Areopagitica in the Licensing Controversy: Milton"s Rhetorical Strategies and Modes

• 영문명: Areopagitica in the Licensing Controversy: Milton"s Rhetorical Strategies and Modes
• 발행기관: 한국외국어대학교 영미연구소
• 저자명: Eunmi Park
• 간행물 정보: 『영미연구』제10집, 113~135쪽, 전체 23쪽
• 주제분류: 사회과학 > 지역학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2004.06.01

영문 초록

  Milton"s Areopagitica is widely known for its defence of a universal and absolute freedom of speech and of the press, but recent studies tend to disapprove its reading as a libertarian document supporting complete freedom of publication and expression. This article shares such a changed critical tendency regarding Areopagitica, but it is more concerned with Milton"s rhetorical strategies and modes in the context of the licensing controversy which recent criticism has overlooked.
  The licensing controversy of 1643-45 whose immediate occasion was Parliament"s introduction of the Licensing Order in 1643 was related to a complex of multiple factors: the Stationers" Company"s demand for Parliament"s strict regulation of the press, Parliament"s reintroduction of a stringent censoring machine aiming at suppressing the spread and circulation of radical ideas in its alliance with the Stationers" economic interests, conservative Presbyterians"s support for Parliament"s censorship and radical writers" criticism of the monopolistic and factional use of the press. Milton"s Areopagitica written in such a political, economic and ideological context shows the characteristic rhetorical modes of classical deliberative and epideictic rhetoric and of a closely connected network of rational discourse and figurative language. Milton"s artful orchestration of these modes derives from his complicated rhetorical strategies of negotiation with, and indirect criticism of, the Parliament which played a leading role in bringing back the conservative licensing system in its alliance with the Stationers" Company. Behind the deployment of Milton"s ingenious rhetorical modes and complex rhetorical strategies is his implicit criticism of the current civil power"s inability to redefine the relationship between a ruling power and the private subject"s right to freedom of the press and speech from a novel perspective.

키워드

licensing controversy Parliament Stationers" Company press censorship rhetorical strategies and modes