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Explores Milton's academic affiliations, their impacts, and implications for modern universities and scholars.
This article considers Milton’s affiliations with various academic or professional bodies, with special emphasis on three: the Italian academies he visited on his Grand Tour, the loose society of scholar-athletes envisioned in Areopagitica, and the Republican (and then Cromwellian) secretariat. It explores the benefits and burdens of membership in each, why they appealed to Milton, and why they ultimately proved unsatisfactory or untenable. The second part looks more closely at what Milton’s experience can teach us about the modern university and its growing reliance on a workforce of precarious scholars, while reflecting on some personal experiences about leaving academia.
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Stephen Hequembourg (2026) studied this question.
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