Affiliation:
1. University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign
Abstract
ABSTRACTIn this article, I argue that for John Milton in Paradise Lost and Areopagitica freedom was a rhetorical quality of action: an ethical capacity to address a situation by means of language. I contrast Milton’s approach to that of Thomas Hobbes, for whom freedom was only a state. These reflections suggest that Milton’s rhetorical freedom, a capacity to act amid oppositions by virtue of the wisdom and power of discourse, offers the outlines of an alternate modernity.
Publisher
The Pennsylvania State University Press
Subject
Literature and Literary Theory,Linguistics and Language,Communication,Language and Linguistics