Dr Rosanna Cox
About
I am interested in the interconnections between political thought and literature in the early modern period and, in particular, the mid-to-late seventeenth century. My research focuses on the formation of political identities, the languages of political engagement and the relationships between gender, citizenship and hermeneutics. I am particularly interested in the works of John Milton, the ‘republican speculations’ of his contemporaries and the influence of classical ideas of statecraft in the formation of the commonwealth. I am currently writing a monograph entitled Milton and the Ideal Citizen: Versions of Liberty, Slavery and Political Identity, 1643-1660, which considers the the ways in which Milton’s engagement with classical models in a series of his texts from 1643-1660 developed in response to his attempts to imbue the people of England with a sense of their rights and duties as citizens against a backdrop of unprecedented political transformation.