밀턴 산문 속의 식민주의

Abstract

European countries of the sixteenth and seventeenth century were eager to expand their empires, and England was no exception. Ireland and North America were her main colonies for political and religious reasons and financial resources. Milton, who lived in the age of early English imperialism and worked for the Commonwealth government, must have known the English colonial policies and might have been involved in actual colonial operations. Milton's prose, Observations Upon the Articles of Peace, Reason of Church Government, Defensio Secunda Pro Populo Anglicano, Animadversions, The History of Britain, Eikonoklastes, Brief History of Moscovia, for examples, reveal evidences of Milton's view toward colonialism. This paper insists that Milton's view was not very different from that of the colonialists of his time: English colonialism was beneficial to Ireland and the Americas, which was God's divine intention. Colonialism itself does not mean anything to Milton, and what matters to Milton was who colonized whom. If the colonizers were Spain or the English Royalists, the act of colonization was sinful, but if it were England or the Puritans, it was propitious to the colonized and the colonizer.