ABSTRACT
Milton’s political writings are relatively short works, addressing specific events and situations and, on reading them, it is not immediately obvious how they might combine into a grand theoretical engagement with the political condition. However, when these works are placed in the light (and shade) of his later poetic writing, strong political themes may be seen to run through each and every text. The political themes are the nature of tyranny, the nature of liberty and the relationship of mutual opposition which defines them. The perception of an integral relationship between tyranny and liberty derives, in Milton’s thinking, from his philosophical concern with the nature of truth, the nature of falsity and the relationship between them. The interest in truth and falsity is itself derived from his theological concern with good and evil which ‘in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably’ (Areopagitica in Bush 1977: 167).
