Dec 28, 2009
Much of Sonnet XVI (subtitled To the Lord General Cromwell) is localized in time and place to England’s seventeenth century. The allusions that make up the poem’s primary content are to places and events that would have been immediately recognized by John Milton’s contemporaries but are understood by a modern audience only if put into historical context. In the spring of 1652, the Parliament appointed a committee to consider the question of how much free religious discussion would be tolerated outside the official Puritan Church and its appointed clergy....
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