This book reads Milton’s Paradise Lost as a poem that seeks to educate its readers by narrating the education of its main characters. Many of Milton’s characters enter the action in late adolescence, newly independent and eager to test themselves, to discover who they are and their place in the world. The poem charts their progress into moral adulthood. Taking as its premise that attention to the moral development of the poem’s main characters will open the poem to most undergraduate readers, this book explores both the pedagogical activity within Paradise Lost and the pedagogical activity that the poem encourages.
Author(s): Margaret Olofson Thickstun
Edition: First Edition
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 200
Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 8
Preface......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 14
Introduction: Teaching Paradise Lost in the Twenty-First Century......Page 16
1 God as Father in Paradise Lost......Page 36
2 Satan, Interpretive Choices, and the Danger of Fixed Stories......Page 48
3 Abdiel, Peer Pressure, and the Rebel Angels......Page 68
4 Good Angels, Gratitude, and Growing in Communion......Page 86
5 The Education of the Son......Page 102
6 Raphael and the Challenge of Evangelical Education......Page 120
7 Adam as Parent......Page 134
8 Eve, Identity, and Growing in Relationship......Page 152
Conclusion......Page 172
Notes......Page 178
Works Cited......Page 182
A......Page 190
C......Page 191
E......Page 192
H......Page 193
M......Page 194
P......Page 195
R......Page 196
S......Page 197
W......Page 198
