my latest post for the group blog Notes On Liberty
Areopagitica
A Speech of Mr John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England (1644).
(For my general introduction to Milton, click here)
‘We turn for a short time from the topics of the day, to commemorate, in all love and reverence, the genius and virtues of John Milton, the poet, the statesman, the philosopher, the glory of English literature, the champion and martyr of English liberty’, Thomas Babington Macaulay (Whig-Liberal historian, writer and government minister), 1825.
The digitised text of Areopagitica can be found at the Online Library of Liberty here.
The strange sounding title is a reference to one of the key institutions of ancient republican and democratic Athens, the court of Areopagus. Appropriately, as we are looking at an essay on politics by a great poet, the Areopagus and its mythical foundation was celebrated as the core of Athenian justice in
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