English 162: Milton

Fall, 2001

Second paper

Your second paper for the course will be an original critical essay on one of the topics below. The topics derive from our class discussions this quarter; you must show a familiarity with that discussion in your approach. Your essay must assume the discourse of the class as its starting point and its context. In practice, you might assume that your readership is the class itself, that you are addressing your classmates on the issues that have concerned us all.

While there is no set limit, an essay of around 2000 words is envisioned. Please note that the essay is not a research paper, but an original critical essay based on your own reading of Milton over the past several weeks. You will be assumed to have a strong familiarity with Paradise Lost, having read the poem at least twice and having engaged both with Milton's biography and with the most important of his earlier poems. Your essay, of course, will show this background in a sophisticated engagement with the whole scope of Milton's epic.

You may, if you wish, also contextualize your essay in some critical discussion of Milton; in this case you must append a bibliography of the scholarly and critical works you consult and annotate all specific debts. But because the essay is to be an original critical essay deriving from your own experience of the poem, do not substitute extensive reading in the criticism for your own response.

Here are the topics:

1. Why does Milton include his own subjectivity in Paradise Lost? Before Milton epic had been understood as a genre that was public and directed outward to history through an objective narrative voice. But Milton's own subjectivity makes its way into the poem at significant moments, most significantly in the invocations. that begin Books I, III, and VII, and the references to the choice of subject matter at the beginning of the book that narrates the fall, Book IX. Why does he do this? Is it merely egotism, or does it come of a certain necessity in the subject matter of the poem? Is there any logic or progression in these "intrusions"? Can you see a plausible strategy in the relation of the poet's subjectivity to his larger thematic concerns?

2. A crucial fact about John Milton the man is that he was blind - had been blind in fact for the decade previous to his beginning serious work on Paradise Lost. (This blindness was interpreted by his political enemies as God's judgment on his support of revolution.) In the poem Milton does not hide the fact of his blindness, but makes explicit reference to it at several points. Can the poem be understood as in part a vindication of the poet's blindness? How does the poem understand light as both an attribute of God and a created element? How, in its large extent, does the poem make use of tropes of light, darkness, sight, blindness, etc.?

3. Milton insists on the sexual character of Adam and Eve's relationship in innocence, and sexuality is central to their understanding of themselves and their world. How do gender and sexuality figure in the poetic construction of Paradise and the unfallen world? Does Raphael describe the created world (in Book VII) as gendered and/or sexual? Try to answer this question by looking closely at the figurative language that describes the natural world, particularly the accounts of Paradise and of the creation.

4. In our discussions we have called Paradise Lost the last European epic and the first mock epic. How can it be both at the same time? What might this mean? A frequent way of referring to epic in the seventeenth century was as an "heroic poem." Consider Milton's practice of "heroic" poetry and his engagement with the classical traditions. (Obviously you'll want to have some familiarity with the ancient epics.) How does this relate to his discussions at various points in the poem to the thematics of heroism? How, finally, is Paradise Lost an heroic poem?

5. We have noticed that Paradise Lost in its image of Adam and Eve in innocence in Book IV portrays the relationship between them as strictly hierarchical. This vision of innocent, "ideal" man and woman accords of course with the general seventeenth-century view of the relation between the sexes. Are there any ways in which the poem implicitly (or explicitly?) alters this view as it develops? Does it simply portray a rigidly patriarchical understanding of the sexes, or is the poem in some ways interestingly conflicted on gender relations? Are changes visible in its portrayal of post-fallen man and woman? (The Elledge anthology contains two useful essays, to some extent disagreeing, on this issue.)

6. A poet's medium, of course, is language, and in Paradise Lost Milton wants to suggest the relationship of language to his themes of unfallen innocence and the falls of Satan and of Adam and Eve. How does language itself appear to be an explicit and implicit theme of the poem? What attitudes do you see expressed toward language by the various characters and by the poet? What do you believe emerges as the poem's understanding of rhetorical and poetic language? What is human language in innocence, what is it after the fall? What appears to be suggested as the proper language (a proper poetics) for fallen humanity?

I'll be happy to talk over any of these topics with you via e-mail or in office hours over the next couple of weeks. The goal, of course, is to produce an essay on Paradise Lost that says something interesting, insightful, significant, about the artistry, methods, or meanings of the poem. Your essay should show your own engagement with the poem over the quarter.

Essays should also show careful attention to clear and precise writing; in my experience, this can only occur with work that has been given adequate time for revision over several drafts. Note that this essay will count for about 45 percent of your final grade.

The essay, typed double spaced and (it should go without saying) carefully proofread, spell-checked and corrected, will be due on Monday, December 3 - this is a firm due date since I intend to return the papers at the final exam.