“Is this our boasted constitution? Is this our liberty?”: Reading Milton in Ireland

Abstract

This essay examines a largely undocumented aspect of Irish literary history: the reception and circulation of John Milton's writings in Ireland. Milton's negative views of the inhabitants of Ireland have been well documented, but this essay analyses some of the intellectual responses of readers, writers, and thinkers in Ireland to the English republic's leading apologist for the conquest of Ireland. I argue that such an approach is required in order to redirect the critical narrative away from examinations of the hackneyed anti‐Irish stereotypes written for colonial agendas and to shed light on the ways in which Milton was read to speak to and about a range of political, religious, social, and ethical issues in early modern and late modern Ireland. The essay also seeks to introduce my book‐length study of the topic which, ranging across printed and manuscript sources—from Irish translations of Milton's poetry to political appropriations of his controversial prose—interrogates the collective assumptions, aspirations, fears, anxieties, and prejudices of readers and writers in Ireland as they are revealed in response to the self‐conflicting voice of civil and religious liberties, on the one hand, and aggressive English colonialism on the other.