ABSTRACT
This metaphor, an amalgam of image and word, begins and encapsulates Milton’s argument against the Licensing Order of June 16, 1643. It reflects two contentious ways of seeing dominant during seventeenth-century England-iconophilia, or love of the image, and iconophobia, or fear of the image-a dynamic that shapes the manuscript speech. In this essay, I argue that we can fully understand neither Milton’s argument nor the complexity of that argument without considering the scopic regimes-the dominant ways of seeing-that organized visual culture in the seventeenth century. Specifically, Areopagitica draws its power from and manifests a conflicted visual culture, one that simultaneously loved and hated the image.
