밀턴의 유미(有尾) 소네트, 새로운 양심강요 세력들 연구

As Milton’s sole tailed sonnet (sonetto caudato), “On the New Forcers of Conscience,” is directed by two notes, the one by himself and the other by the scribe, to appear at different places in the Trinity Manuscript, and in the 1673 edition it is even excluded from the sonnet sequence, not only the proper placement but the precise occasion of the sonnet seems to be difficult to define. The present article tries to explain why Milton changes his original idea of the chronological order and separates the sonnet from the sonnet group. Apparently the two main evils of the sonnet are ‘hire’ and ‘force’; the one takes the form of the Presbyterian movement to return to the corruptions of episcopal “plurality” and the other refers to their “civil sword” forcing our free consciences. But in the context of his lifelong efforts for the religious and political reformation in England, they are found out to be the very abuses against which he has consistently fought. The charges levelled here by the poet against Roman Catholics(“Trent”, “Priest”), Anglicans(“your prelate lord”), and Presbyterians(“a classic hierarchy”) would be hurled at Independents anxious to set up a new Established Church by defining the limits of toleration and seriously restricting the freedom of worship of dissenters, if the sonnet were placed in an originally intended position by the author, that is, after the excluded Vane sonnet. Finally, at its current placement in the 1673 edition published after the first version of Paradise Lost, Milton generalizes the object of his attack to include any religious or political parties who would “force our conscience that Christ set free” and climb into the Church like the “lewd hirelings” for their bellies’ sake. In short, Milton has continued to fight against all the corrupted clergy and the tyrannical magistrates who would seek to wield secular or civil power in order to suppress the liberty of conscience and private faith.