This seminar will explore some of the enduring questions Milton addresses in Paradise Lost: Does justice exist? What is the nature of evil? Can we know the truth? What are the limits to authority? Discussion will focus on the language and narrative structure of the text and will extend to its literary, philosophical, and historical contexts. The inquiry will reveal that rather than providing definitive answers, the poem is provisional and often skeptical. At the end, Adam and Eve are banished from Paradise and exiled into the world of history with all its suffering and limitations. The image comprehends the entire poem and asks whether in the final analysis individual dignity, salvation, or heroism is possible; whether social progress—even survival—is possible. Small wonder that while rooted in mid seventeenth-century England, Paradise Lost strikes many readers today as an intensely modern poem.
Registration Opens Online: Monday, March 25, 2019 at 8AM (AZ Time)
