Milton's Strenuous Liberty

What motivated John Milton? Amidst his shifting concerns, which ones moved him most deeply? These are the animating questions of Milton's Strenuous Liberty. Tobias Gregory advances a new paradigm for Milton's priorities as a heterodox, godly, lay intellectual, arguing that, at the heart of Milton's public agenda from the early 1640s to the end of his life, there lay a concern to maximize liberty of conscience. In contrast to the republican Milton prevalent in recent scholarship, Gregory presents an anticlerical Milton whose real radicalism lay in his individualistic view of the church. Milton emerges in this study as an eloquent spokesman for unpopular positions, and as a poet who, in his late masterpieces, arrived at a broader perspective on the Puritan revolution, though without ever disavowing it as a dearly-held cause.

• Centralises anticlericalism within Milton's thought, situating the core of his radical attitudes in his individualistic, non-institutional view of the church
• Presents a fresh and enlivened chronology of change over Milton's career, discerning amongst his shifting concerns which ones touched him most deeply
• Presents fresh readings of Milton's late masterpieces Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, deepening scholarly understanding of major issues in these poems and their politics