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Milton’s Ideal Education and the Role of Literature

Milton defines ideal literature in terms of its performance of educational functions. Milton’s Of Education focuses on cultivating young leaders with inner virtues and practical skills based on Protestant doctrine and civic ethics. The necessity of Milton’s ideal education reflects the realities of England in the 1640s, which were expected to overcome historical turmoil and build the ideal Christian republic and millennial kingdom. This era was the time for trained and educated young men to be continually recruited to construct the ideal state. In this situation, Milton argues that Parliament should urgently design and implement the vitally appropriate educational programs necessary for training effectively noble and capable students. In Of Education, Milton places literature education at the end of a well-organized curriculum to achieve his educational goals. This order of curriculum takes the interests and abilities of the young men selected for such an education into consideration, but simultaneously demonstrates the importance of literature and its education. Milton claims that education should provide young leaders with the knowledge and love of God, the practical ability to adequately cope with both normal and emergent circumstances, and the ethical awareness to thoughtfully performing what is needed for both the private and public good. In this aspect, literature is the most suitable means of carrying out Milton’s ideal education, because literature can be used religiously, gloriously and magnificently, playing an integral role in all things relating to both the divine and the secular, the private and the public, the visible and the invisible. Ultimately literature and its education contribute decisively to establishing Milton’s ideal republic because his desired commonwealth can be alized essentially through highly trained young leaders and their tremendous capabilities supported by a complete and generous education, which is hard to achieve in actuality without a proper understanding of education in literature. In this sense, Milton’s literature has a solid educational significance and function.