My purpose is to examine how on a few points Paradise Lost absorbs and reflects Milton's political experience. Even though Paradise Lost is not necessarily a political poem, it was written fairly late by a man who had a tremendous political experience that was both practical and theoretical. In my opinion, when politics are discussed in the first books, it is not so much the question of republicanism that is dealt with as the questions of government and of the source and foundation of political authority. It is only fairly late in the poem, in Books XI and XII, when the postlapsarian world is evoked by Michael, that indications are given on republicanism. And Milton's conclusion, as I see it, is that Christian liberty and republicanism cannot be separated.
Paradise Lost, as a literary work then, has its proper code and language. To adapt Pocock's vocabulary, I will say that only after we have understood what means Milton had of saying anything can we understand what he meant to say, or what he succeeded in saying. The languages in Paradise Lost are multiple: literary, theological, political, and even to some extent historical. Though my purpose is not to study the various languages of the work, I must nonetheless recall the limits within which Milton's conceptions were at least theoretically framed, and then focus on some of the main paradigms utilized so as to see what bearing they may have on the question of republicanism.