Milton and the Republican Politics of Paradise Lost

• Published date: 01 September 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129241255291
• Author: Frank Lovett
• Date: 01 September 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2024, Vol. 77(3) 1060–1072

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129241255291

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Milton and the Republican Politics of

Paradise Lost

Frank Lovett

Abstract

Milton was both a great poet and in his own time a well-known political writer. Reading Paradise Lost in the light of his

republican political writings, however, presents a serious problem because it is Satan and his confederates who speak and

act like republicans in that epic poem, as would have been obvious to his contemporary readers. Rather than try to

explain this problem away as others have done, this paper argues that Paradise Lost advances a powerful republican

argument continuous with Milton’s earlier political views. Specif‌ically, Paradise Lost shows that monarchy and other

artif‌icial hierarchies are evil because they contradict the natural and equal right to freedom of all human beings.

Keywords

John Milton, Paradise Lost, republicanism, freedom from domination, natural equality

John Milton is best known as a poet. Modern readers

usually encounter him f‌irst as the author of Paradise Lost,

and many go no further. But there was another side to

Milton, for he was also a deeply engaged political writer,

and a committed republican.

1

The political Milton was

just as familiar to his contemporaries as the poetical

Milton, if not more so. Directly confronting the poetical

with the political Milton presents a serious diff‌iculty,

however.

The diff‌iculty is related, in some respects, to two

commonplaces about Paradise Lost. On the one hand,

there is the familiar observation that Milton could vig-

orously support rebellion against King Charles I even as

he disapproved of rebellion against God because he re-

garded the latter as a legitimate ruler but not the former.

Thus, Milton would have heartily agreed with the ex-

pression attributed to John Bradshaw (the judge who

presided over the king’s trial in 1649) that “Rebellion to

tyrants is obedience to God.”On the other hand, there is

the familiar observation that Satan is by far the most

interesting character in Paradise Lost, with the possible

exception of Eve. So much so indeed that William Blake

famously quipped Milton was “of the Devil’s party

without knowing it”([1790] 1977, 182).

These two commonplaces by themselves are apt to

cause worry when set too close together. After all, if the

reader is prone to sympathize with the rebel Satan, should

this not either discredit actual rebels such as Milton, or

else cast doubt on Milton’s faith? But the diff‌iculty is

increased substantially once we have a clear under-

standing of republican political doctrine in hand. For, as

we shall see, the problem is that Satan is no ordinary rebel,

but specif‌ically a republican rebel who expresses and acts

more often than not from the very same republican ideals

and principles that Milton himself previously advocated.

In other words, the poetical Milton seems to have recast

the political Milton on the wrong side in his epic

masterpiece.

This problem was long obscured as, f‌irst, Milton’s

republicanism was neglected in the eighteenth century;

and later, as republicanism was neglected altogether in the

nineteenth century. As a result, surprisingly few scholars

have confronted Satan’s apparent republicanism directly.

2

There is of course a considerable body of scholarship on

various other political themes in Paradise Lost, much of it

f‌lowing from the pathbreaking work of Hill (1977). While

this literature is often excellent in drawing out the poem’s

many political resonances, at the same time it usually

lacks a f‌irm understanding of republican doctrine with

which to structure those ideas. Thus, the central problem

Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA

Corresponding Author:

Frank Lovett, Washington University in St. Louis One Brookings Drive,

Campus Box 1063, St. Louis, MO 63130-4899.

Email: f‌lovett@wustl.edu