Blackwell Reference Online

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John Milton, as David Armitage has so cogently argued, was a poet against empire (Armitage 1995). He associated a drive for imperial expansion with the worst excesses of a dying and corrupt political culture. In fact, in his view the two are inextricably linked, the one necessitating the other. An extended critique of the evils of the late Stuart regime is made throughout Paradise Lost, a work which can no longer be read as an expression of Milton's quietism and withdrawal from political thought and political life (Hill 1977, ch. 29; Norbrook 1999, ch. 10). Satan, a figure in keeping with the politics of Charles I as well as Oliver Cromwell, once he has manipulated the Parliament of devils to allow him to implement his plan of corrupting humankind, sets off for the New World like an explorer, merchant or colonist seeking out exotic lands. Milton describes Satan resembling a fleet descriedHangs in the clouds, by equinoctial windsClose sailing from Bengala, or the islesOf Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bringTheir spicy drugs: they on the trading floodThrough the wide Ethiopian to the CapePly stemming nightly toward the pole. So seemedFar off the flying fiend:(PL II. 636–43) The significance of this epic simile, of course, is that the vehicle and object of the comparison can be reversed. European merchants are, in a fundamental way, Satanic, a point reinforced by the repetition ... log in or subscribe to read full text