Nascent Republican Theory in Milton's Regicide Prose Page 1 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: University of Notre Dame; date: 25 March 2020 Print Publication Date: Nov 2012 Subject: Literature, Literary Studies - 1500 to 1700 Online Publication Date: Jan 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199560608.013.0017 Nascent Republican Theory in Milton's Regicide Prose Stephen M. Fallon The Oxford Handbook of Literature and the English Revolution Edited by Laura Lunger Knoppers Abstract and Keywords This article examines John Milton's political prose, which reflects the ideological turbu lence and paradoxes of nascent English republicanism. As the ascendant Independent party moved toward and through the cataclysmic events of 1649 without a fully realized political programme, Milton like others was obliged to keep pace with events by cobbling a set of intuitions and nascent principles into a coherent and explicitly anti-monarchic po litical theory. This process can be traced in Milton's 1649 prose: The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, Observations upon the Articles of Peace, and Eikonoklastes. While the three works are similar in their arguments, both explicit and implicit, they differ in rhetorical context and, as a result, in style. They follow a trajectory from self-generated essay to ani madversion, or point-by-point refutation of an opponent. Keywords: John Milton, English Revolution, political prose, republicanism, anti-monarchic political theory THE beheading of King Charles I on 30 January 1649 was a defining moment for the Eng lish Revolution and for John Milton. Milton's writings defending the regicide would fulfil an ambition he had once thought to reach by his poetry—international fame. In Milton's political prose, one can witness the ideological turbulence and paradoxes of nascent Eng lish republicanism. The ascendant Independent party moved toward and through the cat aclysmic events of 1649 without a fully realized political programme, and Milton like oth ers was obliged to keep pace with events by cobbling a set of intuitions and nascent prin ciples into a coherent and explicitly anti‐monarchic political theory. One can trace this process in Milton's 1649 prose: The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, Observations upon the Articles of Peace, and Eikonoklastes. Although, as we shall see, the three works have much in common in their arguments, both explicit and implicit, they differ in rhetorical context and, as a result, in style. They follow a trajectory from self‐generated essay to animadversion, or point‐by‐point refuta tion of an opponent. As the Tenure is succeeded by Eikonoklastes, which answers Charles I's Eikon Basilike nearly line by line, so Milton's first anti‐prelatical tract, Of Reformation, had preceded his more vitriolic Animadversions on the Remonstrants Complaint against