
Understanding Public Debates presents case studies including Milton's Paradise Lost and P.B. Shelley's 1820 Reform essay to explore how texts stage these debates by means of multiple perspectives, narrative situations, or ambiguities.

By historicizing and contextualizing them through readings of carefully selected literary texts, literary studies can contribute to understanding and rationalizing key debates waged in many pluralist societies today - whether on different conceptions of liberty, identity politics,...