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

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

&nbsp;&nbsp;Milton&quot;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&quot;s rhetorical strategies and modes in the context of the licensing controversy which recent criticism has overlooked.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;The licensing controversy of 1643-45 whose immediate occasion was Parliament&quot;s introduction of the Licensing Order in 1643 was related to a complex of multiple factors: the Stationers&quot; Company&quot;s demand for Parliament&quot;s strict regulation of the press, Parliament&quot;s reintroduction of a stringent censoring machine aiming at suppressing the spread and circulation of radical ideas in its alliance with the Stationers&quot; economic interests, conservative Presbyterians&quot;s support for Parliament&quot;s censorship and radical writers&quot; criticism of the monopolistic and factional use of the press. Milton&quot;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&quot;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&quot; Company. Behind the deployment of Milton&quot;s ingenious rhetorical modes and complex rhetorical strategies is his implicit criticism of the current civil power&quot;s inability to redefine the relationship between a ruling power and the private subject&quot;s right to freedom of the press and speech from a novel perspective.