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Robert A. Brinkley Who employs a dilemma must take care that the dilemma cannot be turned against him. -Antoine Arnauld l In a letter to Cromwell in 1652, Gerald Winstanley warned that "if kingly authority be set up in your laws again, King Charles hath conquered you and your posterity and won the field of you, though you semingly have cut off his head."2 What I would like to consider here is the kingly authority which Milton, a follower of Cromwell, set up in the radical epic he wrote in opposition to tyranny. While Paradise Lost was designed in part as a retort of the dilemma with which the Restoration confronted Milton-to submit willingly or unwillingly to the authority of Charles II-Milton's epic confronts its readers with a new version of the same dilemma: to submit willingly or unwillingly to Milton's authority. One of the legacies of the poem has been the attempt by its readers to evade this choice, to fashion a retort to the poem even as Milton attempted to fashion a retort in his poem. Such reading responds less to the content of Paradise Lost than to its rhetorical strategy and the will to power
Explorations in Renaissance Culture – Brill
Published: Dec 2, 1981
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