Teaching John Milton’s “Lycidas”

Abstract

Along with Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare, John Milton is considered to be one of the founders of the English language as it is heard, spoken, written, and read around the world today. Students for whom English is not a native language often find some familiarity with the characters and plotlines of The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer and the plays of Shakespeare. Milton is another matter. Teachers of Milton need to make choices about which of Milton’s works to teach beyond Paradise Lost, and how to teach them. This study is based on the experience of teaching Milton to graduate students in post-Soviet Georgia and offers an approach that might be used in other locations, as well. We find that an effective approach to teaching Milton’s pastoral elegy, “Lycidas,” is to engage students by relating the characters to their own lives. Students at the graduate level tend to be about the same age as Edward King, the friend about whom Milton is writing.