ABSTRACT
The English people needed to be particularly discerning and vigilant readers during the turbulent years following the regicide. The death of the king did not guarantee the safety of the infant Republic. Royalists and revolutionaries cried out in print for support, and the choice between them could be construed as a choice between God’s supporters and Satan’s. Eikon Basilike, which represented the late King Charles as a good and religious man who attempted to preserve his subjects against political chaos, succeeded in part by offering a simpler, nostalgic alternative to the recent turmoil. In taking up the gauntlet to do battle with the king’s book in October 1649, Milton pits his own acute power of reading in Eikonoklastes against the emotional appeal of a text which offers a comforting restoration of stability at the cost of liberty. Through his exhaustive reading and refutation of Eikon Basilike, Milton acts to prove what he argued in Areopagitica, that “bad books . . . to a discreet and judicious Reader serve in many respects to discover, to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate” (YP 2, 512).1 More importantly, by putting his own reading on public display, he instructs others in the process of discerning error masked by seductive rhetoric.
