Milton’s Areopagitica (1644)

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Licensing Order of 1643

•Author(s): Parliament•Context: Created during the Civil War•Pretext: Regulation of the industry and of

civil society

An Ordinance for the Regulating of Printing.[14 June, 1643.]• Online copy - http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=55829

•Justifications– Inadequacy of prior orders and measures against “false,

forged, scandalous, seditious, libellous, and unlicensed Papers, Pamphlets, and Books to the great defamation of Religion and Government”.

– Rampant piracy by the emergence of private and unregulated presses (which “have taken liberty to Print, Vend and publish, the most profitable vendible Copies of Books belonging to the Company and other Stationers”)

It is therefore Ordered by the Lords and Commons in Parliament..• Pre-publication censorship - No publication is to be

printed “unless the same be first approved of and licensed under the hands of such person or persons as both, or either of the said Houses shall appoint ”

• Registration of publishing - All publications are to be “entred in the Register Book of the Company of Stationers, according to ancient custom, and the Printer thereof to put his name thereto.”

• The protection of printing rights – No party shall print “book or Books lawfully licensed and entred in the Register of the said Company for any particular member thereof, without the license and consent of the Owner or Owners ”.

Furthermore.. The “Power to search and seize.; To apprehend Authors, Printers, &c” • The power to search and seize –

– Presses: “all unlicensed Printing Presses, and all Presses any way imployed in the printing of scandalous or unlicensed Papers, Pamphlets, Books, or any Copies of Books belonging to the said Company, or any member thereof, without their approbation and consents”

– Books:“scandalous and unlicensed Books, Papers, Pamphlets and all other Books, not entred, nor signed with the Printers name as aforesaid, being printed, or reprinted by such as have no lawfull interest in them, or any way contrary to this Order,

– People: “all Authors, Printers, and other persons whatsoever, imployed in compiling, printing, stitching, binding, publishing and dispersing of the said scandalous, unlicensed, and unwarrantable Papers, Books and Pamphlets as aforesaid”

The Authors – Parliament

• In particular, the House of Commons– Dilemma: Puritan ideals vs. political pragmatism– Dilemma: A return to the former regime?

• Collapse of licensing– Flowering of public discourse– But in some areas, it created legitimate problems (Mendle)

• “Tabloid journalism” – Scandal, false news, and fear in a time of war.

• Degeneration of the industry: even legitimate publishers resorted to the printing of such news to compete.

Areopagitica contextualised

•Demonstrates his shrewd political judgment – With regards to public discourse: “ […]if they be found mischievous

and libellous, the fire and the executioner will be the timeliest and the most effectuall remedy, that mans prevention can use.”

– With regards to the industry, and Parliament’s misgivings: “For this authentic Spanish policy of licencing books, if I have said aught, will prove the most unlicenc't book it self within a short while; and was the immediat image of a Star-chamber decree to that purpose made in those very times when that Court did the rest of those her pious works, for which she is now fall'n from the Starres with Lucifer. ”

Areopagitica contextualised

•With such awareness, Milton crafts a rhetorical piece which is both persuasive and sensitive to political realities

•And yet Areopagitica is concerned mainly with ideals, and a transcendent reality rather than a temporal one.

•Could this account for the near absolute lack of response to it?– For more than two centuries Areopagitica has been hailed as a

work of noble reasoning and eloquent prose […] and yet, incredible as it may appear, there seems to have been not a single reference to this masterpiece in the thousands of books and pamphlets printed at the time, some of them dealing with the same subject. (Parker 2)

Areopagitica

• "Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are" p.832

• "For that part which preserves justly every man's copy to himself, or provides for the poor, i touch not." p.832

• "Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably [...] it was out the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil." p.833

• "how can we more safely, and with less danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reason? And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read." p.833

• "if we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must regulate all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man" p.833

• "When God gave him reason, he gave him reason to choose, for reason is but choosing." p.834

• "There it was that I found and visited he famous Galileo, grown old a prisoner to the inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought" p.834 (Catholic Spain ref but in context of reason v religious dogma trope)

Areopagitica

"Suffer not these licensing prohibitions to stand at every place of opportunity, forbidding and disturbing them that continue seeking, that continue to do our obsequies to the torn body of our martyred saint." p.835

"Consider what nation it is wherof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point, the highest that human capacity can soar to." pp.835-6

"But now, as our obdurate clergy have with violence demeaned the matter, we are become hitherto the latest and backwardest scholars, of whom God offered to have made us the teachers." p.836

What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil but wise and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies? We reckon more than five months yet to harvest; there need not be five weeks; had we but eyes to lift up, the fields are white already." p.836 ("Do not say, 'four months more and then the harvest?' I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest." John Ch.4 v.35 NIV.) (a comment on Restoration)

"Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, mich writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making." p.836

"Ye cannot make us now less capable, less knowing, less eagerly pursuing of the truth, unless ye first make yourselves, that made us so, less the lovers, less the founders of our true liberty [...] Give me liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties." p.838

"if it come to prohibiting, there is not aught more likely to be prohibited than truth itself." p.839

"This authentic Spanish policy of licensing books" p.839

Bibliography

• Haller, William. “Two Early Allusions to Milton's ‘Areopagitica”. Huntington Library Quarterly. 12.2 (1949): 207-212. University of California Press. Web.

• Mendle, Michael. “De Facto Freedom, De Facto Authority: Press and Parliament, 1640-1643”. The Historical Journal. 38.2 (1995): 307-332. Cambridge University Press. Web.

• Parker, William R. Milton’s contemporary reputation. Ardent Media, 1940. Web.