traveled. It is a refreshing approach that I enjoy. As Moshenska demonstrates how Milton comes alive for him, he illuminates this complex man and poet for us.

Milton was a Nonconformist thinker, a Christian, and a man who supported republicanism and the murder of Charles I. He was a man who married unwisely and supported divorce, then married two more times. He was a scholar of great breadth, determined to become a poet by writing epic poems. He became blind and blamed his diet, and he met Galileo and was familiar with cutting edge scientific discoveries. He was anti-Catholic but made friends across Italy during his travels.

This is not an easy book, it requires attention and work, at least for someone like myself, whose scholarly days ended forty-three years ago. But I kept on, for it is a beautiful book, complex and rich.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.… (mais)

This biography of an unusual man at a fascinating point in history has much of interest in it and I am glad I read it. But it left me feeling somewhat frustrated. It doesn't engage in the way you'd expect from historical fiction but it isn't analytical enough to be serious historical scholarship. Although the writer isn't naive enough to represent him as some sort of saint, he is nevertheless fairly uncritical and over sympathetic towards Kenelm, with the result that we don't get any real sense of the impact on him of the conflicts of the age. 12 August 2017.… (mais)