At the beginning of Eikonoklastes, Milton argues that his response to the King‘s book, Eikon Basilike, is not because he is ―after fame,‖ but because he endeavours to destroy the false representation of the King imposed by Eikon Basilike upon the people. The enforcement is in the form of reading and interpretation. The intended effect of the King's book on people is to make them believe that he ―breath'd not the same breath with other mortal men‖ (338). Milton‘s attempt to represent a truer image of the King and his actions ―on the behalf of liberty, and the commonwealth‖ and destroy this idolized image would be of course in the realm of language, interpretation, and reading. Milton applies his method of radical, critical, and free reading in order to interpret and judge truly and justly, a method which is founded in the qualities of language: ―For in words which admit of various sense, the libertie is ours to choose that interpretation which may best minde us of what our restless enemies endeavour, and what wee are timely to prevent‖ (342). Milton insists that the achievements of language are more influential than the victories of armies. He makes the performative, interpretive force of language the very focus of his book:
[…] among other examples we finde that the last will of Caesar being read to the people, and what bounteous Legacies hee had bequeath‘d them, wrought more in that Vulgar audience to the avenging of his death, then all the art he could ever use, to win thir favor in his life-time. And how much their intent, who publish‘d these overlate Apologies and Meditations of the
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dead King, drives to that same end of stirring up the people to bring him that honour, that affection, and by consequence, that revenge to his dead Corps, which hee himself living could never gain to his Person […]. (342)
To him the power of the King's book lies in its ability to change the conception of the king in the minds of the people. Referring to the Latin words written on the ―portraiture‖ of Eikon Basilike, Milton indicates that the King or the ghost-writer hope that ―what hee could not compass by Warr, he should achieve by his meditations‖ (342):
In one thing I must commend his op‘nness who gave the title to this Book, Eikon Basilike, that is to say, The Kings Image; and by the Shrine he dresses out for him, certainly would have the people come and worship him. For which reason this answer also is intitl‘d Iconoclastes, the famous Surname of many Greek Emperors, who in thir zeal to the command of God, after long tradition of Idolatry in the Church, took courage, and broke all superstitious Images to peeces. (343)
Milton publishes his book, Eikonoklastes, as an essentially deconstructive reading of the King‘s book which has created an exemplary image of the Christian King as a universal model blocking the critique of kings and state powers in general. Working on the minds of its readers, it aims to anchor and institutionalize monarchy in an undisputable and
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unquestionable form. The King is represented as a saint, a martyr, beyond critique.40
This is exactly against the very practice of Milton's fit reading. Milton‘s radical, critical reading of Eikon Basilike is a good example of textual performative critique and its challenge to hegemonic language. His reading strategy is a form of deconstructive metaquestioning. Milton writes:
And if by sentence thus writt‘n it were my happiness to set free the minds of English men from longing to returne poorly under that Captivity of Kings, from which the strength and supreme Sword of Justice hath deliverd them, I shall have don a work not much inferior to that of Zorobabel: who by well praising and extolling the force of Truth, in that contemplative strength conquer‘d Darius; and freed his Countrey, and the people of God from the Captivity of Babylon. Which I shall yet not despair to doe, if they in this Land whose minds are yet Captive, be but as ingenuous to acknowledge the strength and supremacie of Justice […]. (585)
Milton's aim in this book, which responds to an urgent political situation but is oriented towards the future, is to "free the minds of English men from returning to slavery and captivity." He believes that if people do not read and interpret the King's book correctly, they will lose their freedom. His own reading of the King's book is the very exemplification of a fit reading, which considers, questions, and analyzes everything in
40 For a discussion on Milton's attempt to replace the image of the King as a saint or martyr with his own
image of Charles, see David Loewenstein‘s Milton and the Drama of History: Historical Vision, Iconoclasm, and the Literary Imagination.
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order to come to a true and just understanding and judgment which provides the opening for justice. Milton's attempt, as Ainsworth indicates, is to put the theory of Areopagitica to work "in Eikonoklastes and engage in ‗textual trial‘" (Spiritual Reading 34). His reading model is radical and critical enough not to exempt even the King as the highest religious and political power. Such a reading is to be free from all sectarian and customary interests and concerns. The textual trial in the form of radical, critical, and free reading, for Milton, is the only way through which individuals in his society could be able to identify the truth of a case and judge truly and justly for the sake of freeing all people from any hegemonic, tyrannical power and moving towards more justice. Susanne Woods, in her essay "Elective Poetics and Milton's Prose," argues for what she calls an "elective poetics" in Milton's polemical writings, which is "an author's method for requiring and empowering reader choice, often to get the reader to enact the liberating and self-defining process of choosing" (196).41
Milton makes regular disapproving references to readers of the King's book who are not demonstrating the attributes and qualities of being a fit reader. He calls such readers "the blockish vulgar," "the common sort," those with "boisterous folly and superstition," judging "without industry or the paines of well judging, by faction and the easy literature of custom and opinion," (339) and "prone ofttimes not to a religious onely, but to a civil kinde of Idolatry in idolizing their Kings" (343). In his thought, unfit readers "would shew themselves to be by nature slaves, and arrant beasts; not fitt for that liberty
41 See Susanne Woods‘ essay, "Elective Poetics and Milton's Prose," in Politics, Poetics, and
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which they cri'd out and bellow'd for, but fitter to be led back again into thir old servitude"(581).