“The Liberty Discourse in Early Modern Europe 1500-1650: Milton’s Areopagitica in context”, Professor Hilary Gatti
English Department Research Seminar, University of Sydney
Date: Wednesday April 6, 2016
Time: 3:00–5:00pm
Venue: John Woolley Building, Room S226, University of Sydney
All welcome!
My contribution will start by emphasizing the recent emergence of Milton the prose writer as a fully autonomous figure and no longer as a mere adjunct of the great epic poet (writing with his left hand). That the considerable recent attention to Milton’s prose has led to a lively interpretative debate is considered here as a positive aspect of the liberty discourse which is the subject of my recent book Ideas of Liberty in Early Modern Europe: from Machiavelli to Milton (Princeton University Press, 2015). The second part of the paper will reconsider the treatment of Milton’s Areopagitica in my book, emphasizing in particular the Italian influence on Milton’s idea of liberty, and the limits he places on that idea.
Hilary Gatti was born and studied in Great Britain, until she married and moved to Italy in 1961. She started teaching English Language and Literature in the Letters and Philosophy Faculty of the State University of Milan in 1964, and then as Associate Professor in the Letters and Philosophy Faculty of the State University of Rome “La Sapienza” until her retirement in 2006. She has published extensively on renaissance literature and philosophy, and is the author of The Renaissance Drama of Knowledge: Giordano Bruno in England (Routledge), Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science (Cornell University Press) and Essays on Giordano Bruno (Princeton University Press). Her most recent book, Ideas of Liberty in Early Modern Europe: from Machiavelli to Milton was published by Princeton University Press in May, 2015. A Festschrift in her honor, edited by Martin McLaughlin of the University of Oxford, Ingrid D. Rowland of the University of Notre Dame, and Elisabetta Tarantino, was published by Legenda in October, 2015.
