MUMBAI: BBC Radio 3 commemorates the 400th anniversary of the birth of poet John Milton (1608–74) with a host of programmes exploring his life and works next month from 7 December 2008 - 2 January 2009.
Milton was also a polemicist and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost, his treatise Areopagitica and his radical republican views and thoughts on divorce.
Sunday Feature: Adventurous Song airs on 7 December. David Norbrook, Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford University, explores the evolving views of Milton over the centuries and his importance to us today.
He searches for a sense of the man, on the streets – and Tube, where his poems are displayed – of the city of London, in the church where he is buried, and by looking at the Milton artefacts in the Bodleian Library.
It places his work in the context of the social and political turmoil of Milton's times.
Professor Norbrook responds personally to the life and the work of the man and how his prose moves him 400 years after it was written.
The Essay airs from 8 - 12 December. As well as writing poems, Milton was engaged, embroiled even, in politics and he wrote essays, pamphlets and tracts. The Essay devotes a week to Milton as an essayist.
Martyn Crucefix, a poet who also teaches in a secondary school, responds to Milton's Of Education. Sharon Achinstein, who is editing his tracts on divorce, will consider his controversial thoughts on the subject. In 1644, he seems to have called for no fault divorce on the ground of mutual incompatibility, which the law finally allowed in 1977.
Drama On 3 presents a new production of Samson Agonistes (Sunday 14 December, 8.00pm), the "dramatic poem" published in 1671, three years before the poet's death.
Written in the form of a Greek tragedy, with the Chorus commenting on the action, it follows the biblical story of the blind Samson wreaking his revenge on the Philistines who have imprisoned him.
A subject, with a personal resonance for the blind Milton, the BBC says that this is a perfect work for the medium of radio where poetry and drama can be balanced equally.
Acclaimed actor Anton Lesser reads the complete Paradise Lost (12 books), Milton's best known work, every weekday at 5 pm and at the weekend at 9.30 pm from 22 December to 2 January.