Renaissance/Early Modern
John Milton
1608–1674
“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
John Milton, English poet and Latin secretary under the Commonwealth, wrote , the epic of the Fall, and , a defense of unlicensed printing. His angels are free agents capable of war, loyalty, and rebellion. His Adam and Eve choose. Liberty of conscience and the dignity of free will run through the poems and the prose alike. Later treatments of sin, liberty, and theodicy answer to the figures and arguments he fixed for English readers of poetry and politics.
In the Conversation
5 of the Great Ideas