Milton's Patriotic Epic

Abstract

fERIODICALLY during the past few decades articles and fairly r substantial passages in books have been devoted to the problem of Milton's British epic. References in his early writings, culminating in the famous autobiographical passage in The Reason of Church Government, have led to the generally accepted conclusion that he planned an epic on the classical model, with a British hero; some scholars even say explicitly that he intended to write an Arthuriad. Among the various biographical and political reasons given to explain why he never wrote such a poem, there have been a few suggestions that his prose writings, especially his two Latin defenses of the English people, represent a commutation of his plans, a substitute for his intended epic. This argument, however, has not been given due weight, even by the scholars who have advanced it. They have felt constrained to find further reasons, which imply that Milton was not satisfied with this substitute, while other scholars have ignored the idea altogether. In this paper I wish to suggest that Milton's prose works represent a definite fulfillment of his patriotic aims. Previous arguments, I believe, have failed to take into account many relevant statements from his own works and have been based on an assumption that Milton's plans in The Reason of Church Government were more explicit than they actually were. Milton defined his plans funda-