- John Carey. Milton: The Complete Shorter Poems. Edinburgh: Longman, 1997.
- Cleanth Brooks. The Well Wrought Urn. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.
- Louis Martz. The Poet of Exile: A Study of Milton's Poetry. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980.
- Harold Bloom. Bloom's Major Poets: John Milton . Broomall: Chelsea House Pub, 1999.
-
Patterson, Annabel. "L'Allegro, Il Penseroso and Comus: "The Logic of Recombination"." Milton Quarterly 9, no. 3 (1975): 75-79. www.jstor.org/stable/24463111.