In the excerpt from Writing the English Republic, Norbrook suggests that Milton, “Finding that the government was dealing well with liberty in the state… turned to domestic liberty, in which he included marriage, education, and freedom of speech. This is a very broad category; but one of Milton’s aims is to span conventional distinctions between the political and the religious, the public and the private, authorship and citizenship” (109). In reading Milton’s treatise on Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Areopagitica, and Of Education, one cannot help but notice the way in which Milton conflates these dichotomies; each treatise implies the natural conflation of all three of the pairings Norbrook mentions, especially as they concern authorship.
Milton’s frequent use of “Author” in Paradise Lost to imply the master in the relationship – both for god and Adam – is an apt demonstration of the way in which Milton seems to suggest the power of the written word. His eloquent defense of free speech in Areopagitica implies the necessity for the citizen-author to the freedom of both individual and nation. The figure of the author-citizen, as the use of “Author” in Paradise Lost implies, is a figure of considerable authority and, naturally enough, represents the image of the authoritative scholar Milton projects. This author-citizen was a synthesis not only of public and private, but of a modern man and “a return to that lost civic virtue and purity of language” (Norbrook 113) that Milton valued in Classical writing and government. As author and citizen, Milton’s suggestions, especially in treatises that could be construed as somewhat controversial, resonate with his image of the ideal nation; he desires England to be a nation of rationality and the author-citizen is the ideal member of that nation.
However, the author-citizen figure so staunchly defended in Areopagitica is already present in both Doctrine and Of Education. The rational tone that combines the language of legal and religious discourse in Doctrine attempts to argue the value of the author-citizen as more valuable to the public sphere if he is contented in the private: “The republican male must be fit of rthe public sphere, and ideological antagonism in marriage disrupts that fitness” (Norbrook 115). This conflation of the two spheres – which had hitherto and would thereafter often be kept completely separate – completely embodies Milton’s republicanism in which, Norbrook says, “he wants to destroy… a hierarchy in which power is handed down from above” (110). Although Norbrook focuses on Milton’s early defense of monarchy, specifically in Of Reformation, the ideas contained therein continue to apply to Milton’s later ideas, and Norbrook suggests that these ideas were always more compatible with republicanism than monarchy: “[Civill Government mentioned in Of Reformation] is a commonwealth in which all the parts are subordinated to the whole rather than the body’s being subordinated to the monarchical head” (113). Milton, Doctrine’s author-citizen, refuses to accept either religious or political authority that would attempt to dictate rules that suffocate the private person, rendering him unable to participate in the public sphere.
Of Education seems to be a synthesis of Milton’s republican attitude of defying authority with an understanding of self-discipline that would enable the educational system to produce more author-citizens. Following these, Areopagitica is rather unsurprising; the figure of the author-citizen – a man educated in a republican fashion and allowed to escape the strictures of a religious authority that does not have his happiness and peace foremost in mind – must have the freedom to be an author-citizen and must not be stifled by an oppressive government whose irrational fears have begun to lead it away from republic and back toward tyranny. The fundamental element of the author-citizen, as Norbrook suggests, is that he is a synthetic figure; he fuses both the public and the private, the religious and the political, and, most important of all, the citizen and the author.
The questions that arise from the depiction and articulation of the author-citizen relate to the contradictions inherent in the act of synthesis. As Norbrook points out, Doctrine is rife with contradictions both to itself and to Of Education: “As in his relations with democracy, a certain opening in the direction of wider communication creates an abrasive effect when it is then sharply limited. He expected wives to converse, but the ideal curriculum he set out in Of Education… made no mention of women” (118). Other contradictions that are complicated rather than resolved by Milton’s synthesizing appear in his desire to limit Catholic publications – “Milton then does not object to the suppression of royalist opinions in a time of war” (Norbrook 120) – while speaking against the limiting of publication in Areopagitica. At what point do we listen to the author-citizen and at what point to we ignore the strictures he sets forth? When is the authority of the author liberating and when does it cross the line it professes to defend between freedom and tyranny, especially in light of Norbrook’s observation that “Areopagitica would have been still less accessible to the artisans who were enthusiastically entering political debate. It speaks for, rather than to, them; the community it speaks to is that of intellectuals deeply versed in literary culture” (125)?
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