English 609.36 Milton

Instructor: Maria Zytaruk

Course Description

The focus of this course will be Milton's epic, Paradise Lost. We will seek to understand how Milton aspired in his epic "to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright."  The aim of the course is to give students a thorough grounding in one of English literature's most canonized poems.  Emphasis will be placed on a close reading of the poem and on the special capacity of imaginative literature to analyze cultural change.  Topics to be discussed include Milton's accommodation of several other genres within the epic: allegory (the account of Sin and Death); pastoral (the description of Eden); georgic (the gardening labours of Adam and Eve); tragedy (the fall of Adam and Eve).  The poem's final, consolatory emphasis on cultivating the "paradise within" has often been interpreted as a recipe for quietism and withdrawal.  We will challenge such readings by examining the poem's engagement with contemporary debates about nation, empire, civil liberties, and commercial expansion -- the consequences of which are still very much with us.

Course Requirements

Seminar presentations, class discussion, prospectus and bibliography for research paper, final research paper due at the end of term.

Texts

Works studied will include (but not be limited to) Milton's Paradise Lost, Comus, Of Education, and Areopagitica.  Non-Milton material will include Shakespeare's Richard II, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, and Ian McEwan's novel Atonement.  Theoretical and historical articles will be assigned each week.

Recommended Preparation

A course in Renaissance literature (ENGL 408 or 414 or equivalent).  Students are advised to read Paradise Lost in advance of the first class.