INTRODUCTION

This chapter is written for Miltonists and students of Milton; at the same time, it invites consideration of a more general set of questions and problems by linking serious issues in Milton studies with serious issues facing Christian activists today. I offer a reading of Milton's poetry, primarily Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, through an imaginative window provided by the contemporary phenomenon of liberation theology.

Analogies, by definition, juxtapose phenomena that are alike in some ways and different in others. Linking Milton's life and works with the thought and actions of Christian activists over four centuries later calls forth questions about what we are doing when we draw analogies between phenomena from different points in history. Such a juxtaposition invites discussion of particular differences and of the very meaning of historical difference. I would like at the beginning to acknowledge the validity of these concerns but at the same time to set them to one side for the moment on the ground that the method I have chosen requires doing one thing at a time.

One advantage of the theoretical self-consciousness of our age has been academic writers' freedom to acknowledge and explore the ideological and practical contexts from within which we inevitably experience and explore our subjects. A related opportunity is for scholars to widen their own experience by entering imaginatively the contexts of others.