In this final lecture on Paradise Lost, Book Twelve's justification for the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden is examined alongside the Genesis account. The nature of Milton's God, whether literal or liberal, is examined at length. The poem's closing lines are closely read, with substantial attention paid to Milton's final, complicated take on the poem-long consideration of Providence and free will.
John Milton. Complete Poems and Major Prose. (Hughes):
Paradise Lost, Books XI-XII (esp. lines 574-679)
Yale University 2009. Some rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated on this page or on the Open Yale Courses website, all content on this page is licensed under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0)